Israel and Hamas war rages despite U.N. cease-fire demand, as U.N. envoy accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza

Despite a United Nations Security Council demand for an immediate cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, the situation in Gaza is so desperate that some teenagers in the decimated Palestinian territory say they hope to be killed swiftly to escape the "nightmare" around them, a spokesman for the U.N. children's agency said Tuesday.

The grim assessment came as the U.N.'s top envoy for human rights in the Palestinian territories said there were "reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel's commission of genocide is met."

Spokesperson James Elder, for the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, told journalists in a video message from Rafah, in southern Gaza, that agency staff held a meeting the previous day with adolescents in the city during which several youths said they were "so desperate for this nightmare to end that they hoped to be killed."