Israel requests crisis meeting with UN after Hamas kills six hostages in Gaza

The United Nations Security Council will discuss the conflict between Hamas and Israel and the crisis in the Palestinian territories after the killing of six hostages in the Gaza Strip.

Even routine bureaucratic questions about the meeting are sparking disagreements between UN members.

Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon’s wrote on X early Tuesday that, “following my urgent request, the UN Security Council will finally convene on Wednesday for the first time since the October 7 massacre to hold an official discussion on the hostages”.

The UN ambassador from Malta, who served as Security Council president in April, wrote back to Danon on X that the council had adopted a November 15 resolution that called for the release of all the hostages during humanitarian pauses in the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

“At the time of adoption your representative stated in the Council that Israel will not implement the resolution,” Vanessa Frazier wrote.

“Stop spreading misinformation.”

France, the United Kingdom and the United States backed Israel’s request for a Security Council meeting.

Israel wrote in a press release on Tuesday that “the Security Council must condemn the terrorist organisation Hamas and demand the immediate release of the abductees”.

Algeria, another Security Council member, separately requested a meeting on the Middle East crisis that will be part of Wednesday’s meeting.

The death of the six hostages whose bodies were recovered by Israeli troops over the weekend underscores the urgency to get a ceasefire deal and the release of the remaining captives, the White House said on Tuesday.

“Clearly what happened over the weekend underscores how important it is to get this done as quickly as possible,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters in a briefing, adding that Hamas was responsible for their deaths.

The Israeli Health Ministry said autopsies had determined the hostages were shot at close range and died on Thursday or Friday.

The army said the bodies were recovered from a tunnel in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Israeli forces killed 33 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours as they battled militants, Palestinian officials said on Tuesday, but brief pauses in fighting allowed medics to conduct a third day of polio vaccinations for children.

Among those killed were four women in Rafah and eight people near a hospital in Gaza City in the north, the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said.

Others were killed in separate air strikes across the territory, it said.

The Israeli military said it killed eight Palestinian gunmen, including a senior Hamas commander who took part in the October 7 attacks in Israel, at a command centre near the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.

A statement said Ahmed Fozi Nazer Muhammad Wadia had taken command of a “massacre of civilians carried out by Hamas terrorists” in Israel’s Netiv HaAsara community near the Gaza border.

There was no response from Hamas.

The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they were battling Israeli forces in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City, and also in Rafah and Khan Younis in the south.

Nevertheless, the World Health Organisation said that on Tuesday, day three of a mass campaign, it was ahead of its targets for polio vaccinations in Gaza and had inoculated about a quarter of children under 10.

The campaign relies on daily eight-hour pauses in fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in specific areas of the besieged enclave.

Diplomatic efforts to secure a permanent ceasefire release foreign and Israeli hostages held in Gaza and return many Palestinians jailed by Israel have stalled, however.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israeli troops would remain in the Philadelphi corridor on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, one of the main sticking points in reaching a deal to end the fighting and return hostages.

Hamas, which wants an agreement to end the war and see Israeli forces out of all of the Gaza Strip, says such a condition, among some others, would prevent a deal.

Netanyahu says the war can only end when Hamas is eradicated.

with AP