GAZA: Palestinians wept and prayed for their dead on Saturday after fresh Zionist strikes followed a UN Security Council resolution that demanded more aid be allowed into Gaza but did not call for an immediate halt to fighting. Clouds of grey and black smoke rose over Khan Yunis city in the south after strikes in the morning, and live AFPTV images showed black smoke drifting over the territory’s north.

The health ministry in Gaza said at least 20,258 people had been killed in the Palestinian territory since the start of war with the Zionist entity on Oct 7. The latest toll includes 201 fatalities in the past 24 hours, the ministry said. Most of the dead are women and children.

The health ministry said dozens of Palestinians were killed this week and publicly “executed” during a Zionist military operation in the north of the Gaza Strip. The Zionist “massacre resulted in the death of dozens” of people in the Jabalia camp and Jabalia town, ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said in a statement. “They also executed dozens of citizens in the streets,” he added. The ministry also reported 18 people killed in a strike on a house at the central Nuseirat refugee camp, and said other targets were hit up and down the Gaza Strip.

The bombardments came after the Security Council approved a resolution demanding “immediate, safe and unhindered” deliveries of life-saving aid be rushed to Gaza “at scale”. It also called for creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities,” but did not seek an immediate end to combat. Members had wrangled for days over the wording.

At Washington’s insistence, they toned down some provisions and avoided calling for a ceasefire that would stop the war. It is still unclear what, if any, impact the vote will have on the ground where Gazans have been forced into crowded shelters or tents, struggling to find food, fuel, water and medical care. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a “humanitarian ceasefire” is the only way for aid “to be effectively delivered”. The issue is not the number of aid trucks, he said, but “the way (the Zionist entity) is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles” to aid distribution.

Immediately after the UN vote, the Zionist entity again vowed to fight on until Hamas is “eliminated” and captives are freed. “(The Zionist entity) will continue the war in Gaza,” said Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, insisting it was legal and just.

At Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, men gently led a weeping woman who had seen the bodies of relatives. A man crouched down in tears, his hand resting on a black body bag. Outside, others prayed before another corpse. “What is going on in the corridors of the UN Security Council is nothing more than theatre and farce,” Rafat Al-Aydi said, standing before the bodies which lay under a bush of bright red flowers. “This is a genocide.”

Allies, including the United States which provides the Zionist entity with billions of dollars in military aid, have increasingly pressured the Zionist entity to avoid civilian casualties. The UN estimates the fighting has displaced 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million population. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a majority of those uprooted from their homes were now going “entire days and nights without eating”, and “famine is looming”.

A one-week truce that Qatar helped mediate, with support from Egypt and the United States, ended on Dec 1. It saw 80 Zionist captives released from Gaza captivity in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. The Zionist entity has repeatedly told Palestinians to make their way to areas in the tiny territory it says are safe, but even when they do residents say they still have been bombarded.

Many Gazans have been forced to move multiple times. On Friday thousands fled central Gaza after an army evacuation order. It warned residents of Bureij, a refugee camp established about 70 years ago, to move “for their own security” towards Deir al-Balah city further south. Donkey carts creaked with their belongings. Families pushed babies in prams and led elderly relatives through the crowd. They packed winter blankets for the road ahead.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said the latest evacuation order would affect more than 150,000 people. “The (Zionist) army just orders people to move into areas where there are ongoing air strikes,” Thomas White, UNRWA’s Gaza director, wrote on social media. At Deir al-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital ambulances arrived with more bodies and wounded after an overnight strike.

Friday’s UN resolution only passed thanks to US and Russian abstentions. It requests the appointment of a UN humanitarian coordinator to oversee and verify third-country aid to Gaza. But the Zionist entity would retain operational oversight of aid deliveries. Hamas described the resolution as “an insufficient measure that does not respond to the catastrophic situation created by the Zionist war machine”.