Israel forged ahead with its air and ground offensive Wednesday in Gaza, drawing international outrage and rare criticism from the United States over the killing of thousands of civilians.
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The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to demand a humanitarian cease-fire, General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, but the assembly's message in favor of ending the Israel-Hamas war serves as an important barometer of world opinion.
Just hours before the vote, US President Joe Biden warned that Israel was losing international support because of its "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza.
The Israel-Hamas war has resulted in the deaths of over 18,400 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory, which does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Israel says 113 of its soldiers have died in its ground offensive after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, murdering about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 hostages.
Clashes on Lebanon's southern border against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war have exacerbated an education crisis in the small Mediterranean country that has been in the throes of a major economic meltdown for the past four years, UNICEF said Wednesday.
A survey of Lebanese as well as Syrian and Palestinian refugee households living in Lebanon conducted by the U.N. agency in November found that 26% of households had school-aged children who were not attending school, up from 18% in April.
Syrians reported the highest prevalence of children out of school, at 52% of households, followed by Lebanese at 13% and Palestinians at 7%.
While the "cost of education materials" was the most-cited reason, UNICEF said, thousands of children were also out of education due to disruptions related to ongoing fighting on the border between the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah and Israeli forces.
The clashes have killed about 130 people in Lebanon, including 17 civilians, according to a tally by The Associated Press, and have displaced nearly 59,000, according to the International Organization for Migration.
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