NEW YORK – Israel pressed ahead with its offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza on Saturday after the United States blocked an extraordinary United Nations request to call for a ceasefire in the two-month war.

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were quick to condemn the U.S. veto, as the Hamas-run Health Ministry put the latest death toll in Gaza at 17,487 people, mostly women and children.

An Israeli attack on the southern town of Khan Yunis killed six people, while five others died in a separate attack in Rafah, the ministry said on Saturday.

Israel has vowed to root out Hamas after its unprecedented attack on October 7, when militants breached the Gaza Strip’s militarized border, killing around 1,200 people and taking hostages, of whom Israel says 138 remain captive.

Vast areas of the Gaza Strip have been reduced to rubble and, according to the United Nations, around 80% of the population has been displaced and severe shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine have been reported.

“It’s so cold and the tent is so small. I only have the clothes I wear, I still don’t know what the next step will be,” said Mahmoud Abu Rayan, who was displaced from Beit Lahia in the north.

The United States on Friday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have called for an immediate ceasefire.

U.S. envoy Robert Wood said the resolution was “disconnected from reality” and “did not advance the sense on the ground.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the ceasefire “would prevent the collapse of the terrorist organization Hamas, which commits war crimes and crimes against humanity, and allow it to continue to rule the Gaza Strip.”

Hamas on Saturday criticized the US rejection of the ceasefire offer as “the occupation’s direct involvement in the killing of our people and the commission of further massacres and ethnic cleansing.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said it was “a disgrace and another blank check for the occupying state to carry out massacres, destruction and displacement.”

The veto was immediately condemned by humanitarian groups. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said the Security Council was “complicit in the ongoing massacre.”

The Israeli military said Friday it had attacked 450 targets in Gaza in 24 hours, showing footage of attacks by naval vessels in the Mediterranean.

Hamas’ health ministry reported 40 dead near Gaza City in the north and dozens more in Jabalia and the southern capital Khan Yunis.

“SPIRAL NIGHTMARE”

After two months of conflict and bombing, UN chief Antonio Guterres said on Friday: “The people of Gaza are staring into the abyss.”

“People are desperate, afraid and angry,” he said.

“All of this is happening in the midst of an ever-widening humanitarian nightmare.”

Many of Gaza’s 1.9 million people displaced by the war have moved south, turning Rafah near the Egyptian border into a massive camp.

As the death toll of medical workers rises in the conflict, more than a dozen member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) submitted a draft resolution on Friday calling on Israel to comply with its obligations under international law to protect humanitarian workers in Gaza.

They called on Israel to “respect and protect” medical and humanitarian personnel carrying out exclusively medical tasks, as well as hospitals and other medical facilities.

According to the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA, only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were functioning in any way.

With civilian casualties rising, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Friday that Washington believes Israel must do more to protect civilians in the conflict.

“We are certainly all aware that more can be done to … reduce the number of civilian casualties. And we will continue to work with our Israeli colleagues to achieve this goal,” he said.

The death toll also rose in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot dead six Palestinians on Friday, the territory’s health ministry said.

Israel said on Friday it had lost 91 soldiers in Gaza.

It said two more people were injured in a failed hostage rescue attempt overnight and that “numerous terrorists” were killed in the operation.

Hamas claimed a hostage was killed in the operation and released a video purporting to show the body, but this could not be independently verified.

Hamas rocket parts, launchers and other weapons, as well as a one-kilometer-long tunnel, were found at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, the army said, warning residents to head west.

Attack on the US Embassy

An attack on the US embassy in Iraq on Friday increased fears of a wider regional conflict.

Volleys of rockets were fired against the mission in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, adding to dozens of recent rocket and drone attacks by pro-Iranian groups against American or coalition troops in Iraq and Syria.

Separately, three Hezbollah fighters and a Syrian were killed in an Israeli drone strike on their car in southern Syria on Friday, a war monitor said.

“One Syrian and three Lebanese Hezbollah fighters from the surveillance and missile launch unit were killed in the Israeli drone attack on their rental car” in the town of Madinat al-Baath in Quneitra province, near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

The day before, the Observatory, which has a network of sources in Syria, reported that Israel had hit sites near Damascus and a “regime military post in Quneitra province” with eight rockets, without causing any casualties.

The attacks were a response to the bombing of the Golan Heights, the observer said.