An Israeli strike on a five-story building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 60 people early yesterday, more than half of them women and children, Gaza’s health ministry said.
In a separate development, Lebanon’s militant group Hezbollah said it has chosen Sheikh Naim Kassem as its new top leader following the killing of Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike last month.
The group said in a statement that Hezbollah’s decisionmaking Shura Council elected Kassem, who had been Nasrallah’s deputy leader for more than three decades, as the new secretary-general.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Hezbollah vowed to continue with Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”
Marwan al-Hams, director of the field hospitals’ department at the Gaza health ministry, announced the toll from yesterday’s strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya at a news conference. He said another 17 people were missing.
The ministry’s emergency service said the dead included at least 12 women and 20 children, 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 provided by the emergency service.
Kamal Adwan Hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya 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.
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.
The military said it detained scores of Hamas militants in the raid on Kamal Adwan, the latest in a series of raids on hospitals since the start of the war.
Israel has sharply restricted aid to the north this month, prompting a warning from the US that failure to facilitate greater aid efforts could lead to a reduction in military aid.
On Monday, Israel’s parliament passed two laws that could prevent the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating in the Palestinian territories. It was the culmination of a long-running campaign against UNRWA, which Israel says has been infiltrated by Hamas, allegations denied by the agency.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7 last year killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250. About 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, one-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 percent of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.
The Taipei MRT is open all night tonight following New Year’s Eve festivities, and is offering free rides from nearby Green Line stations. Taipei’s 2025 New Year’s Eve celebrations kick off at Taipei City Hall Square tonight, with performances from the boy band Energy, the South Korean girl group Apink, and singers Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Faith Yang (楊乃文). Taipei 101’s annual New Year’s firework display follows at midnight, themed around Taiwan’s Premier12 baseball championship. Estimates say there will be about 200,000 people in attendance, which is more than usual as this year’s celebrations overlap with A-mei’s (張惠妹) concert at Taipei Dome. There are
LOOKING FOR WHEELS: The military is seeking 8x8 single-chassis vehicles to test the new missile and potentially replace the nation’s existing launch vehicles, the source said Taiwan is developing a hypersonic missile based on the Ching Tien (擎天) supersonic cruise missile, and a Czech-made truck has been tentatively selected as its launch vehicle, a source said yesterday. The Ching Tien, formerly known as Yun Feng (雲峰, “Cloud Peak”), is a domestically developed missile with a range of 1,200km to 2,000km being deployed in casemate-type positions as of last month, an official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The hypersonic missile to be derived from the Ching Tien would feature improved range and a mobile launch platform, while the latter would most likely be a 12x12 single chassis
UP AND DOWN: The route would include a 16.4km underground section from Zuoying to Fongshan and a 9.5km elevated part from Fongshan to Pingtung Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday confirmed a project to extend the high-speed rail (HSR) to Pingtung County through Kaohsiung. Cho made the announcement at a ceremony commemorating the completion of a dome at Kaohsiung Main Station. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications approved the HSR expansion in 2019 using a route that branches off a line from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District (左營). The project was ultimately delayed due to a lack of support for the route. The Zuoying route would have trains stop at the Zuoying Station and return to a junction before traveling southward to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝).
Parts of the nation, including in the south, could experience temperatures as low as 7°C early tomorrow morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. A strong continental cold air mass coupled with the effect of radiative cooling would bring cold weather to several northern cities and counties, and could even affect areas as far south as Tainan early tomorrow, the CWA said. Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan, and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties would experience temperatures below 10°C until this evening, according to cold surge advisories issued by the weather agency. The weather across the nation is forecast to remain
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