Middle East latest: Hezbollah picks a new leader and Israel bombs southern Lebanon

Lebanon’s Hezbollah has chosen Sheikh Naim Kassem as its leader after longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a massive Israeli airstrike last month, as the militant group vowed Tuesday to continue “until victory is achieved.” Kassem, 71, had been Nasrallah’s deputy leader for over three decades.

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon late Tuesday killed six people in the port city of Sidon and wounded dozens, while a strike in a nearby town killed eight people and wounded at least 21, the Health Ministry and state media reported.

Lebanon's Heath Ministry said more than 2,790 people have been killed and 12,700 wounded since Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation. Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon at the beginning of October.

The death toll from more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has passed 43,000, Palestinian officials reported Monday, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants. The Israel-Hamas war began after Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.

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Here’s the latest:

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration says it is seeking an explanation from Israel about its attack Tuesday on a town in northern Gaza that Palestinians say killed at least 88 people, including dozens of women and children, which the State Department termed a “horrifying incident.”

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the U.S. had inquired with Israeli authorities about the strikes on the town of Beit Lahiya but had yet to get a full response.

“We are deeply concerned by the loss of civilian life in the sense that this was a horrifying incident with a horrifying result,” Miller told reporters. “I can’t speak to the total death toll, but there were reports of two dozen children killed, a number of them children who have been fleeing the effects of this war for more than a year now.”

“We have reached out to the government of Israel to ask what happened here,” he said. “We don’t yet know the underlying circumstances. We have not gotten a full explanation from them about what happened.”

Earlier, the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said at least 12 women and 20 children, including babies, were among the dead in Tuesday’s strike.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military regarding the strike in Beit Lahiya. The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months. It says it carries out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but the strikes often kill women and children.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Health Ministry said six people were killed and 37 others were wounded by a pair of strikes Tuesday evening in the southern coastal city of Sidon. Within a few hours, a third apparent Israeli strike targeted another building in the same neighborhood, Lebanon's state-run media reported.

Another Israeli airstrike hit the nearby Sarafand town and killed eight people and wounded 21 others, according to the Health Ministry. It said rescue efforts were ongoing in the town, which is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) further south down the coast.

According to the National News Agency, the first strikes in Sidon targeted an area sheltering displaced people that was adjacent to a Hezbollah complex called Sayyed Shohada, located a few hundred meters (yards) from a Lebanese army barracks.

The intended target of the strikes was not clear and the Israeli army gave no warnings ahead of the bombing. Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli military had issued evacuation orders for 16 villages in South Lebanon, instructing residents to move north of the Awali River.

JERUSALEM – Rights group Amnesty International slammed the Israeli parliament’s decision to restrict operations of the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees.

“This unconscionable law is an outright attack on the rights of Palestinian refugees. It is clearly designed to make it impossible for the agency to operate in the occupied Palestinian territory,” Amnesty's secretary-general, Agnès Callamard, said. “It amounts to the criminalization of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis.”

Callamard said UNRWA plays an indispensable role in providing food, water, medical services, shelter and education in Gaza. She urged the international community to condemn the legislation and press for its repeal.

“This appalling, inhumane law will only exacerbate the suffering of Palestinians, who have endured unimaginable hardship since the horrific attacks by Hamas and other armed groups in southern Israel one year ago, and whose need for global support is greater than ever,” she said.

GENEVA — Multiple United Nations agencies rallied Tuesday around their fellow organization that provides aid to Palestinian refugees after Israel’s parliament took steps to ban it in the coming months.

The World Food Program is deeply concerned about the restrictions, spokeswoman Abeer Etefa said Tuesday when asked whether the WFP might take up the work of UNRWA.

“The World Food Program’s mandate is to deliver food assistance to people in need,” she said. “WFP cannot replace the equally important critical functions of UNRWA in Gaza, including the running of shelters and health clinics.”

Spokesman Tarik Jasarevic of the World Health Organization said 3,000 of UNRWA’s roughly 13,000 staff are health workers. Those health staff have provided more than 6 million medical consultations from its centers over the last year. Activities include immunizations, disease surveillance, and screening for malnutrition, and UNRWA’s work “couldn’t be matched by any agency — including WHO.”

