More than 700 Palestinians were killed in overnight Israeli air strikes, Gaza's health ministry said. It is the highest 24-hour death toll since Israel began a bombing campaign to crush Hamas militants who rampaged through southern communities, killing 1,400 people, in the country's deadliest attack since its founding in 1948.
"I hear the call for proportionality. I hear the calls before for a ceasefire," said said Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. "Tell me what is a proportionate response for killing of babies, for rape women and burn them, for beheading of a child? How you can agree to a ceasefire with someone who swore to kill and destroy your own existence? How?"
FILE - Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki attends a meeting of the Security Council on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., October 24, 2023.
Israel has imposed a "total siege" on Gaza and international diplomacy has focused on getting aid to the enclave of 2.3 million people from Egypt via Rafah - the main crossing in and out of Gaza that does not border Israel.
"We are here today to stop the killing, to stop the massacres being committed against the Palestinian people. The ongoing massacres being deliberately and systematically and savagely perpetrated by Israel, the occupying power, against the Palestinian civilian population under its illegal occupation must be stopped. The Security Council has a duty to stop them," said Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki.
Material by UNTV was also included in this report.