Middle East latest: Dozens are killed or wounded in an Israeli strike on northern Gaza

At least 34 people were killed and another 20 wounded 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:

Lebanon’s Hezbollah says it has chosen Naim Kassem to replace slain leader Hassan Nasrallah

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.

Dozens are killed or wounded in an Israeli strike on a building housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza

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 34 people early Tuesday, more than half of them women and children, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

The ministry’s emergency service said another 20 people were wounded in the strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, near the Israeli border.

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 chief warns Israel against barring UNRWA from its work

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.