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3. Gaza War: Unrelenting Israeli Raids Amid Persisting Ceasefire Mediation

Fighting raged on Sunday in the Gaza Strip in the third month of war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.

Hamas said on Sunday that Israel had launched a series of "very violent raids" targeting the southern city of Khan Yunis and the road from there to Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

Mediation efforts are continuing to secure a new Gaza ceasefire despite ongoing Israeli bombardment that is "narrowing the window" for a successful outcome, Qatar's prime minister said on Sunday.


UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the Security Council was "paralyzed by geostrategic divisions" that were undermining solutions to the Israel-Hamas fighting.

The body's "authority and credibility were severely undermined" by its delayed response to the war, he said two days after a US veto prevented a resolution calling for a ceasefire.

A crater caused by Israeli bombing on the Salah Al-Din road, on December 10, 2023. (Photo by Said Khatib / AFP)

'Catastrophic' Health Impact

The war is having a catastrophic impact on health in the Gaza Strip, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Sunday.

"The impact of the conflict on health is catastrophic," and health workers are doing an impossible job in unimaginable conditions, the UN health agency's director-general told the opening of a WHO executive board special session called to discuss the health conditions in the Palestinian territories

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said that 100 trucks carrying aid entered Gaza from Egypt on Saturday, "well below" the daily average before the war.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees UNRWA, said that "food, water, and fuel are being systematically used as weapons of war in Gaza."

Katrine Dige Houmøller, with AFP