The United States Friday vetoed a United Nations resolution backed by the vast majority of Security Council members and many other nations demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.

The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1 with the United Kingdom abstaining.

U.N. Secretary-general Antonio Gutteres told the council that Gaza is at “a breaking point” and “there is a high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system.”

The vote came as Israel said that its military was rounding up Palestinian men in northern Gaza for interrogation, searching for Hamas militants, while desperate Palestinians in the south crowded into an ever-shrinking area, and the U.N. warned that its aid operation is “in tatters.”

In a vain effort to press the Biden administration to drop its opposition to calling for a halt to the fighting, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were all in Washington on Friday. But their meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken took place only after the U.N. vote.

Along with the vote, the Arab diplomats’ mission served to shift responsibility more squarely onto the United States for protecting Israel from growing demands to stop the airstrikes that are killing thousands of Palestinian civilians.

U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood called the resolution “imbalanced” and criticized the council after the vote for its failure to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which the militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, or to acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself. He declared that halting military action would allow Hamas to continue to rule Gaza and “only plant the seeds for the next war.”

The detentions on Friday pointed to Israeli efforts to secure the military’s hold on northern Gaza as the war entered its third month. Furious urban fighting has continued in the north, underscoring Hamas’ heavy resistance, and tens of thousands of residents are believed to remain in the area six weeks after troops and tanks rolled in.

The first images of mass detentions emerged Thursday from the northern town of Beit Lahiya, showing dozens of men kneeling or sitting in the streets, stripped down to their underwear, their hands bound behind their backs.

Some had their heads bowed. U.N. monitors said Israeli troops reportedly detained men and boys from the age of 15 in a school-turned-shelter.

Israel’s air and ground campaign initially focused on the northern third of Gaza, leading hundreds of thousands of residents to flee south. A week ago, Israel expanded its ground assault into central and south Gaza, where nearly the territory’s entire population of 2.3 million Palestinians are crowded, many of them cut off from humanitarian supplies.