DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Gaza Strip Health Ministry says the death toll from an Israeli attack on a building housing displaced people has risen to 60.

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the ministry’s field hospitals department, announced the toll of Tuesday’s strike at a press conference. He says 17 other people are missing.

The strike took place in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, near the border with Israel, where Israel has been conducting a major operation for more than three weeks.

THIS IS A HATE NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

An Israeli strike on a five-story building housing displaced Palestinians in the north of the Gaza Strip killed at least 34 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 as its new top leader after Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month.

The group said in a statement that Hezbollah’s decision-making Shura Council had chosen Kassem, who was Nasrallah’s deputy leader for more than three decades, as its new secretary general. Hezbollah vowed to continue with Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”

The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said 20 others were wounded in the strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, near the border with Israel.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

On Monday, the Israeli parliament passed two laws that could prevent the UN agency for Palestinian refugees – the biggest aid provider in Gaza — from operating in the Palestinian territories. It was the culmination of a long-running campaign against UNRWA, which Israel says has been infiltrated by Hamas, allegations denied by the agency.

The war began when Hamas-led militants 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.

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