UNITED NATIONS (AP) Russia and China on Friday vetoed a U.S.-sponsored U.N. resolution calling for an immediate and sustained cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza to protect civilians and enable humanitarian aid to be delivered to more than 2 million hungry Palestinians .

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 11 members in favor and three against, including Algeria, the Arab representative on the council. There was one abstention, from Guyana.

Before the vote, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow supports an immediate cease-fire, but he criticized diluted language that referred to moral imperatives, which he called philosophical wording that does not belong in a U.N. resolution.

He accused U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield of deliberately misleading the international community.

This was some kind of an empty rhetorical exercise, Nebenzia said. The American product is exceedingly politicized, the sole purpose of which is to help to play to the voters, to throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a cease-fire in Gaza and to ensure the impunity of Israel, whose crimes in the draft are not even assessed.

Thomas-Greenfield urged the council to adopt the resolution to press for an immediate cease-fire and the release of the hostages, as well as to address Gazas humanitarian crisis and support ongoing diplomacy by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.