GAZA took the spotlight as the annual meeting at the United Nations general assembly opened in New York.

As the world’s leaders took it in turns to speak on Tuesday, the crisis in the devastated Palestinian territory received the greatest attention, though many also highlighted the conflicts in Ukraine and Sudan as well as climate problems, exclusion from UN decision-making and poor nations struggling to feed their populations. 

King Abdullah of Jordan said: “I cannot recall a time of greater peril than this.”

He accused Israel of undermining a key part of the international system protecting human rights, highlighting the bombing of UN shelters and schools and the killing of humanitarian workers.

The Jordanian monarch dismissed the Israeli far right’s talk of a mass deportation of Palestinians to Jordan as a war crime “that will never happen.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said: “The right to self-defence became a right for vengeance, which prevents a deal for the release of hostages and delays a ceasefire [in Gaza].”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the UN of being  a “dysfunctional, unwieldy and inert structure,” telling the meeting that “international peace and security are too important to be left to the arbitrariness of the privileged five” permanent members of the world body’s security council. 

He called on the security council to impose sanctions on Israel and said the general assembly should recommend the use of force to achieve an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an exchange of prisoners and unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid.

Making his final speech to the general assembly, US President Joe Biden repeated his calls for a ceasefire and the return of hostages, insisting that a “full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest.”

At least 53 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Tuesday.

A mother and her five children lost their lives when a house was bombed north of Rafah.

At least two people died and several wounded when an Israeli air strike hit a tent in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. The al-Ejla family had already lost 11 members last month. 

One person was killed and others were wounded in an Israeli air strike on a house in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. The Israeli military partially withdrew from the town after conducting military raids and destroying agricultural land.

Civil defence authorities in Gaza have confirmed a significant rise in the number of air strikes targeting residential buildings in central Gaza and in Khan Younis further south.