Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza have killed at least 88 people, health officials say

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip. Two Israeli air strikes in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday killed at least 88 people, including dozens of women and children, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

Israel has stepped up its airstrikes and launched a larger ground operation in northern Gaza in recent weeks, saying it is focused on rooting out Hamas militants who have regrouped after more than a year of war. The intense fighting has raised concerns about deteriorating humanitarian conditions for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still trapped in northern Gaza.

Concerns about insufficient aid reaching Gaza increased on Monday Israeli lawmakers passed two laws cut ties with the main UN agency that distributes food, water and medicine and deny them access to the land of Israel. 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 both places.

“The humanitarian operation in Gaza, if unravelled, would be a disaster in a series of disasters that is simply not worth thinking about,” said UNRWA spokesman John Fowler. Other UN agencies and international organizations distributing aid in Gaza rely on logistics and thousands of workers, he said.

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

A little later, eight Austrian soldiers serving in the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon were slightly injured in a rocket attack in the afternoon. The peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL said the rocket that hit its headquarters in Lebanon was “probably” fired by Hezbollah and that it hit a car workshop.

STRIKE IN NORTHERN GAZA SECTOR COMES IN MIDDLE OF MAJOR ISRAELI OPERATION

At least 70 people were killed and 23 missing in the first strike on Tuesday in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya, the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said. More than half of the victims are women and children, the department said. A mother with five children, some of them adults, as well as a second mother with six children, were among those killed in the attack on the five-story building, according to the emergency service.

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 count.

The nearby Kamal Advan Hospital was overwhelmed by a wave of wounded, according to its director, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya. Israeli troops raided a medical facility over the weekend, detaining dozens of doctors.

The Israeli military said it was investigating the first strike on Beit Lahia; he did not immediately comment on the second.

Recent Israeli operations in northern Gaza, centered in and around the Jabalia refugee camp, have killed hundreds of people and driven tens of thousands from their homes.

In recent months, the Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people. It claims it carries out precision strikes on Palestinian militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, although women and children are often killed in the strikes.

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

During the fighting, Hamas made it clear that it was willing to resume ceasefire talks, although its key demands – a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces – do not appear to have changed and have been rejected in the past. Israel. A senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, said on Tuesday that the group had accepted mediators’ request to discuss “new proposals”.

NEW HEZBALL LEADER RUSHES TO CONTINUE GATE WITH ISRAEL

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

Qasem, 71, a founding member of the militant group formed after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, served as its leader. He made several televised speeches in which he pledged that Hezbollah would continue to fight despite a series of setbacks.

Hezbollah launched a missile attack on Israel, prompting a response, after a surprise attack by Hamas from Gaza on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war there. Iran, which supports both groups, also traded directly with Israel in April and again this month.

Tensions with Hezbollah rose in September, when Israel launched a wave of heavy airstrikes that killed Nasrallah and most of his senior 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 city of Maalot Tarshiha, authorities said. The Ministry of Health of Lebanon reported that as a result of Israeli strikes in the coastal city of Sidon, at least five people died.

ISRAELI LAWS TARGETING UN AGENCY MAY FURTHER LIMIT 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 claims that UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas and that the militant group is funneling aid and using UN facilities to cover its activities. The UN agency denies the allegations.

Israeli government spokesman David Menser promised that aid will continue to flow to Gaza as Israel plans to coordinate with aid organizations and other UN bodies. “At the end of the day, we will provide a more effective replacement for UNRWA, not one that has been infiltrated by a terrorist organization,” he said.

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

Almost a quarter of UNRWA’s roughly 13,000 staff are health workers who provide services such as immunizations, disease surveillance and malnutrition screening, according to WHO spokesman Tarik Yasarevich. According to him, the work of UNRWA “is unmatched by any agency, including the WHO.”

Israel sharply cut aid to northern Gaza this month, prompting warnings from the United States that failure to provide more humanitarian aid could lead to cuts in military aid.

In an 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.

According to local health authorities, more than 43,000 Palestinians have died in Israel’s response. About 90% of the population of 2.3 million have been evicted from their homes, often several times.

Megdi reported from Cairo and Mruu from Beirut. Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Jamie Kiten in Geneva contributed to this report.

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