Middle East latest: 60 people killed in an Israeli strike on northern Gaza

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 Oct. 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.

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Here’s the latest:

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.

Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel since Oct. 8, 2023, when it began attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas a day after its cross-border attack. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has intensified in recent weeks after Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon.

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 Oct. 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.

The agency is the major distributor of aid in Gaza and provides education, health and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“It is the legal and moral obligation of the international community to take a strong stance against attempts to ban the activities of UNRWA,” the ministry added, noting that the agency was created by a U.N. General Assembly resolution.

Turkey, which currently chairs the UNRWA’s Working Group on Financing, pledged to continue its support for the agency.

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.

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.

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.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been waging a large-scale operation in northern Gaza for more than three weeks, targeting what it says are pockets of Hamas militants who have regrouped there.

Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, said it was overwhelmed by the wave of wounded people from the strike. Israeli forces raided the medical facility over the weekend, detaining dozens of medics. Israel says it detained scores of Hamas militants in the raid.

The Israeli military 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.

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations chief is warning that if two laws adopted by Israel’s parliament are implemented, the U.N. 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 U.N. 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.

UNRWA was established by the General Assembly in 1949 to provide relief for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes before and during the 1948 war that followed Israel’s establishment, as well as their descendants.

The laws adopted Monday by Israel’s parliament, which do not immediately go into effect, will sever ties with the agency and bar UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil. They were approved amid an escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza, now in the second year of Israel’s military retaliation following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in southern Israel.

Guterres called on Israel “to act consistently with its obligations” under the U.N. 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.