(VOVWORLD) - Israel bombarded Hamas targets as it prepared for a ground attack, with Russia warning the conflict could spread beyond the Middle East, and as world powers failed to secure plans to deliver critical humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip.
 Palestinians gather at the site of Israeli strikes on houses, as the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 26, 2023. (Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem) |
US President Joe Biden, in remarks looking beyond the conflict that began with an Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian Hamas militants, said on Wednesday that the future should include Israeli and Palestinian states side by side.
Biden said at a joint press conference in Washington with visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that he believed one reason the Islamist Hamas group attacked southern Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages of different nationalities, was to prevent normalising relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the conflict could spread beyond the Middle East and said it was wrong that innocent women, children and old people in Gaza were being punished for other people’s crimes.
At the United Nations, Russia and China vetoed a US-drafted Security Council resolution calling for pauses in hostilities to allow food, water and medicine to be delivered to Palestinian civilians. Russia made a proposal that advocated a wider ceasefire, but failed to win the minimum number of votes. Israel has resisted both, arguing that Hamas would only take advantage and create new threats to Gaza civilians.