Spokespeople from U.N. agencies for children, health and migration were among those who stressed that UNRWA is the “backbone” of the world body’s operations in Gaza,

Jeremy Laurence, spokesman for the U.N. human rights office, said that “without UNRWA, the delivery of food, shelter, health care, education, amongst other things, to most of Gaza’s population would grind to a halt.”

“Civilians have already paid the heaviest price of this conflict over the past year,” he said. “Cruelly, this decision will only make matters worse for them”

BEIRUT — Analysis from a humanitarian group working in Lebanon forecasts two scenarios in its report on the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, both predicting a severe economic contraction in Lebanon by early 2025.

Mercy Corps’ Lebanon Crisis Analysis Team says Israel’s continued strikes on suspected Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, without blocking key infrastructure, will still bring severe economic and humanitarian risks.

Lebanon’s economy could contract by 12.81% , or $2.305 billion by January 2025, with impacts hitting agriculture, manufacturing, and services hard in the South and Bekaa Valley.

Agriculture in South Lebanon, which drives 80% of its economy, may come to a halt, while factories face shutdowns, the report says. “The Bekaa Valley, responsible for 2% of national GDP, will see similar disruptions, with 70% of farmland under threat and many Syrian laborers fleeing,” it adds.

The service sector, particularly tourism, stands to lose $1.256 billion, potentially crippling a vital part of the economy.

If Israel imposes a stricter blockade and expands bombings to key infrastructure, Lebanon’s economic loss could rise to 21.9% of GDP, or $3.938 billion, according to the report.

Over 1.5 million people could be displaced, with political and intercommunal tensions intensifying as Shia Muslims flee to diverse religious regions that are majority Christian, Druze or Sunni Muslim, the report adds.

Already, 1.2 million people have been displaced from villages in southern and eastern Lebanon as well as Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Lebanon, already enduring a five-year economic crisis marked by a severe currency collapse, had just begun showing signs of recovery before the war erupted.

PARIS — France “deeply deplores” the adoption by the Israeli Parliament of two bills aimed at banning the activities of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees on Israeli soil, the French foreign ministry said.

“The implementation of these bills would have very serious consequences on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is already catastrophic, but also throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, depriving hundreds of thousands of civilians of essential aid in terms of shelter, care, education and food,” the statement said.

France “reaffirms its support to UNRWA” and will continue to “ensure that the reforms needed” to ensure its neutrality are implemented, the French foreign ministry said.

VIENNA — Eight Austrian soldiers serving in the U.N. force in Lebanon were lightly injured in a missile strike at the Naqoura camp on Tuesday, Austrian authorities said.

Defense Ministry spokesperson Michael Bauer wrote on social network X that the incident happened Tuesday lunchtime. He said it wasn’t immediately clear who was responsible for the strike.

The injuries were “light and superficial scrapes,” Bauer said.

UNIFIL said in a statement that the rocket that hit its headquarters in Naqoura this afternoon was fired from the north, “likely by Hezbollah or an affiliated group.”

“Peacekeepers were not in bunkers at the time. While some peacekeepers suffered minor injuries, fortunately, no one was seriously injured,” the statement added.

UNIFIL spokesperson Dany Ghafary confirmed to the Associated Press that it was the same episode that injured eight Austrian U.N. peacekeepers.

“We have opened an investigation into the incident. We remind Hezbollah and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property,” the statement said.

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military said that four soldiers were killed Tuesday in battle in the northern Gaza Strip.

The military did not disclose the exact circumstances behind the deaths.

Israel has refocused its offensive in Gaza on the territory’s hard-hit north, which was an early target of the war. Soldiers have been conducting raids and strikes to target what the military says are pockets of militancy.

More than 360 soldiers have been killed since Israel launched its ground invasion in Gaza last year in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel.

NICOSIA, Cyprus — The foreign ministers of Cyprus and Luxembourg say the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees is “indispensable” to providing food, education and health care to Palestinians and that the international community must do whatever it can to enable the agency to continue its work.

