At least 60 people have been killed and another 17 are missing in a Israeli strike early Tuesday on a five-story building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the north The Gaza Stripsaid the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

The death toll from more than a year of fighting has topped 43,000, Gaza officials reported Monday, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants.

Israeli lawmakers passed two laws on Monday which could threaten work of the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency. UNRWA is Gaza’s biggest aid provider, but the laws would cut Israel’s ties to the agency and bar it from operating on Israeli soil, raising concerns about whether it can continue to provide basic services both in Gaza , as well as in the West Bank occupied by Israel.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer greeted his Lebanese counterpart in London on Monday and offered condolences for the deaths of citizens killed in Israeli attacks. Lebanon’s Ministry of Health reported that more than 2,700 people have been killed and nearly 12,600 wounded since October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, prompting retaliation.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says his country will respond to Israel “appropriately” afterwards Israel has openly attacked Iranian military sites for the first time this weekend. The United States has warned Iran that there will be “serious consequences” if it attacks Israeli or American personnel in the region.

Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both at war with Israelare supported by Iran.

___

Here are the latest:

NICOSIA, Cyprus — The foreign ministers of Cyprus and Luxembourg say the UN agency for Palestine refugees is “indispensable” to providing food, education and medical assistance to Palestinians and that the international community must do everything possible to allow the agency to continue its work .

Cyprus’ top diplomat, Constantinos Kombos, said on Tuesday, after talks with his Luxembourg counterpart, Xavier Bettel, that UNRWA’s work is “extremely valuable” in the Middle East, considering it “imperative” to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Bettel said there was “no alternative” to UNWRA’s work to help the people of Palestine because without the agency, “there is no education, no health, no food.”

The diplomats made the remarks after Israel’s parliament passed two laws on Monday that could prevent UNRWA from continuing its work. The laws prohibit the agency from operating and cut all ties between it and the Israeli government.

Bettel said his country would continue to support UNWRA and would raise the issue in his meetings with his Israeli counterpart and the speaker of the Israeli parliament when he visits Israel later on Tuesday. He will also meet with the Palestinian Prime Minister and UNWRA officials.

GENEVA — A UNICEF spokesman says the Israeli parliament’s move to ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees “means a new way has been found to kill children.”

James Elder says the inability of the refugee agency, UNRWA, to function “could probably lead to the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza” and the UN children’s agency “would become effectively unable to distribute life-saving supplies”.

He said this would prevent supplies of vaccines, winter clothes, hygiene kits, health kits, water and ready-to-use therapeutic food to combat malnutrition.

Elder said that a decision like that of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, “suddenly means that a new way to kill children has been found.”

GENEVA — The director-general of the International Organization for Migration, Amy Pope, said the United Nations body is unable to fully fill a gap left by UNRWA, which she described as “absolutely essential.”

“They provide education. They provide medical care. They provide some of the most basic needs for people who have been living there for decades,” Pope said of UNRWA. “This is not something IOM does that IOM does well.”

She said IOM is able to assist with ongoing humanitarian support, such as providing aid to displaced people and providing shelter and hygiene kits.

“There is no way the ILO can step in to do what UNRWA has done. UNRWA is absolutely essential for the people of Gaza and I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression that IOM can play that role, because we can’t,” she said.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli authorities said Tuesday that one person was killed after a projectile fired from Lebanon hit a northern city.

The Israeli military said about 50 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israel. It said some of the launches were intercepted by Israel’s air defense system and others fell in the area.

Israeli police said they received a number of reports of falling projectiles causing property damage in the town of Maalot-Tarshiha. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said one man was killed in the attack.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it fired rockets into the area.

Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel since October 8, 2023, when it began attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, a day after its cross-border attack. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has intensified in recent weeks after Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called Israel’s decision to ban United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East a “clear violation of international law”.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the move undermines efforts towards a two-state solution and obstructs the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

“By targeting UNRWA, Israel seeks to eliminate the two-state solution and prevent the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland,” the statement said.

Israel accuses the agency of turning a blind eye to staff it says belong to Hamas, embezzling aid and using UNRWA facilities for military purposes. Israel says about a dozen of the agency’s 13,000 personnel in Gaza participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. The agency denies knowingly aiding armed groups and says it is moving quickly to remove any suspected militants from its staff.

The agency is the main distributor of aid in Gaza and provides education, health and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees in the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“It is the legal and moral obligation of the international community to take a firm stand against attempts to ban UNRWA’s activities,” the ministry added, noting that the agency was created by a UN General Assembly resolution.

Turkey, which currently chairs UNRWA’s Financing Working Group, has pledged to continue its support for the agency.

Jerusalem — Christian Aid, a British charity, criticized the Israeli parliament’s decision to restrict the work of UNRWA.

“Cutting off this lifeline in Gaza as winter threatens to exacerbate an already desperate situation is cruel and dangerous,” the group’s Middle East chief, William Bell, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Israeli lawmakers passed two laws on Monday which could threaten work of the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency. UNRWA is Gaza’s biggest aid provider, but the laws would cut Israel’s ties to the agency and bar it from operating on Israeli soil, raising concerns about whether it can continue to provide basic services both in Gaza , as well as in the West Bank occupied by Israel.

Bell argued that the move is part of Israel’s “ongoing challenge to the eligibility of Palestinian refugees to claim the right of return” to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“Once again, international leaders have either been unable or unwilling to protect the most basic rights of the Palestinians, including their existence as a sovereign people,” he said.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group says it has chosen Naim Kassem to replace them slain leader Hassan Nasrallahwho was killed in September in an Israeli airstrike.

Kassem, a longtime deputy to Nasrallah, has been the militant group’s interim leader since Nasrallah’s death. His appointment to replace Nasrallah was announced on Tuesday.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike on a five-story building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the north The Gaza Strip killed at least 60 people early Tuesday, according to health officials.

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the field hospitals department of the Gaza Ministry of Health, announced the toll of Tuesday’s strike in the northern city of Beit Lahiya at a press conference. He says 17 other people are missing.

The ministry’s emergency service says at least 12 women and 20 children, including babies, are among the dead.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been waging a large-scale operation in northern Gaza for more than three weeks targeting what it says are pockets of Hamas militants who have regrouped there.

Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, director of the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, said he was overwhelmed by the wave of injuries from the strike. Israeli forces raided the medical facility over the weekend, detaining dozens of doctors. Israel says it detained dozens of Hamas militants in the raid.

The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months, saying it carried out precision strikes against Palestinian militants and tried to avoid injuring civilians. The strikes often killed women and children.

UNITED NATIONS — The head of the United Nations warns that if two laws passed by the Israeli parliament are implemented, the UN agency that provides essential services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank would likely be prevented from continuing the work that is mandated by the UN General Assembly.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the work of the agency known as UNRWA “indispensable” and said the implementation of the laws “could have devastating consequences for Palestinian refugees in the occupied Palestinian territories, which is unacceptable.”

“There is no alternative to UNRWA,” he said in a statement issued late Monday.

UNRWA was established by the General Assembly in 1949 to provide aid to Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes before and during the 1948 war that followed the establishment of Israel, as well as their descendants.

Laws passed by the Israeli parliament on Monday, which do not take immediate effect, will sever ties with the agency and prevent UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil. They were approved amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, now in its second year Israel’s military reprisals following October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks in southern Israel.

Guterres called on Israel to “act consistently with its obligations” under the UN Charter and international law, as well as the privileges and immunities of the United Nations.

“National legislation cannot change these obligations,” Guterres stressed. He said implementing the laws would be detrimental to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, more broadly, to peace and security in the region.