The U.S. veto would veto an Algerian plan likely to come before the United Nations Security Council this week calling for an immediate cease-fire to Israel’s war in Gaza, according to the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement Saturday that the U.S. has been working for months on “a sustainable resolution” to the Gaza conflict “which would bring an immediate and sustained period of calm to Gaza for at least six weeks, and from which we could then take the time and the steps to build a more enduring peace.”
She said the plan the U.S. has been working on with input from Israel, Egypt and others “represents the best opportunity to reunite all hostages with their families and enable a prolonged pause in fighting, that would allow for more lifesaving food, water, fuel, medicine, and other essentials to get into the hands of Palestinian civilians who desperately need it.”
She said the Algerian plan would not achieve the same results and “may run counter to them.” Thomas-Greenfield said if the Algerian plan were to come up for a vote, “it will not be adopted.”
Israeli airstrikes Saturday across central Gaza have killed at least 68 people, officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital told CNN.
The World Health Organization and Gaza’s health ministry say Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza is a nonfunctioning entity.
Nasser is “completely out of service,” Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesperson for the ministry told Reuters Sunday. He said only four staff members are caring for patients.
“It’s ceasing to function is a death sentence for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian displaced people in Khan Younis and Rafah,” Qidra said.
Earlier Sunday, the head of the World Health Organization posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Nasser was “not functional anymore, after a weeklong siege followed by the ongoing raid.”
He said the WHO was denied access to the hospital Friday and Saturday “to assess the conditions of the patients and critical medical needs, despite reaching the hospital compound to deliver fuel alongside partners.”
Tedros said about 200 patients remain in the hospital, with at least 20 of them needing “to be urgently referred to other hospitals to receive health care; medical referral is every patient’s right.”
“The cost of the delays,” the WHO chief said, “will be paid by patients’ lives.”
The Gaza ministry said Sunday that 28,985 Palestinians have been killed and 68,883 wounded in Israeli strikes since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. The ministry said at least 127 Palestinians were killed and another 205 were injured in the past 24 hours. Most of the Palestinian casualties have been women and children.
Source: VOA
