The United Nations General Assembly is set to convene an emergency special session on Thursday to discuss the ongoing war between Israel and Palestine's Hamas militants.

According to foreign media outlets on Monday, General Assembly President Dennis Francis sent a letter to notify member states about opening of the 39th plenary meeting of the tenth Emergency Special Session.

The Assembly president said the meeting had been requested by Jordan, as the chair of the Arab Group, and by Mauritania, as the chair of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, with similar requests made by Russia, Syria, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia.

First convened in April 1997, the tenth Emergency Special Session on the Israel-Palestine conflict was most recently held in June 2018.

The emergency Assembly session comes after the UN Security Council failed to agree on a resolution concerning the war, with a Russian draft calling for a "humanitarian pause" rejected by the U.S., Britain and France for lacking a specific reference to Hamas, while a draft by Brazil vetoed by the U.S. for lacking reference to Israel's right to self-defense.

The Security Council is also expected to convene on Tuesday to further discuss the war.