UN chief invokes rare article to address war as Israeli strikes kill dozens

Israel battled Hamas fighters in Gaza's biggest cities and said it had attacked dozens of targets, leaving Palestinians struggling to survive a situation the United Nations described as "apocalyptic."

Warning of a "severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system," United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked rarely used Article 99 of the founding UN Charter to push for a ceasefire in a letter to the Security Council. 

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said UN chief Antonio Guterres's tenure was "a danger to world peace" after he invoked a rare procedure with the Security Council over the Gaza war.

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Gazans crammed into neighboring Rafah on the border with Egypt on the basis of Israeli leaflets and messages saying that they would be safe in the city. But they remained fearful after an Israeli strike on a house there killed 15, according to health officials in Rafah.

Israel said it had killed a number of gunmen in southern Gaza's largest city, Khan Younis, including two fighters who emerged firing from a tunnel, a day after Israeli troops entered the heart of the city. Hamas's armed wing, al-Qassam Brigades, said earlier that combat was fierce. 

Palestinian health officials said an Israeli air strike had killed four people in a house in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip overnight and another strike killed two people in Khan Younis in the morning.

Fierce gun battles

Residents in Gaza City in the north reported all-night bombing and fierce gun battles in Shejaiya, east of the center and the Jabalia refugee camp further north, as well as bombing in another district, Sabra.

Israel said it had raided a Hamas compound in Jabalia, killing several gunmen and locating a network of tunnels, a training area and a weapons cache.

In Khan Younis, Israeli forces had encircled the house of Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

"His home may not be his castle, and he can escape, but it's only a matter of time before we get him," he said in a video statement.

Khan Younis residents said Israeli tanks had neared al-Sinwar's home but it was not known whether he was there. Israel has said it believes many Hamas leaders and fighters are holed up in underground tunnels.

Israeli warplanes also bombed targets across the densely populated coastal strip in one of the heaviest phases of the two-month-old war. WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, said at least 17 were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Maghazi in Central Gaza.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network said an Israeli bombardment of Jabalia Camp in northern Gaza killed 22 relatives of its Gaza correspondent Moamen Al-Sharafi.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released a statement saying that the Israeli strikes on a group of Lebanese, U.S., and Iraqi journalists in south Lebanon on October 13, appeared to be "deliberate attacks on civilians," which the NGO says constitutes a "war crime."

The strikes killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists, including Al Jazeera cameraperson Elie Brakhia and reporter Carmen Joukhadar.

From the 'war of cannons' to the 'war of starvation'

Hundreds of thousands of people made homeless in north Gaza during the war were desperately seeking shelter in the few places in the south designated as safe by Israel.

The UN humanitarian office said that most of the homeless people in Rafah, about 13 kilometers (8 miles) south of Khan Younis, were sleeping rough due to a lack of tents although the UN had managed to distribute a few hundred.

Displaced civilians were also fleeing to the desolate area of Al Mawasi on Gaza's southern Mediterranean coast, which Israel has said is safe. 

The former Bedouin village lacks shelter, food and other necessities, according to refugee organizations. 

Ibrahim Mahram, a Palestinian who fled to Al Mawasi, said five families were sharing a tent.

"We suffered from the war of cannons and escaped it to arrive at the war of starvation," he told the network. "We divide one tomato between all of us."

The United Nations World Food Programme has published a report highlighting food insecurity in the Gaza Strip, pointing out that households in northern Gaza are "experiencing alarming levels of hunger."

At least 97 percent of households in northern Gaza have "inadequate food consumption," with nine out of 10 people going one full day and night without food.

Israel unleashed its military campaign in response to a surprise October 7 incursion by Hamas fighters who rampaged through Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and seizing 240 hostages, according to Israel's tally.

Israeli army announced the death of another of its soldiers, 24-year-old Maor Gershoni, bringing the total death toll in the Israeli army since war started to 414.

Hundreds unaccounted for under the rubble

Figures from Gaza's Health Ministry put the death toll in Gaza at 16,015, including at least 6,000 children. But because the ministry has not released casualty figures for all of Gaza since Monday, it was unclear if that toll was comprehensive, and the ministry and the UN have said hundreds of people are unaccounted for under the rubble.

As Israel broadened its onslaught after largely taking control of north Gaza last month, Palestinian medics said Gaza's hospitals were overflowing with dead and wounded, many of them women and children, and supplies were running out.

The UN said only two hospitals in the north were now admitting patients, down from 24 before the war.

Maher Shamiyeh, the assistant undersecretary for Gaza's health ministry, told Al Jazeera that al-Shifa Hospital has been reduced to administering first aid and clinical care. The hospital is the largest in the Gaza Strip, but has not been functioning since the Israeli army targeted the medical complex last month.

Leaders of the G7 nations including Israel's close ally the U.S. called for further humanitarian truces "to address the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Gaza and minimize civilian casualties."

The United Nations Security Council received a UAE-drafted resolution that demanded an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire" with a vote sought on Friday. 

A senior Hamas official told journalists that mediators were still exploring opportunities for a truce and reiterated its demand that Israel cease its attacks.

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