With more than 1,000 people killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting in New York early Monday to push for “an immediate and unconditional humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.”

The halt in violence would allow for the delivery of urgently needed assistance, the 15-nation council said.

At its midnight meeting, the Security Council also proclaimed its support for “a comprehensive peace based on the vision of a region where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace with secure and recognized borders as envisioned in Security Council resolution 1850 (2008).”

But the statement did not appease the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, who wanted the Security Council to pass a resolution calling for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

At least 1,062 Palestinians have been killed and 6,037 wounded since the Israeli operation against Hamas in Gaza started almost three weeks ago, Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Ashraf al-Qedra said.

Hamas and Israel began firing at each other again Sunday after a temporary cease-fire Saturday failed.

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It is already the world’s biggest cemetery, the final resting resting place of some five million souls but it’s growing all the time.

With gravestones stretching out as far as the eye can see, Wadi Al-Salaam, which translates as Valley of Peace, is an ancient Islamic cemetery near the holy city Shiite city of Najaf.

The site is located close to the shrine of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Shia Imam and fourth Caliph and as a result nearly all Iraq’s Shi’a muslim population request to be buried there.

An estimated 500,000 additional bodies are buried at Wadi Al-Salaam every year, however in recent weeks the figure has been even higher due to victims of the country’s bitter civil war.

Violence in Iraq has killed more than 5,500 civilians over the first six months of the year, the U.N. said Friday in a new report that documents the massive humanitarian toll of an ongoing Sunni militant offensive in the country.

In its report, the U.N. mission to Iraq said at least 5,576 civilians were killed and another 11,665 wounded in Iraq from Jan. 1 through the end of June. Another 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes by the violence, it said.

The pace of civilian deaths over the first six months marked a sharp increase over the previous year. In all of 2013, the U.N. reported just over 7,800 civilians killed, which was the highest annual death toll in years.

The report also documents human rights abuses by both sides of the conflict that may constitute crimes against humanity or war crimes.

The U.N. urged all sides in the conflict to ensure the protection of civilians, and to respect international law and humanitarian law.

An Egyptian security official says ousted President Hosni Mubarak has broken his leg at a Cairo military hospital, where he is serving his three-year prison sentence in a corruption case.

The official says the 86-year-old Mubarak slipped in the bathroom and broke the upper part of his thigh bone on Thursday.

The official says Mubarak will need surgery for the break. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.

Mubarak, toppled in 2011, is facing a retrial for his role in the killings of hundreds of protesters during the uprising against his rule.

Last month he was convicted on charges of embezzling millions of dollars of funds allocated for the renovation of presidential palaces.

A suicide bombing rocked a Shia mosque in the central part of Iraq’s capital Tuesday, killing at least 20 people and injuring 43 others, a Baghdad police source said.

The bomber entered the Shiite mosque in the Shorja market in downtown Baghdad as worshippers were heading inside to attend noon prayers, a police officer said.

Also in Baghdad, a bomb went off in an outdoor vegetable market in the eastern Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, killing two civilians and wounding five others, police said. And two policemen were killed and six other people wounded when a bomb hit a police patrol in the southern Dora district, another police officer said.

Three medical official confirmed causality figures.

Last year was the deadliest in Iraq since 2008, with more than 8,800 people killed, most of them civilians, according to the United Nations.