UNSC resolution "fails to match" abject condition in Gaza: Hamas

GAZA, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- Hamas expressed disappointment at the UN Security Council Resolution adopted on Friday demanding immediate and unhindered humanitarian access throughout the Gaza Strip.

In a press statement to Xinhua, the Gaza-ruling Palestinian faction at war with the Israeli army said the resolution "failed to match" the catastrophic condition in Gaza resulting from Israeli military actions in the region.

Hamas accused the U.S. administration of watering down the resolution, allowing Israel to continue what it described as a campaign of destruction, violence, and terrorism in Gaza, according to the statement.

Earlier in the day, the 15-member Security Council passed the resolution with 13 votes in favor, no votes against, and two abstentions from Russia and the United States. The vote followed a U.S. veto of a Russian amendment that would have restored the call for a "suspension of hostilities."

The resolution demands parties to the conflict "allow, facilitate and enable the immediate, safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale directly to the Palestinian civilian population throughout the Gaza Strip, and in this regard calls for urgent steps to immediately allow safe, unhindered, and expanded humanitarian access and to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities."

Speaking after the vote, Riyad Mansour, permanent observer of the Observer State of Palestine to the United Nations, said that the Security Council first met to address the crisis when hundreds of Palestinians had been killed by Israel, and is now meeting "after over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, almost half of them children and 60,000 wounded, and two million Palestinians have been forcefully displaced."

"This resolution is a step in the right direction. It must be implemented and must be accompanied by massive pressure for an immediate ceasefire," he urged.