More than 90 killed in north Gaza strike as Israel bans U.N. relief agency

Scores of Palestinians were killed and wounded in northern Gaza on Tuesday after an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building where hundreds of people had been sheltering, local rescue and medical workers said.

It appeared to be the deadliest attack on the isolated north since Israeli troops resumed operations against Hamas militants there in early October, and came a day after Israel’s parliament voted to ban operations by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, Gaza’s leading humanitarian provider.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday that the latest attack had killed at least 93 people and that 25 of them were children. The Israeli military said it was “aware of reports that civilians were harmed” and was looking into the matter. “We emphasize that the area was evacuated by the IDF and it is currently an active combat zone,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

The strike on a five-story apartment block in Beit Lahia was reported at 4:20 a.m., Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense force, said. Photographs from the scene showed bodies being pulled from the rubble of a building smashed to pieces. Women and children stood over the dead, weeping.

“We simply cannot accept the killing of Palestinian children as normal,” Save the Children wrote in a post on Instagram. “Each child killed was someone’s everything, with hopes and dreams for the future.”

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tuesday that the United States was “deeply concerned by the loss of civilian life,” adding that Washington has yet to receive a “full explanation” of the strike from the Israeli government. “This was a horrifying incident with a horrifying result,” Miller said.

The Gaza Health Ministry says that more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began military operations in the enclave 13 months ago in response to the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children.

When Israeli troops returned to northern Gaza at the beginning of this month, the IDF described the operation as aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping. The military also sealed off the area – still home to some 400,000 people – to most aid deliveries, which critics feared was a first step in the implementation of a plan proposed by a former Israeli general to starve out the population and kill those who remained.

The Israeli government has denied the so-called “General’s Plan” is official policy, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected U.S. entreaties to publicly disavow it.

Asked about the plan after his last visit to Israel, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday, “We reject any effort to create a siege, to starve people, to hive off northern Gaza from the rest of Gaza.” In an Oct. 13 letter to their Israeli counterparts, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned of possible cuts to military funding if Israel did not take immediate steps over the next 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation.

But late Monday, Israel’s parliament passed two laws severely restricting the activities and diplomatic privileges of UNRWA, Gaza’s most important humanitarian lifeline. The first law prevents any activity by UNRWA within Israeli territory, which would be likely to include the operation of schools and health clinics in the occupied West Bank. The second bans state authorities from contact with UNRWA, which is essential to coordinating relief operations in Gaza.

“Israel has every right to act against UNRWA after the failure of the international community,” said Israeli lawmaker Sharren Haskel, who first wrote the legislation six years ago. “This organization which was founded in sin and has been corrupted to its core stands in the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict.”

In a statement, Netanyahu said he would cooperate with international partners in the 90 days before the legislation takes effect to ensure aid gets to civilians in Gaza “in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security.”

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said the laws, if implemented, were likely to prevent UNRWA from doing its work in Gaza and would have “devastating consequences.” Israel’s military operations in the north have made life “untenable for the Palestinian population there,” Guterres added.

The latest moves against UNRWA come after more than a year of Israeli efforts to sideline and discredit the agency, which it has long accused of abetting militant activity in Gaza and teaching anti-Israel material in its schools. In January, the United States was among more than a dozen countries that suspended funding to UNRWA over Israeli allegations that members had participated in the Oct. 7 attack, when about 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 250 taken hostage.

An internal U.N. investigation, the results of which were released in August, found that nine of the 19 accused UNRWA workers “may have been involved” in the attack, and their contracts were terminated. All donor countries except the United States have resumed funding for the agency.

Miller said Monday that Washington has made clear to Israel it is “deeply concerned” about the anti-UNRWA legislation, which he said could have “implications under U.S. law,” adding that the issue was mentioned explicitly in the letter sent two weeks ago.

On Tuesday, in the opening to an address to the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke about watching a young girl die of hunger nearly three decades ago. “And I think about her as we’ve seen reports that no food assistance has reached Jabalya or Beit Lahiya since early October,” she continued. “Right now, there is no alternative to UNRWA when it comes to delivering food and other lifesaving aid in Gaza.”

Norway, Spain, Ireland and Slovenia issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s move against an agency whose work they said is “essential and irreplaceable for millions of Palestinian refugees.”

Israeli authorities have not provided UNRWA with any clarity about when and how the laws will be implemented, said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications “We are very much in the dark at the moment,” she said.

No U.N. agencies or outside groups are able to fill UNRWA’s far-reaching role in the Palestinian territories, she said, and the U.N. General Assembly would need to approve any changes to the agency’s mandate.

As the occupying power in Gaza and the West Bank, Touma said, Israel bears responsibility under international law for the provision of aid.

“Are they planning to take on that responsibility to feed 2 million people and provide education to 600,000 kids [in Gaza]?” she asked.

Already, Touma said, UNRWA and other U.N. agencies are having difficulties securing permission from Israel for international staffers. The agency has been “getting shorter visas, sometimes two months, three months, sometimes not getting visas” at all, she said.

“Israel has bombed Palestinians to death, maimed them, starved them, and is now ridding them of their biggest lifeline of aid,” said Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam regional director in the Middle East and North Africa, in a statement. “Piece by piece, Israel is systemically dismantling Gaza as a land that is autonomous and liveable for Palestinians.”