Israeli strike in northern Gaza kills 60, officials say

An Israeli strike on a building housing displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip has killed at least 60 people, more than half of them women and children, Gaza's health ministry says.

In a separate development on Tuesday, Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah said it has chosen Sheikh Naim Kassem to succeed longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in September.

Hezbollah vowed to continue with Nasrallah's policies "until victory is achieved".

Israel also faced backlash from aid groups after its parliament passed legislation that could severely restrict the ability of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees to operate in the Palestinian territories.

The agency, known as UNRWA, is the largest aid provider in Gaza.

Hezbollah said its decision-making Shura Council elected Kassem, who had been Nasrallah's deputy leader for over three decades, as the new secretary-general.

Kassem, 71, a founding member of the militant group established following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, had been serving as acting leader.

He has given several televised speeches vowing that Hezbollah will fight on despite a string of setbacks.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation, after Hamas's surprise attack out of Gaza on October 7, 2023, triggered the war there.

Iran, which backs both groups, has also directly traded fire with Israel, in April and then again in October.

The tensions with Hezbollah boiled over in September, as Israel unleashed a wave of heavy air strikes and killed Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders.

Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon at the start of October.

Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, killing at least one person in the northern city of Maalot-Tarshiha, authorities said.

Even as attention has shifted to Lebanon and Iran in recent weeks, Israel continues to wage a large operation in northern Gaza and to carry out air strikes across the territory.

Dr Marwan al-Hams, from the Gaza health ministry, announced the toll from Tuesday's strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

He said another 17 people were missing.

The ministry's emergency service said at least 12 women and 20 children were among the dead, including babies.

The dead included a mother and her five children, some of them adults, and a second mother with her six children, according to an initial casualty list.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been waging the operation in northern Gaza for more than three weeks, targeting what it says are pockets of Hamas militants who have regrouped there.

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.

Israel's latest major operation in northern Gaza, focused on the Jabaliya refugee camp, has killed hundreds of people 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 in October, prompting a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate greater aid efforts could lead to a reduction in military aid.

On Monday, Israel's parliament passed two laws that ban UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil and cut all ties between the agency and the Israeli government.

Israel controls access to both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and it was unclear how the agency would continue to operate there.

Israel says UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas and the militant group uses UN facilities to shield its activities, which it denies.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250.

Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities.

About 90 per cent of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes.