JERUSALEM | At least 60 people were killed and another 17 are missing in an Israeli strike early Tuesday on a five-story building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the northern Gaza Strip, Gaza's Health Ministry said.
The death toll from more than a year of fighting has passed 43,000, officials in Gaza reported Monday, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants.
Israeli lawmakers passed two laws Monday that could threaten the work of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA is the largest aid provider in Gaza, but the laws would sever Israel's ties with the agency and bar it from operating on Israeli soil, raising concerns about whether it could continue to provide basic services in both Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed his Lebanese counterpart to London on Monday and offered condolences for the deaths of citizens killed in Israeli attacks. Lebanon's Health Ministry reported that more than 2,700 people had been killed and nearly 12,600 wounded since October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation.
Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian says his country will respond to Israel “appropriately” after Israel openly attacked Iranian military sites for the first time over the weekend. The United States warned Iran there will be “severe consequences” if it attacks Israeli or American personnel in the region.
Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both at war with Israel, are backed by Iran.
Here's the latest:
Projectile launched from Lebanon kills 1 in northern Israel
TEL AVIV, Israel | Israeli authorities said Tuesday one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into a northern city.
The Israeli military said about 50 projectiles were launched from Lebanon into Israel. It said some of the launches were intercepted by Israel's aerial defense system and others fell in the area.
Israeli police said they received a number of reports of fallen projectiles, which caused damage to property, in the city of Maalot-Tarshiha. The Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom said a man was killed in the strike.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it fired rockets toward the area.
Turkey slams Israeli decision to ban UNRWA activity violates international law
ISTANBUL — Turkey's Foreign Ministry called Israel's decision to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East a “clear violation of international law.” In a statement Tuesday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the move undermines efforts toward a two-state solution and obstructs the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
“By targeting UNRWA, Israel aims to eliminate the two-state solution and prevent the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland,” the statement read.
Israel accuses the agency of turning a blind eye to staff members it says belong to Hamas, divert aid and use UNRWA facilities for military purposes. Israel says around a dozen of the agency's 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.
The agency denies it knowingly aids armed groups and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants among its staff.
British charity Christian Aid criticizes Israeli parliament's move to restrict UNRWA's work
JERUSALEM | Christian Aid, a British charity, criticized the Israeli parliamentary decision to restrict the work of UNRWA.
“Severing this lifeline in Gaza as winter threatens to exacerbate an already desperate situation is cruel and dangerous,” the group's Middle East head, William Bell, said in a statement Tuesday.
Bell alleged that the move is part of Israel's “ongoing challenge to the eligibility of Palestinian refugees to claim the right of return” in Israel and occupied Palestinian territories.
“Once again international leaders have either been unable or unwilling to protect the most basic rights of Palestinians, including their existence as a sovereign people,” he said.
Lebanon's Hezbollah says it has chosen Naim Kassem to replace slain leader Hassan Nasrallah BEIRUT — Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group says it has chosen Naim Kassem to replace its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in September in an Israeli airstrike.
Kassem, a longtime deputy to Nasrallah, has served as the militant group's acting leader since Nasrallah's death. His appointment to replace Nasrallah was announced Tuesday.
60 killed or wounded in an Israeli strike on a building housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip | An Israeli strike on a five-story building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 60 people early Tuesday, according to health officials.
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 says another 17 people are missing.
The ministry's emergency service says the dead include at least 12 women and 20 children, including babies.
United Nations chief warns Israel against barring UNRWA from its work
UNITED NATIONS | The United Nations chief is warning that if two laws adopted by Israel's parliament are implemented, the UN agency providing essential services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank would likely be prevented from continuing work that is mandated by the UN General Assembly.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the work of the agency known as UNRWA “indispensable,” and said implementing the laws “could have devastating consequences for Palestinian refugees in the occupied Palestinian territories, which is unacceptable.” “There is no alternative to UNRWA,” he said in a statement issued Monday night. Guterres called on Israel “to act consistently with its obligations” under the UN Charter and international law, as well as the privileges and immunities of the United Nations.
“National legislation cannot alter those obligations,” Guterres stressed. He said implementing the laws would be detrimental to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and more broadly for peace and security in the region.
