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) — An Israeli attack on a five-story building sheltering displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip At least 60 people were killed on Tuesday, more than half of them women and children, Gaza’s health ministry said.

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

Meanwhile, eight Austrian soldiers serving in the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon were slightly injured in a rocket attack on the Naqoura camp, Austrian authorities said.

Defense Department spokesman Michael Bauer wrote on social network X that the incident occurred Tuesday afternoon. He said it was not immediately clear who was responsible for the strike. None of the soldiers required emergency treatment.

Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner “condemns this attack in the strongest terms and calls on all parties to immediately cease combat operations in the vicinity of the UN mission’s positions,” Bauer wrote.

Israel also faced a backlash after passing legislation that could severely limit the U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees’ ability to operate in the Palestinian territories. The agency, 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 done so too exchanged direct fire with Israelin April and again this month. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

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 conducting the operation in northern Gaza for more than three weeks, targeting what they say are groups of Hamas fighters 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 detained dozens of Hamas fighters in the attack on Kamal Adwan, the latest in a series of attacks on hospitals since the war began.

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

The latest major Israeli operation in northern Gaza, targeting the Jabaliya refugee camp, has killed hundreds of people and driven tens of thousands from their homes. a new wave of mass movement more than a year after the war in the small coastal area.

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 fighters without providing evidence, while Hamas does not make its losses public.

Israeli laws targeting UN agencies could further limit aid

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

The Palestinians are afraid that Israel will take action a plan proposed by a group of former generalswhich suggested that the civilian population of the north should be ordered to evacuate, that aid supplies should be cut off, and that anyone left there should be considered a combatant.

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 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 the creation of Israel 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 clothes, hygiene kits, health kits, water and ready-to-eat therapeutic foods. to combat malnutrition.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led terrorists 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.

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