More than 90 people, including 20 children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Gaza early Tuesday, local officials said, the deadliest attack in months as Israel wages a renewed assault on the northern part of the Palestinian enclave.
The strike hit a five-story building in the northern city of Beit Lahia housing some 200 people, according to the Gaza government media office. Some 93 people were killed, another 40 people were missing and dozens injured, it added.
The nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of Gaza’s last functioning medical facilities, had no doctors to treat the wounded after a dayslong siege there by Israeli forces, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. “Critical cases without intervention will succumb to their destiny and die,” the ministry warned.
The deadly airstrikes came just hours after the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed a law banning UNRWA, the United Nations’ Palestinian aid agency, from operating inside Israel or having any contact with Israeli authorities. The move has raised fears of a spiraling humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where UNRWA is the main supplier of food, water, medicine and other essential supplies to the enclave’s 2 million residents.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini called the vote “unprecedented” and “nothing less than collective punishment” for the Palestinians after more than a year of “sheer hell.” The U.S. expressed deep concern over the legislation, which it said would outlaw an agency that “plays a critical, important role in delivering humanitarian assistance to civilians that need it in Gaza.”
The Israeli airstrike and UNRWA ban are the latest developments in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The assault on Gaza comes after a surge of violence in March 2022, prompting the Israeli government to declare a “state of emergency” and undertake a widespread crackdown on suspected militants.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Lebanon, the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah named a new leader – former deputy Sheikh Naim Kassem – after the killing of its powerful chief Hassan Nasrallah and his presumed successor.
