US tells UN Hamas is to blame for deaths since Israel resumed Gaza hostilities

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that the Palestinian militant group Hamas was to blame for the deaths in the Gaza Strip since Israel resumed hostilities there.

“Hamas bears full responsibility for the ongoing war in Gaza and for the resumption of hostilities. Every death would have been avoided had Hamas accepted the bridge proposal that the United States offered last Wednesday,” acting U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea told the 15-member council.

Israel effectively abandoned a two-month-old truce three days ago, and has resumed its aerial bombardment and ground campaign, saying it wanted to press the militants to free remaining hostages.

Hamas said on Friday it was reviewing the U.S. proposal to restore the ceasefire.

Of the more than 250 hostages originally seized in Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel – which triggered the war in Gaza – 59 remain in the enclave, 24 of whom are thought to be alive.

Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon told the council that, in recent days, Israel had “eliminated several top Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists”.

Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday alone killed more than 400 Palestinians, with scant let-up since then.

“Hamas has a choice,” Danon said. “They can come back to the table and negotiate, or they can wait and watch their leadership fall, one by one. We will not stop until our people come home, all of them.”

French Ambassador Jerome Bonnafont urged Israel to “unconditionally resume humanitarian aid, to stop the bombing, to stick to the logic of negotiations, however slow they may be, and to stop responding to cruelty with the unleashing of violence”.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Kevin Liffey)