At least 60 people are killed in an Israeli attack in northern Gaza, officials say

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli attack on a five-story building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 60 people early Tuesday, more than half of them women and children, it said Gaza Ministry of Health.

In a separate development, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it has chosen Sheikh Naim Kassem to succeed former leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month. Hezbollah vowed to continue Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”

Israel also faced backlash after passing legislation that could severely limit the U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees’ ability to operate in the Palestinian territories. The organization, known as UNRWA, is the largest aid provider in Gaza. Israel has long accused the country of militant ties, but it denies the accusations.

A spokesperson for the UN children’s agency said the decision “means a new way to kill children has been found.”

Hezbollah’s new leader has vowed to keep fighting Israel

Hezbollah said in a statement that the decision-making Shura Council had chosen Kassem, who had been Nasrallah’s deputy leader for more than 30 years, as its new secretary general.

Kassem, 71, a founding member of the militant group formed after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, served as acting leader. He has made several television speeches in which he promised that Hezbollah will continue to fight despite a series of setbacks.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, provoking retaliation, after Hamas’s surprise attack from Gaza on October 7, 2023 sparked the war there. Iran, which supports both groups, has also exchanged fire directly with Israel in April and then again this month.

Tensions with Hezbollah boiled over in September, when Israel unleashed a wave of heavy airstrikes, killing Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders. Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon in early October.

Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, killing at least one person in the northern city of Maalot-Tarshiha, authorities said.

The strike in northern Gaza comes as Israel carries out a major operation there

Even as attention has shifted to Lebanon and Iran in recent weeks, Israel has continued to carry out a major operation in northern Gaza and launch airstrikes across the territory.

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the health ministry’s field hospitals department in Gaza, announced at a news conference the toll of Tuesday’s strike in the northern city of Beit Lahiya. He said another 17 people were missing.

According to the ministry’s emergency services, there were at least twelve women and twenty children, including babies. The dead included a mother and her five children, some of them adults, and a second mother with her six children, according to an initial list of victims provided by the emergency service.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been carrying out the operation in northern Gaza for more than three weeks, targeting what they say are groups of Hamas militants who have regrouped there.

Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, said it was overwhelmed by the wave of injuries caused by the strike. Israeli forces raided the medical facility this weekend and arrested dozens of medics.

The military said it has arrested dozens of Hamas militants in the attack on Kamal Adwan, the latest in a series of attacks on hospitals since the start of the war.

The Israeli military has repeatedly attacked shelters for displaced people in recent months, saying it has carried out precise attacks on Palestinian militants and tried not to harm civilians. Women and children have often been killed in the strikes.

Israel’s latest major operation in northern Gaza, targeting the Jabaliya refugee camp, has killed hundreds of people and driven tens of thousands from their homes in a new wave of mass displacement, more than a year into the war in the small coastal region.

On Tuesday, the army said four more soldiers were killed in the fighting in northern Gaza, bringing the toll since the start of the operation to 16, including a colonel. The army says it has killed dozens of militants without providing evidence, while Hamas does not make its losses public.

Israeli laws targeting UN agencies could further limit aid

Israel also sharply curtailed aid to the north this month, prompting a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate increased humanitarian aid could lead to a reduction in military aid.

Palestinians fear Israel is implementing a plan proposed by a group of former generals, who suggested the north’s civilian population should be ordered to evacuate, aid supplies cut off and anyone left there labeled as a militant considered.

The military has denied implementing such a plan, while the government has made no clear statement about it.

On Monday, Israel’s parliament passed two laws banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil and severing all ties with the organization. Israel controls access to both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and it was unclear how the agency would continue to operate there.

Israel says UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas and that the militant group is siphoning aid and using UN facilities to protect its activities, allegations the UN agency denies.

Aid groups have warned there is no immediate replacement for UNRWA, which provides education, health care and emergency aid to millions of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants. Refugee families make up the majority of Gaza’s population.

James Elder, a spokesman for the U.N. children’s agency known as UNICEF, said the suspension of UNRWA’s work “would likely cause the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza.” He said UNICEF would “effectively lose its ability to distribute life-saving supplies.”

He said this would hamper the supply of vaccines, winter clothing, hygiene kits, health packs, water and ready-to-eat therapeutic foods to combat malnutrition.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 250. There are still about 100 hostages in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead. .

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. About 90% of the 2.3 million residents have been displaced from their homes, often several times.

Magdy reported from Cairo and Mroue from Beirut. Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.