Aid workers say Gaza's humanitarian system is on the verge of collapse, as disease and starvation threaten.
Washington's veto was swiftly condemned by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, whose health ministry put the latest death toll in Gaza at 17,490, mostly women and children.
An Israeli strike on the southern city of Khan Younis killed six people, while five others died in a separate attack in Rafah, the ministry said Saturday.
It added that, over a 24-hour period, 71 dead and 160 wounded had arrived at Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah city following persistent bombings.
Repeated volleys of automatic weapons fire were heard Saturday in Gaza's north, in live footage aired by French News Agency, AFPTV.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, said it fired rockets Saturday toward Reim in southern Israel, where Hamas gunmen killed 364 people, Israel says, at a musical festival on October 7.
Israel has vowed to eradicate Hamas after its unprecedented attacks of that day, when militants broke through Gaza's militarized border to kill around 1,200 people and seize hostages, 138 of whom remain captive, according to Israel.
Vast areas of Gaza have been reduced to rubble, and the UN says about 80 percent of the population has been displaced, with dire shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine reported.
"It's so cold, and the tent is so small. All I have are the clothes I wear," said Mahmud Abu Rayan, displaced from Beit Lahia in the north.
US vetoes cease-fire vote
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres triggered the rare Security Council vote by invoking a measure unused in decades.
He sought the council's endorsement of a cease-fire because, he said, rapidly deteriorating current conditions make it "impossible for meaningful humanitarian operations," with potentially irreversible implications for regional peace and security.
The United States on Friday vetoed the Security Council resolution.
US envoy Robert Wood said it was "divorced from reality" and "would leave Hamas in place able to repeat what it did on October 7."
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the cease-fire "would prevent the collapse of the Hamas terrorist organization, which is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and would enable it to continue ruling the Gaza Strip."
Humanitarian groups swiftly condemned the veto.
Hamas denounced it as "a direct participation of the occupation in killing our people,"while Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh called it "a disgrace and another blank check given to the occupying state to massacre, destroy and displace."
On Saturday Iran, which backs Hamas, warned about the possible "uncontrollable explosion in the situation of the region" after the U.S. veto.
Guterres said Friday that "the people of Gaza are looking into the abyss," with "a spiraling humanitarian nightmare."
Many of the 1.9 million Palestinians displaced by the war have headed south, turning Rafah near the Egyptian border into a vast camp.
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