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Two Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday killed at least 78 people, including dozens of women and children, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
Israel has escalated its airstrikes and waged a bigger 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 is raising alarm about the worsening humanitarian conditions for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still in northern Gaza.
Concerns about not enough aid reaching Gaza were amplified Monday when Israeli lawmakers passed two laws to cut ties with the main U.N. agency distributing food, water and medicine, and to ban it from Israeli soil. Israel controls access to both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and it was unclear how the agency known by the acronym UNRWA would continue its work in either place.
“The humanitarian operation in Gaza, if that is unraveled, that is a disaster within a series of disasters and just doesn’t bear thinking about," said UNRWA spokesperson John Fowler. He said other U.N. agencies and international organizations distributing aid in Gaza rely on its logistics and thousands of workers.
In Lebanon, the militant group Hezbollah said Tuesday it has chosen Sheikh Naim Kassem to succeed longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month. Hezbollah, which has fired rockets into Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, vowed to continue with Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”
A short while later, eight Austrian soldiers serving in the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon were reported lightly injured in a midday missile strike.
UNIFIL said the rocket that struck its headquarters in Lebanon was “likely” fired by Hezbollah, as it came from the north, and that it struck a vehicle workshop.
The Gaza Health Ministry's emergency service said at least 60 people, more than half of them women and children, were among the dead in the first of Tuesday's strikes in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. A mother and her five children — some of them adults — and a second mother with six children, were among those killed in the attack on a five-story building, according to an initial casualty list provided by the emergency service.
The toll from the strike was announced by Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the field hospitals’ department at the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its counts. He said another 17 people are missing.
A second strike on Beit Lahiya on Tuesday evening killed at least 18 people, the Health Ministry said.
The nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was overwhelmed by the wave of wounded people, according to its director, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya. Israeli forces raided the medical facility over the weekend, detaining dozens of medics.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the first Beit Lahiya strike; it did not immediately comment on the second.
Israel’s recent operations in northern Gaza, focused in and around the Jabaliya refugee camp, have killed hundreds of people and driven tens of thousands from their homes.
The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months. It says it carries out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but the strikes often kill women and children.
On Tuesday, Israel said four more of its soldiers were killed in the fighting in northern Gaza, bringing the toll since the start of the operation to 16, including a colonel.
As the fighting raged, Hamas signaled it was ready to resume cease-fire negotiations, although its key demands — a permanent cease-fire and full withdrawal of the Israeli military — do not appear to have changed, and have been dismissed in the past by Israel. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Tuesday the group has accepted mediators’ request to discuss “new proposals.”
Hezbollah said in a statement that its decision-making Shura Council elected Kassem, who had been Nasrallah's deputy leader for over three decades, as the new secretary-general.
Kassem, 71, a founding member of the militant group established following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, had been serving as acting leader. He has given several televised speeches vowing that Hezbollah will fight on despite a string of setbacks.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation, after Hamas’ surprise attack out of Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered the war there. Iran, which backs both groups, has also directly traded fire with Israel, in April and then again this month.
The 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 one person in the northern city of Maalot-Tarshiha, authorities said. Israeli strikes in the coastal city of Sidon killed at least five people, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
UNRWA and other international groups continued to express outrage Tuesday about the Israeli parliament's decision to cut ties to 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.
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer vowed that aid will continue to reach Gaza, as Israel plans to coordinate with aid organizations or other bodies within the U.N. “Ultimately, we will ensure that a more efficient replacement for UNRWA takes its role, not one which is infiltrated by the terrorist organization,” he said.
Multiple U.N. agencies rallied Tuesday around UNRWA, calling it the “backbone” of the world body’s aid activities in Gaza and other Palestinian areas. UNRWA provides education, health care and emergency aid to millions of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants. Refugee families make up the majority of Gaza’s population.
Nearly a quarter of UNRWA’s roughly 13,000 staff are health workers who provide services like immunizations, disease surveillance, and screening for malnutrition, according to World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic. UNRWA’s work “couldn’t be matched by any agency -- including WHO,” he said.
Israel has sharply restricted aid to northern Gaza this month, prompting a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate greater humanitarian assistance could lead to a reduction in military aid.
In its attack on Israel last year, Hamas killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 as hostages. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. Around 90% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.
Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
27 Comments
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Mr Kipling
Zionists showing their true nature. Time for the world to put an end to this poorly thought out experiment.
sakurasuki
While genocide continuing, South Africa legal team found new genocide evidence.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/28/south-africas-legal-team-says-intent-is-clear-in-israels-gaza-genocide
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/10/28/gaza-south-africa-files-evidence-for-their-genocide-case-against-israel_6730836_4.html
WhenIfNotToday
As much as I am for exposing the crime of Zionists, I am starting to wanting not even hear that about Zionists. Compared the them, even Hamas looks nice. Zionists unlocked Nazi, ISIS, Transatlantic Slave-Traders, Khmer Rouge, Stalin, Native American genociders level savagery.
