Israel pounded the Gaza Strip from north to south on Saturday in an expanded phase of its two-month-old war against Hama

United States wielded its U.N. Security Council veto to shield its ally from a global demand for a ceasefire.

Thirteen of the Security Council’s 15 members voted for the resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire that was blocked by Washington.

Israel has expanded its ground campaign into the southern half of the Gaza Strip by launching the storming of the main southern city Khan Younis.

Israel has blocked Gazans from fleeing along the main north-south route down the spine of the narrow strip and is shunting them instead towards the Mediterranean coast.

Younis said on Saturday that Israeli forces were ordering people out of another district just west of positions the Israelis stormed earlier this week

In Khan Younis, the dead and wounded arrived through the night at the overwhelmed Nasser hospital.

A medic ran out of an ambulance with the limp body of a small girl in a pink track suit. Inside, wounded children wailed and writhed on the tile floor as nurses raced to comfort them

Nassar and another southern hospital, al Aqsa in Deir al-Ballah, reported 133 dead and 259 wounded between them in the past 24 hour