DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) – An Israeli strike on a five-story building housing displaced Palestinians in the north of the Gaza Strip killed at least 60 people early Tuesday, more than half of them women and children, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

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

Israel also faced backlash from aid groups after its parliament passed legislation that could severely curtail the ability of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency to operate in the Palestinian territories. The agency, known as UNRWA, is the largest aid provider in Gaza. Israel has long accused him of militant ties, charges denied by the agency.

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

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

Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Kassem speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Bilal Hussein

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 Hamas’ surprise attack in Gaza on October 7, 2023, triggered the war there. Iran, which supports both groups, has also done so 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 at least one person in the northern town of Maalot-Tarshiha, authorities said.

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

Even as attention has turned to Lebanon and Iran in recent weeks, Israel has continued to conduct a large-scale operation in northern Gaza and carry out airstrikes throughout the territory.

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 said 17 other people are missing.

The ministry’s emergency service said at least 12 women and 20 children were among the dead, including babies. The dead included a mother and her five children, some of them adults, and a second mother and her six children, according to an initial casualty list provided by emergency services.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been operating 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.

The army said it detained dozens of Hamas militants in the raid on Kamal Adwan, the latest in a series of raids on hospitals since the beginning of the war.

“The health system has completely collapsed,” Abu Safiya said in a voice message to reporters on Tuesday. He said people who end up injured die because they don’t take care of them.

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.

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

Israeli laws targeting the UN agency could further restrict aid

Israel also sharply curtailed aid to the north this month, citing a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate greater relief efforts could lead to a reduction in military aid.

Palestinians fear Israel is acting a plan proposed by a group of former generalswhich suggested that the civilian population in the north should be ordered to evacuate, aid supplies should be cut off and anyone who remains there should be considered a militant.

The military has denied executing such a plan, while the government has not made clear whether it is carrying out all or part of it.

On Monday, the Israeli parliament passed two laws banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil and cutting all ties between the agency and the Israeli government. 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 siphons off aid and uses UN facilities to protect its activities, allegations denied by the UN agency.

Aid groups have warned that there is no immediate replacement for UNRWA, which 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.

James Elder, a spokesman for the UN children’s agency known as UNICEF, said that suspending UNRWA’s work “would likely collapse the humanitarian system in Gaza. He said UNICEF “will effectively become 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.

The war in Gaza began when militants led by Hamas stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 250. 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 and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.

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