Alfie Noakes
As the world recoils in disgust at the live streamed scenes of unspeakable horror on social media, the Israelis and their backers in Washington and London have decided to starve the Palestinians to death, and to murder any journalists attempting to report on it.
sakurasuki
@WhenIfNotToday
What worst than other perpetrator, they being backed up with immunity and financial aid from US tax payer, and it's not because majority of US citizen really want it.
Fos
As a reminder we need to put into contest the economic interests of the US administration, and the potent lobbies in Washington. The top 5 arms manufacturers in the world are all American, and as we can see the US stock markets are on all time high, day after day, despite the geopolitical instability. I find hypocritical all these attempts of the main media to shift the blame to China and Russia
owzer
Don’t stop until all the terrorists are dead.
Ricky Kaminski13
That’s some high level commentary right there. JT playing to this level of human too, so yeah, just another day in paradise. Even Hamas looks nice. Top stuff guys.
Aly Rustom
Hear! Hear!
deanzaZZR
It's almost like killing dozens or scores of Palestinians every day has become routine, a routine war crime by Israel that is.
falseflagsteve
Israel should be a pariah safe with tough sanctions for its behaviour.
WoodyLee
Yesterday a commentator from Lebanon with knowledge of Hezbollah operations stated that the group now has the knowledge and capabilities to hit Israel's nuclear and biological weapons storage facilities and if Israel continue on this path Hezbollah will at some point retaliate, he also stated that Israel's defense minister and chief of the army staff are fully aware of this due to the fact that Hezbollah has fired warning shot already in these facilities directions.
Fos
Kudos for JT to keep this forum neutral, unlike US led media inconclusive and unlimited support to Israel unjustified barbarousness and violence
Capuchin
Thanks for the link. The South African legal team seem confident in the evidence they're submitting. As they say in the article their biggest issue is that they have too much evidence.
Such a painfully slow process though. Israel has until July 2025 to dispute the evidence which is then followed by oral hearings sometime in 2025.
Meanwhile hundreds of Palestinians are being killed on a daily basis and thousands more will die from starvation and lack of medicine thanks to Israel banning UNRWA. Possibly 186,000 according to a paper by Lancet the British medical journal.
NB
There is a conflict between two nations in the Middle East. The children of both nations deserve to live. Both nations have their rights that should be fulfilled. Any agenda by any of the nations to uproot, exterminate and slauther the other is madness.
Capuchin
Sorry, correction. Hearings in 2026.
Eastmann
and yes still no sanctions,cutting off from swift ,anything...all "kosher"...
WhenIfNotToday
One user tried to quote only half of what I said and then tried to defame. I said "Compared to Zionist, even Hamas looks nice."
My sentence means: Hamas is bad. Zionist are ISIS level bad.
We got many Zionist lovers (if not Zionists themselves) here, they have no room to defend the Zionist savagery anymore so they try to divert attention by trying other tactics.
WoodyLee
Jordan foreign minister stated during his last meeting with A. Blinken that Jordan sees the killings in northern Gaza by Israel as an " Ethnic cleansing operation" and there is no other ways to describe it.
Bibi and his blood thirsty team are killing innocent civilians including Women, Children, infants even unborn babies on daily with U.S. and NATO nations made killing machines and the rest of the world is watching in shock.
This injustice shall haunt us for years to come.
Chabbawanga
Killing all Israeli politicians and members of the IDF isnt going to make things better
WoodyLee
"" Don’t stop until all the terrorists are dead. ""
Exactly, that's what Hamas and Hezbollah Freedom Fighters are swearing.
WoodyLee
"" There is a conflict between two nations in the Middle East. The children of both nations deserve to live. Both nations have their rights that should be fulfilled. Any agenda by any of the nations to uproot, exterminate and slaughter the other is madness.""
WOW!??? what happened??
WoodyLee
The IDF are no different than ISIS SAVAGES, the only thing that may look different are the Uniforms, Same Militancy, Same mentality, Same ideology, and Same Leadership.
Zaphod
Keep in mind that „Gaza’s Health Ministry“ means Hamas. And I am sure he claims that only women and children were killed, and not any Hamas terrorists.
I am not saying that there are no innocent deaths here. But taking Hamas figures at face value is really a bit naive.
Zaphod
WoodyLee
That is a complete hyperbole. I am sure that unnecessary violence happens, but "no different"? Seriously? Have you seen sex slaves, gays being throw off buildings, captured personnel being burned in cages? And pls explain how Israels constitution is the same ideology as radical Sharia.
Capuchin
"The (Gaza) health ministry's casualty reports have received significant attention during the course of the Gaza–Israel conflict. Its numbers have historically been considered reliable by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and Human Rights Watch. In relation to the Israel-Hamas war, two papers published in The Lancet journal did not find evidence of inflation or fabrication of Palestinian casualty numbers."
Investigations into casualty reports in past conflicts have found that Gaza's health ministry numbers differ within a margin of 4% from other independent studies.
Even the IDF use Gaza's numbers internally as they are based on an identification registry created by Israel.
Zaphod
Capuchin
That is not much of an endorsement, seeing that all these organizations are strongly biased against Israel. Are you disputing that the "Gaza health ministry" is an arm of Hamas?