At least 60 people were murdered early Tuesday in the northern Gaza Strip when an Israeli strike on a five-story building housing displaced Palestinians killed more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Separately, Hezbollah, a terrorist organization in Lebanon, said that Sheikh Naim Kassem has been selected to replace longstanding leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was murdered in an Israeli bombing last month. Nasrallah’s plans will be followed by Hezbollah “until victory is achieved.”
Meanwhile, Austrian authorities reported that a missile strike at the Naqoura camp had lightly wounded eight Austrian soldiers who were part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.
Michael Bauer, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, reported the event on social media platform X around midday on Tuesday. It wasn’t immediately evident, he said.
According to Bauer, Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner “strongly condemns this attack and calls on all sides to immediately cease combat operations in the vicinity of the U.N. mission’s positions.”
After enacting legislation that would significantly limit the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees’ ability to function in the Palestinian territories, Israel also encountered criticism. UNRWA is the biggest humanitarian organization in Gaza. Israel has long accused it of having ties to militants, a claim it refutes.
According to a representative of the United Nations children’s agency, the ruling “means that a new way has been found to kill children.”
Hezbollah has elected Kassem, a founding member of the militant group established following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, as its new secretary-general. Kassem has given several televised speeches vowing to keep fighting Israel despite a string of setbacks. Tensions with Hezbollah boiled over in September, as Israel unleashed a wave of heavy airstrikes and killed Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders. Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon at the start of October.
Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, killing at least one person in the northern city of Maalot-Tarshiha. The Israeli military has continued to wage a large operation in northern Gaza and carry out airstrikes across the territory. Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the field hospitals’ department at the Gaza Health Ministry, announced the toll from Tuesday’s strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya at a news conference. He said another 17 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 with her six children, according to an initial casualty list provided by the emergency service.
Israel has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months, saying it carried out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tried to avoid harming civilians. The strikes have 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 more than a year into the war in the tiny coastal territory.
Israel has also sharply restricted aid to the north this month, prompting a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate greater humanitarian assistance could lead to a reduction in military aid. Palestinians fear Israel is enacting a plan proposed by a group of former generals, who suggested the civilian population of the north should be ordered to evacuate, aid supplies should be cut off, and anyone remaining there should be considered a militant. The military has denied carrying out such a plan, while the government has not made a clear statement about it.
Israel’s parliament passed two laws that ban UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil and cut all ties with the agency. Israel says UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas and that the militant group siphons off aid and uses U.N. facilities to shield its activities, allegations denied by the U.N. 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 from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants.
(AP)
