At least 60 people have been killed in an Israeli attack in northern Gaza

By WAFAA SHURAFA, SAMY MAGDY and BASSEM MROUE

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Two Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip At least 88 people were killed on Tuesday, including dozens of women and children, health officials said, and a hospital director said life-threatening injuries went untreated as a weekend raid by Israeli forces led to the detention of dozens of medics.

Israel has escalated airstrikes in recent weeks and carried out a larger ground operation in northern Gaza, saying it is focused on rooting out Hamas terrorists who have regrouped after over a year of war. The intense fighting is raising alarms about deteriorating humanitarian conditions for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still in northern Gaza.

Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Concerns about insufficient aid reaching Gaza were amplified on Monday Israeli lawmakers have passed two laws to cut ties the main UN agency that distributes foodwater and medicine, and to banish it from Israeli territory. Israel controls access to both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and it was unclear how the organization known as UNRWA would continue its work in both places.

“If the humanitarian operation in Gaza unravels it will be a disaster within a series of disasters that we simply cannot afford to contemplate,” said UNRWA spokesman John Fowler. He said other UN agencies and international organizations distributing aid in Gaza depend on logistics and thousands of workers.

In Lebanon, the militant group Hezbollah said on Tuesday that it had chosen this option Sheikh Naim Kassem to succeed former leader Hassan Nasrallahwho was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month. Hezbollah, which has fired rockets into Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, vowed to continue Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”

A short time later, eight Austrian soldiers serving in the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon were reported to have been slightly injured in an afternoon rocket attack.

The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, said the rocket that hit its headquarters in Lebanon was “probably” fired by Hezbollah, and that it struck a car workshop.

1 by 4

People react at the scene where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon struck in Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, October 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Expand

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

The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency department said at least 70 people were killed and 23 missing in Tuesday’s first attack in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. More than half of the victims were women and children, the ministry said. A mother and her five children – some of them adults – and a second mother with six children were among those killed in the attack on a five-storey building, according to the emergency service.

A second attack on Beit Lahiya killed at least 18 people on Tuesday evening, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count.

The nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was overwhelmed by a wave of injured women and children, including many in need of urgent operations, said its director, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya. The Israeli army raided the hospital this weekend and arrested dozens of medics they said were Hamas fighters.

“The situation is catastrophic in every sense of the word,” Safiya said, adding that the only doctor left at the hospital was a pediatrician. “The healthcare system has collapsed and urgently needs international intervention.”

The Israeli military said it was investigating the first Beit Lahiya attack; it did not immediately comment on the second.

Recent Israeli operations in northern Gaza, targeting and around the Jabaliya refugee camp, have killed hundreds of people tens of thousands driven from their homes.

The Israeli army has repeatedly stormed shelters for displaced people in recent months. The country says it carries out precise attacks on Palestinian fighters and tries not to harm civilians, but these attacks often kill women and children.

On Tuesday, Israel said another four of its soldiers were killed in the fighting in northern Gaza, bringing the toll since the operation began to 16, including a colonel.

As the fighting raged, Hamas signaled its willingness to resume ceasefire negotiations, although its main demands – a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of the Israeli army – appear not to have changed and have been rejected by the authorities in the past. Israel. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Tuesday that the group has accepted mediators’ request to discuss “new proposals.”

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 done so too exchanged direct fire with Israelin April and 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 one person in the northern city of Maalot-Tarshiha, authorities said. At least five people have been killed in Israeli attacks in the coastal city of Sidon, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.

Israeli laws targeting UN agencies could further limit aid

UNRWA and other international groups continued to express outrage Tuesday over the Israeli parliament’s decision to cut ties with the organization.

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

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer pledged that aid will continue to reach Gaza as Israel plans to coordinate with aid agencies or other agencies within the UN. by the terrorist organization,” he said.

Several UN agencies rallied around UNRWA on Tuesday, calling it the “backbone” of the world body’s aid efforts in Gaza and other Palestinian areas. UNRWA provides education, health care and emergency assistance to millions of Palestinian refugees the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel and their descendants. Refugee families make up the majority of Gaza’s population.

Nearly a quarter of UNRWA’s roughly 13,000 staff are health workers who provide services such as immunizations, disease monitoring and malnutrition screening, World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said. UNRWA’s work “couldn’t be matched by any agency – including the WHO,” he said.

Israel sharply limited aid to northern Gaza this month a warning from the United States that the inability to facilitate increased humanitarian assistance could lead to a reduction in military assistance.

In its attack on Israel last year, Hamas killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages. There are still around 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.

Originally published: October 29, 2024 at 10:13 am CDT