Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in Israeli shelling in the Gaza Strip at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Tuesday, October 29, 2024. (Abdel Kareem Hana/AP)

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — At least 60 people, more than half of them women and children, were killed in an Israeli attack early Tuesday on a five-story building housing displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

Separately, Lebanon’s militant group Hezbollah said it had chosen Sheikh Naim Kassem to replace longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month. Hezbollah vowed to continue Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”

Israel also faced backlash after passing legislation that could severely restrict the UN agency for Palestinian refugees from operating in Palestinian territory. The organization known as UNRWA is the largest aid provider in Gaza. Israel has long accused it of militant ties, but it denies the allegations.

A spokesman for the UN children’s agency said the decision “means a new way of killing children has been found”.

Sheikh Naim Kassem, deputy leader of Hezbollah, speaks in an interview with The Associated Press in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon, on Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (Bilal Hussein/AP)

Hezbollah’s new leader vows to continue fighting Israel

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

Kassem, 71, a founding member of the militant group established after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, was serving as acting leader. He made several televised speeches vowing that Hezbollah would continue fighting despite a series of setbacks.

After Hamas’ surprise attack from Gaza on October 7, 2023 triggered the war there, Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel and retaliated. Iran, which supports both groups, exchanged direct fire with Israel in April and again this month.

Tensions with Hezbollah escalated further in September when Israel launched heavy airstrikes, killing Nasrallah and many of his top commanders. Israel launched a ground operation against Lebanon at the beginning of October.

Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, killing at least one person in the northern city of Maalot-Tarshiha, officials said.

The strike in northern Gaza came as Israel launched a major operation there

Although attention has shifted to Lebanon and Iran in recent weeks, Israel has continued to conduct a major operation in northern Gaza and conduct airstrikes across the region.

Director of the field hospitals department of the Gaza Ministry of Health, Dr. Marwan al-Hams announced the death toll in Tuesday’s strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya at a press conference. He said 17 more people were missing.

The ministry’s emergency service said at least 12 women and 20 children, including babies, were among the dead. According to the initial casualty list provided by the emergency services, the dead included a mother and her five children, some of whom were adults, and a second mother and her six children.

There was no direct comment from the Israeli military, which has been operating in northern Gaza for more than three weeks, targeting pockets of Hamas militants who have regrouped there.

Director of nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya said that the number of people injured in the attack was very high. Israeli forces raided the medical facility over the weekend and detained dozens of medics.

The army said several Hamas militants were detained in the raid on Kamal Advan, the latest in a series of raids on hospitals since the beginning of the war.

The Israeli military has repeatedly attacked shelters for displaced people in recent months, saying it was carrying out precision strikes targeting Palestinian militants and trying to avoid harming civilians. Women and children were often killed during strikes.

Israel’s last major operation, focusing on the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands from their homes, plunging more than a year into war in the small coastal region in a new wave of mass displacement.

On Tuesday, the army said four more soldiers were killed in clashes in northern Gaza, bringing the death toll since the start of the operation to 16, including a colonel. The military says it killed dozens of militants without providing evidence, while Hamas does not publicly disclose its losses.

Israeli police bomb squad members work in the area where one person was killed when a projectile launched from Lebanon hit Maalot-Tarshiha in northern Israel, Tuesday, October 29, 2024. (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)

Israeli laws targeting UN agencies could further restrict aid

Israel also sharply restricted aid to the north this month, prompting a US warning that failure to provide more humanitarian aid could lead to a reduction in military aid.

Palestinians fear that Israel will enact a plan proposed by a group of former generals who propose ordering the evacuation of civilians in the north, cutting off aid supplies and considering anyone remaining there as militants.

While the army denied that such a plan was carried out, the government did not make a clear statement on the subject.

On Monday, the Israeli parliament passed two laws banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory and severing all ties with the organization. Israel controls access to both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and it is unclear how the agency will continue to operate there.

Israel says UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas and that the militant group is withdrawing aid and using UN facilities to protect its activities; The UN agency denies these allegations.

Aid groups have warned that there is no immediate replacement for UNRWA, which provides education, health services and emergency aid to millions of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s founding and their descendants. Refugee families make up the majority of Gaza’s population.

James Elder, a spokesman for the UN children’s agency known as UNICEF, said suspending UNRWA’s work “will most likely lead to the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza.” He said UNICEF would be “virtually incapable of distributing life-saving supplies.”

This, he said, would hinder the delivery of vaccines to combat malnutrition, winter clothing, hygiene kits, health kits, water and ready-to-use therapeutic foods.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants raided Israel on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping around 250. Approximately 100 hostages remain in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

More than 43,000 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s retaliatory attack, according to local health authorities. Approximately 90% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.

Magdy reported from Cairo and Mroue from Beirut. Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.