There is “no safe place to go in the Gaza Strip”, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Sunday, as Israeli airstrikes kill 300 people in 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 18,000, as well as 49,500 wounded people.
Heavy fighting raged overnight and into Sunday focussing mainly on Khan Younis, as Israel pressed ahead with its attacks after the US blocked the latest international efforts to halt the fighting and rushed more weapons to its close ally.
Israel has faced rising international outrage and calls for a ceasefire after the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians and the displacement of nearly 85% of Gaza's 2.3 million people within the besieged territory, where UN agencies say there is no safe place to flee .
But the United States has lent vital support to the indiscriminate attack once again in recent days, by vetoing United Nations Security Council efforts to end the fighting that enjoyed widespread international support, and by pushing through an emergency sale of over $100 million worth of tank ammunition to Israel.
The continuing Israeli assault on Gaza comes as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he regrets the Security Council's failure to demand a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Addressing Qatar's Doha Forum, Guterres said the council was "paralysed by geostrategic divisions" that were undermining solutions to Israel's war on Gaza.
The body's "authority and credibility were severely undermined" by its delayed response to the conflict, he said two days after the US veto prevented a resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire.
"I reiterated my appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared," he told the forum.
"Regrettably, the Security Council failed to do it," he added.
"I can promise, I will not give up."
Guterres had convened an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council after two months of fighting that have left more than 17,700 people dead in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Palestinian enclave's health ministry.
The secretary-general deployed the rarely-used Article 99 of the United Nations Charter to bring to the council's attention "any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security".
The rule had not previously been invoked by a UN chief in decades and has been triggered due to the catastrophic humanitarian crisis gripping Gaza.
"We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system," Guterres told the Doha Forum.
"The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region."