The Israeli military on Tuesday hit a town in the northern Gaza Strip for the third time in just over a week, striking a residential building and killing dozens of people, Gazan officials said, as Israel intensified its offensive in the territory after more than a year of war.
The Palestinian Civil Defense, a Gazan emergency service, said at least 55 people had been killed in the strike in the town of Beit Lahia. Gaza’s Health Ministry put the toll higher, saying that at least 93 people had been killed, including 25 children.
The Israeli military, which asserts it is fighting a regrouped Hamas presence in northern Gaza, said that it was “aware of reports that civilians were harmed” and was looking into the details. The area was previously evacuated, it said, and was “an active combat zone.”
Matthew Miller, a U.S. State Department spokesman, called the strike in Beit Lahia “a horrifying incident with a horrifying result” and noted that many of the children reportedly killed had probably fled strikes in other parts of Gaza. He said the Biden administration had contacted the Israeli government for more information.
Hamas condemned the strike as a “horrific massacre” and demanded international action to stop Israel.
Israeli forces struck another residential block in Beit Lahia on Sunday, killing and wounding dozens, according to the civil defense service. They also hit a residential building in the town on Oct. 20, killing dozens of people, Palestinian officials and emergency workers said.
Israel’s recent strikes in northern Gaza have underscored its struggle to defeat Hamas in a lasting way, with the group fighting as a guerrilla force after the decimation of most of its military battalions and Israel’s killing of its leader, Yahya Sinwar.
Israel has so far rejected international pleas to transfer power to an alternative Palestinian leadership in Gaza, and that has allowed Hamas to reassemble in areas from where the Israeli military had retreated, analysts say.
“What’s happening in Beit Lahia is happening in many other places in northern Gaza,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer. “The I.D.F. is detecting Hamas infrastructure there and attacking it,” he added, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
Mr. Milshtein said the operations represented Israel’s failed approach to the war — one in which its forces have fought Hamas and withdrawn, only to return to the same places months later after the militants have re-established themselves.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “When are we going to learn?”
With little apparent progress in cease-fire talks, the Israeli strikes added to the growing death and devastation in Gaza, where tens of thousands have been killed since Hamas led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war. During that assault, militants killed about 1,200 people and took 250 others to Gaza as hostages.
This October has already been the deadliest month of the year for the Israeli military, with at least 59 troops killed in Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that, like its ally Hamas, is backed by Iran. The toll includes four soldiers who were killed overnight in Jabaliya, a town in northern Gaza, about three miles southwest of Beit Lahia, the Israeli military said. It did not say how the soldiers were killed.
The United Nations has warned of catastrophic conditions and the risk of famine in northern Gaza, where it says about 400,000 people remain. Many have been trapped in ruined neighborhoods with little access to food or medicine, according to U.N. officials.
The United States, several European countries and the U.N. have said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza could worsen as a result of two laws the Israeli Parliament passed on Monday that bar UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, from operating in Israel.
Most of the laws’ provisions will not take effect for three months, and their full legal ramifications were not immediately clear. But UNRWA has played a critical role in coordinating desperately needed humanitarian aid in Gaza. The Biden administration had urged Israel not to pass the bills.
On Tuesday, Mr. Miller, the State Department spokesman, warned that Israel could face unspecified “consequences” under U.S. law and said the Biden administration was watching to see if there were any legal challenges to the laws.
“We are deeply troubled by this legislation,” he told reporters in Washington. “It could shutter UNRWA operations in the West Bank, in Gaza, in East Jerusalem. It poses risks for millions of Palestinians who rely on UNRWA for essential services, including health care and primary and secondary education.”
Israel has criticized UNRWA for decades, arguing that its work aiding Palestinian refugees and their descendants perpetuate longstanding territorial conflict with Israel. The Israeli government has accused a few of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza of participating in the Hamas attack last year.
“UNRWA workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
The statement continued: “In the 90 days before this legislation takes effect — and after — we stand ready to work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security.”
Israeli leaders have cited national security as their campaign’s goal in Lebanon, where Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel a day after the Hamas-led attack last year. The group and the Israeli military traded fire for months, forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes in both countries. But Israel has ramped up its attacks significantly in recent weeks, blowing up wireless devices, killing Hezbollah leaders and sending troops into southern Lebanon.
Israeli airstrikes on Monday in the Bekaa Valley, in eastern Lebanon, killed at least 60 people and wounded 58 others, Lebanese officials said, in what appeared to be the deadliest barrage in the area since Israel stepped up its assault on Hezbollah last month.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday its forces had engaged in “joint aerial and ground operations” against “terror infrastructure sites” in Lebanon, but it did not mention the Bekaa Valley.
Most of the airstrikes were concentrated in the Baalbek District, a patchwork of farmlands and villages in the valley that is home to a city of the same name. Hezbollah holds sway in parts of the district, one of Lebanon’s most underdeveloped regions, which borders Syria.
The strikes also hit the city of Baalbek, an urban center that has been largely spared in Israel’s recent bombing campaign, stoking unease that it was no longer a pocket of relative safety.
“They were the most powerful strikes we’ve had here,” said Ibrahim Bayan, a deputy of the mayor of Baalbek city. “We thought the strikes wouldn’t stop until they had leveled all of Baalbek.”
Mr. Bayan said that some windows on his house had shattered and that he had barely slept as booms from the strikes and the cry of ambulance sirens sounded across the city.
Soon after the strikes, patients began flooding into the emergency room at Rayak Hospital in the Bekaa Valley, according to the hospital’s director, Dr. Ali Abdallah.
“It was one of the most difficult nights not just for the hospital, but for everyone here,” he said.
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