At least 20 children among 93 killed in latest Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza, health officials say
WARNING: This story contains a picture of a child killed in an airstrike.
At least 93 Palestinians were killed and scores injured in an Israeli strike on a building in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya on Tuesday, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
Doctors say at least 20 children are among the dead.
“A number of victims are still under the debris and on the roads, and ambulances and security forces cannot reach them,” said the Ministry of Health in the area in a statement.
Later on Tuesday, Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the government information office, put the death toll at 93.
The Israeli military said in a statement sent to US media that it was “aware of reports that civilians were injured” in the city and was looking into the details. CBC News has also reached out for comment and is awaiting a response.
The Israeli military has often questioned the death toll figures published by the Hamas media office, saying they are often exaggerated.
Video obtained by Reuters showed dozens of bodies wrapped in blankets on the ground outside the bombed four-story building. Some bodies and survivors were being picked up under the danger as neighbors were rushing to help in the rescue.
On Monday, the Palestinian Civil Defence, which is in charge of emergency services in Gaza, said that around 100,000 people were displaced in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun without medical supplies or food. Reuters could not independently verify the number.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Tuesday that the injured in the strike could not get help as the doctors were forced to leave the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital.
“Serious cases without intervention will fall to their fate and die,” the ministry said in a statement.
Deadly violence in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley
The war in Gaza has sparked a wider conflict in the Middle East, with Israel bombing Lebanon and sending troops south to cripple Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is allied with Hamas.
Tuesday's strike in Gaza came a day after Israel's parliament passed a law banning UNRWA from operating inside the country, alarming some of Israel's Western allies who fear it will worsen the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres says the UN's Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA is 'critical' and the implementation of a ban on Israeli operations 'could have dire consequences for Palestinian refugees in the occupied Palestinian Territory.'
Israeli officials have cited the involvement of a number of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees employees in an attack led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and the membership of several employees in Hamas and other armed groups. UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini described the move as “collective punishment.”
The resolution represents a form of collective punishment for the people of Gaza if fully implemented, UN officials said on Tuesday.
“If UNRWA can't work, it will see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza,” said UNICEF spokesman James Elder, who has worked extensively in Gaza over the past year. “So a decision like this suddenly means that a new way to kill children has been discovered.”
The October 7, 2023 attack led by Hamas in Israel killed 1,200 people and more than 250 hostages were taken to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
The death toll from Israel's air and ground attacks on Gaza has exceeded 43,000, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
In Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, rescuers were still pulling bodies from the rubble on Tuesday morning.
Israel has stepped up its airstrikes across Lebanon in the past month, saying it is targeting Hezbollah. Lebanese officials, rights groups and residents of the affected towns say the strikes are indiscriminate.
No evacuation orders were issued in any of the cities hit overnight. District manager Bachir Khodor said that 67 people have died and more than 120 have been injured and it is expected that the number of dead will increase.
Major regions of the Bekaa Valley are Hezbollah strongholds.
There was no comment from Israel regarding the attack.
Even before Israel and Hezbollah began exchanging fire in their latest conflict, Lebanon was in a precarious state, with some calling it a failed state. The CBC's Margaret Evans examines the complex factors behind the erosion of the country's stability.
More than 2,700 people have been killed by Israeli bombings in Lebanon since Israeli forces and Hezbollah began a firefight more than a year ago similar to the Gaza war. At least two-thirds were killed in the past five weeks alone, as Israel stepped up its bombing campaign.
Extended strikes target the port city of Tyre. On Monday, Israel issued a new evacuation order for many people in the city and carried out strikes that destroyed the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, which are located in the evacuation zone.
Strikes and bombings have left towns near the Lebanese-Israeli border in ruins, according to satellite imagery.
Hezbollah appoints a new leader
Israeli strikes in recent weeks have killed Hezbollah secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and other officials of the group, which is considered a terrorist organization by several Western governments including Canada.
Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem, a veteran of the group, was appointed as its head on Tuesday.
The group's strength was strong despite “painful blows” from Israel, Qassem said.
Qassem was appointed deputy leader in 1991 by the armed group's secretary-general Abbas al-Musawi, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack the following year.
Qassem remained in his role when Nasrallah became leader, and has long been one of Hezbollah's leading spokesmen, conducting interviews with foreign media including on cross-border disputes with Israel last year.
Born in 1953 in Beirut to a family from southern Lebanon, Qassem's political activism began with the Lebanese Shi'ite Amal Movement.
He left the group in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which shaped the political thinking of many Lebanese Shia activists. Qassem participated in the meetings that led to the creation of Hezbollah, which was founded with the support of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
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