Cyprus’ top diplomat Constantinos Kombos said after talks with his Luxembourgian counterpart Xavier Bettel on Tuesday that the work of UNRWA is “extremely valuable” throughout the Middle East, calling its delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza “imperative.”

Bettel said “there is no alternative” to UNWRA’s work to help people in Palestine because without the agency, “there is no education, there is no health, there is no food.”

The diplomats made the remarks after the Israeli parliament on Monday passed two laws that could prevent UNRWA from being able to continue its work. The laws ban the agency from operating and cut all ties between it and the Israeli government.

Bettel said his country would continue to support UNWRA and would raise the issue in his meetings with his Israeli counterpart and the president of the Israeli parliament when he visits Israel later Tuesday. He will also meet with the Palestinian prime minister and UNWRA officials.

GENEVA — A UNICEF spokesman says the move by Israeli’s parliament to ban the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees “means that a new way has been found to kill children.”

James Elder says an inability for the refugee agency, UNRWA, to operate “would likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza” and the U.N. children’s agency “would become effectively unable to distribute lifesaving supplies.”

He said that would impede deliveries of vaccines, winter clothes, hygiene kits, health kits, water, and ready-to-use therapeutic food to combat malnutrition.

Elder said a decision like the one by the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, “suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children.”

GENEVA — The director-general of the International Organization for Migration, Amy Pope, said that the United Nations body is not capable of fully filling a gap left by UNRWA, which she described as “absolutely essential.”

“They provide, education. They provide health care. They provide some of the most basic needs, for people who have been living there for decades,” Pope said of UNRWA. “That’s not something that IOM does what IOM does well.”

She said IOM is able to assist with ongoing humanitarian support, such as offering help to displaced people and providing shelter and hygiene kits.

“There’s no way for IOM to step in to do what UNRWA has done. UNRWA is absolutely essential to the people of Gaza, and I don’t want to leave anyone with the misimpression that IOM can play that role, because we cannot,” she said.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli authorities said Tuesday one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into a northern city.

The Israeli military said about 50 projectiles were launched from Lebanon into Israel. It said some of the launches were intercepted by Israel’s aerial defense system and others fell in the area.

Israeli police said they received a number of reports of fallen projectiles, which caused damage to property, in the city of Maalot-Tarshiha. The Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom said a man was killed in the strike.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it fired rockets toward the area.

Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel since Oct. 8, 2023, when it began attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas a day after its cross-border attack. Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has intensified in recent weeks after Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon.

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called Israel’s decision to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East a “clear violation of international law.”

In a statement Tuesday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the move undermines efforts toward a two-state solution and obstructs the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

“By targeting UNRWA, Israel aims to eliminate the two-state solution and prevent the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland,” the statement read.

Israel accuses the agency of turning a blind eye to staff members it says belong to Hamas, divert aid and use UNRWA facilities for military purposes. Israel says around a dozen of the agency's 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. The agency denies it knowingly aids armed groups and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants among its staff.

The agency is the major distributor of aid in Gaza and provides education, health and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“It is the legal and moral obligation of the international community to take a strong stance against attempts to ban the activities of UNRWA,” the ministry added, noting that the agency was created by a U.N. General Assembly resolution.

Turkey, which currently chairs the UNRWA’s Working Group on Financing, pledged to continue its support for the agency.

JERUSALEM — Christian Aid, a British charity, criticized the Israeli parliamentary decision to restrict the work of UNRWA.

“Severing this lifeline in Gaza as winter threatens to exacerbate an already desperate situation is cruel and dangerous,” the group’s Middle East head, William Bell, said in a statement Tuesday.

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.

Bell alleged that the move is part of Israel’s “ongoing challenge to the eligibility of Palestinian refugees to claim the right of return” in Israel and occupied Palestinian territories.

“Once again international leaders have either been unable or unwilling to protect the most basic rights of Palestinians, including their existence as a sovereign people,” he said.

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.

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 60 people early Tuesday, according to health officials.

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the field hospitals’ department at the Gaza Health Ministry, announced the toll from Tuesday’s strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya at a news conference. He says another 17 people are missing.

The ministry’s emergency service says the dead include at least 12 women and 20 children, including babies.

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 — 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.