DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Two Israeli airstrikes in the north of the Gaza Strip killed at least 88 people, including dozens of women and children, on Tuesday, health officials said, and a hospital director said life-threatening injuries had not been treated as a weekend raid by Israeli forces led to the detention of dozens of doctors.

Israel has stepped up airstrikes and mounted a larger ground operation in northern Gaza in recent weeks, saying it is focused on eliminating Hamas militants who have regrouped after more than a year of war. The intense fighting raises alarm over worsening humanitarian conditions for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still in northern Gaza.

Concerns that not enough aid is reaching Gaza were heightened on Monday when Israeli lawmakers passed two laws to cut ties with the main UN agency that distributes foodwater and medicine and ban him from Israeli soil. Israel controls access to both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and it was unclear how the agency known as UNRWA would continue its work in either place.

“The humanitarian operation in Gaza, if it is revealed, is a disaster within a series of disasters and it simply does not bear thinking about,” said UNRWA spokesman John Fowler. He said other UN agencies and international organizations distributing aid to Gaza are relying. on its logistics and thousands of workers.

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

A short time later, eight Austrian soldiers serving with the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon were slightly wounded in a midday rocket strike.

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

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

The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said at least 70 people were killed and 23 missing in the first strikes on Tuesday in the northern Gaza city 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 the five-storey building, according to emergency services.

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

The nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was overwhelmed by a flood of injured women and children, including many who needed urgent surgery, according to its director, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya. The Israeli army raided the hospital over the weekend, detaining dozens of doctors said to be Hamas militants.

“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 health system has collapsed and needs urgent international intervention.”

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller referred to the “horrific incident” in Beit Lahiya in comments to reporters. He said Israel’s year-long campaign against Hamas had ensured it could not repeat the kind of attack that started the war in Gaza, but that “getting here came at a high cost to civilians”.

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

Israel’s recent operations in northern Gaza, concentrated in and around the Jabaliya refugee camp, have killed hundreds of people and drove tens of thousands from their homes.

The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months. It says it carries out precision strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tries to avoid injuring civilians, but the attacks often kill women and children.

On Tuesday, Israel said four more of its soldiers had been killed in fighting in northern Gaza, bringing the toll since the start of the operation to 16, including a colonel.

As the fighting flared, Hamas signaled it was ready to resume ceasefire talks, although its key demands – a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of the Israeli army – did not appear to have changed and were rejected in passed by Israel. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Tuesday that the group had accepted the mediators’ request to discuss “new proposals”.

Hezbollah’s new leader vowed to continue the fight against Israel

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

Kassem, 71, a founding member of the militant group formed following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, served as interim leader. He made several televised speeches, vowing that Hezbollah would continue to fight despite a string of setbacks.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation, after a surprise attack by Hamas in Gaza on October 7, 2023. Iran, which backs both groups, has exchanged fire directly with Israelin April and then again this month.

Tensions with Hezbollah came to a head in September when Israel launched a wave of heavy airstrikes and killed Nasrallah and most of his top 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 town of Maalot-Tarshiha, authorities said. Israeli strikes in the coastal city of Sidon killed at least five people, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said.

Israeli laws targeting the UN agency could further restrict aid

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

Israel says UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas and that the militant group siphons off aid and uses UN facilities to protect its activities, allegations denied by the UN agency.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer promised that aid would continue to reach Gaza as Israel plans to coordinate with aid organizations or other UN bodies “Ultimately, we will ensure that a replacement more effective for UNRWA will take its role, not one that is infiltrated. by the terrorist organization,” he said.

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

Israel drastically restricted aid to northern Gaza this month, citing a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate more humanitarian assistance could lead to a reduction in military aid.

In its attack on Israel last year, Hamas killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 100 hostages are still 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 percent of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.

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

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