US Tells UN Hamas Is to Blame for Deaths Since Israel Resumed Gaza Hostilities

 United States UN Ambassador Dorothy Shea addresses the United Nations Security Council, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP)
United States UN Ambassador Dorothy Shea addresses the United Nations Security Council, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP)
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US Tells UN Hamas Is to Blame for Deaths Since Israel Resumed Gaza Hostilities

 United States UN Ambassador Dorothy Shea addresses the United Nations Security Council, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP)
United States UN Ambassador Dorothy Shea addresses the United Nations Security Council, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP)

The United States told the UN Security Council on Friday that the Palestinian group Hamas was to blame for the deaths in the Gaza Strip since Israel resumed hostilities there.

"Hamas bears full responsibility for the ongoing war in Gaza and for the resumption of hostilities. Every death would have been avoided had Hamas accepted the bridge proposal that the United States offered last Wednesday," acting US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea told the 15-member council.

Israel effectively abandoned a two-month-old truce three days ago, and has resumed its aerial bombardment and ground campaign, saying it wanted to press the militants to free remaining hostages.

Hamas said on Friday it was reviewing the US proposal to restore the ceasefire.

Of the more than 250 hostages originally seized in Hamas' October 2023 attack on Israel - which triggered the war in Gaza - 59 remain in the enclave, 24 of whom are thought to be alive.

Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon told the council that, in recent days, Israel had "eliminated several top Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists".

Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday alone killed more than 400 Palestinians, with scant let-up since then.

"Hamas has a choice," Danon said. "They can come back to the table and negotiate, or they can wait and watch their leadership fall, one by one. We will not stop until our people come home, all of them."

French Ambassador Jerome Bonnafont urged Israel to "unconditionally resume humanitarian aid, to stop the bombing, to stick to the logic of negotiations, however slow they may be, and to stop responding to cruelty with the unleashing of violence".



Gaza Civil Defense Says Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 29

A Palestinian girl, wounded in an Israeli strike that killed people, who gathered to collect water from a distribution point, according to medics, receives treatment at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip July 13, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer
A Palestinian girl, wounded in an Israeli strike that killed people, who gathered to collect water from a distribution point, according to medics, receives treatment at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip July 13, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer
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Gaza Civil Defense Says Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 29

A Palestinian girl, wounded in an Israeli strike that killed people, who gathered to collect water from a distribution point, according to medics, receives treatment at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip July 13, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer
A Palestinian girl, wounded in an Israeli strike that killed people, who gathered to collect water from a distribution point, according to medics, receives treatment at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip July 13, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer

Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli airstrikes on Sunday killed at least 29 Palestinians, including six children near a water distribution point.

The attacks came with apparent deadlock in a week of indirect talks in Qatar between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas for a ceasefire in the territory.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that Gaza City was hit by several strikes overnight and in the early morning, killing eight, "including women and children" and wounding others.

An Israeli airstrike hit a family home near the Nuseirat refugee camp, south of Gaza City, resulting in "10 martyrs and several injured", Bassal said.

In central Gaza, six children were among eight people killed when a drone "hit a potable water distribution point in an area for displaced people" in the Nuseirat camp, he added.

Several other people were wounded, he said.

In the territory's south, three people were killed when Israeli jets hit a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in the coastal Al-Mawasi area, according to the civil defense spokesman.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has recently intensified its operations across Gaza, more than 21 months into the war triggered by Hamas's October 2023 attack.

On Saturday, the military said fighter jets had hit more than 35 "Hamas terror targets" around Beit Hanun in northern Gaza.

The vast majority of Gaza's population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war, which has created dire humanitarian conditions in the territory.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify tolls and details provided by the civil defense agency and other parties.