Key Points
- An Israel strike on a residential building in northern Gaza has killed at least 60 people, officials say.
- Others who were inside the building at the time of the strike are missing or have been wounded.
- The director of the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital said it was overwhelmed by the wave of wounded people from the strike.
An Israeli strike on a building housing displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip has killed dozens of people, Gaza’s health ministry says.
Marwan Al-Hams, a health ministry official, said 60 people were killed in Tuesday’s strike on a five-storey building in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, near the Israeli border.
Another 17 people were missing, he said, adding they would be counted as dead, and 150 people were wounded. Medics said 20 children were among the dead.
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.
A damaged ambulance at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya on Friday. Source: AFP, Getty / -/AFP via Getty Images
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 at the weekend, detaining dozens of medics.
Israel’s latest major operation in northern Gaza, focused on the Jabalia refugee camp, has and driven tens of thousands from their homes in another wave of mass displacement more than a year into the war in the tiny coastal territory.
Israel has also sharply restricted aid to the north this month, prompting a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate greater aid efforts could lead to a reduction in military aid.
Since Israel launched its offensive against Gaza in October last year, more than 42,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to local health authorities.
Hamas-led militant’ October 7 attack on Israel last year killed 1,200 people, taking around 250 hostages. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
About 90 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.
Last month, after nearly a year of rocket fire by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, Israel .
More than 1,600 people have been killed in Lebanon since all-out war erupted in September, according to an Agence France-Presse tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
Hezbollah’s Naim Qassem announced as Hasan Nasrallah’s successor
On Tuesday, Hezbollah announced it had chosen deputy head Naim Qassem to succeed as leader after his death in an Israeli strike in south Beirut last month.
“Hezbollah’s (governing) Shura Council agreed to elect … Sheikh Naim Qassem as secretary-general of Hezbollah,” the Iran-backed group said in a statement, more than a month after .
Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, was initially tipped to succeed Nasrallah. But he, too, was on Beirut’s southern suburbs shortly after Nasrallah’s assassination.
Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem has been elected to succeed late chief Hassan Nasrallah. Source: AAP, EPA / Wael Hamzeh
Qassem, 71, was one of Hezbollah’s founders in 1982 and has been the party’s deputy secretary general since 1991, the year before Nasrallah took the helm.
He was born in Beirut in 1953 to a family from the village of Kfar Fila on the border with Israel.
He was the most senior Hezbollah official to continue making public appearances after Nasrallah largely went into hiding following the group’s 2006 war with Israel.
Since Nasrallah’s death in a huge Israeli airstrike on 27 September, Qassem has made three televised addresses.
