Middle East latest: Dozens killed in Gaza as Israel says it targeted a weapons facility

Israeli strikes killed at least 30 people in Gaza, including on a home where displaced families were sheltering, according to Palestinian health officials.

Ten people were killed early Tuesday, including four children and two women, and a strike late Monday on the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed at least 20 people, including eight women and six children, health officials said. The Israeli military said it targeted a weapons storage facility from which a militant had operated, and that "numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians."

Israel has been waging a massive offensive in northern Gaza — which was already the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory — for nearly a month.

Despite growing pressure from the United States and others in the international community for a cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon, intensified Israeli strikes against the Hezbollah militant group are expanding beyond Lebanon's border areas. Israel is also fighting a seemingly endless war against Hamas in northern Gaza.

Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in 2023, at least 3,000 people have been killed and some 13,500 wounded in Lebanon, the Health Ministry reports.

More than a year of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children. The war began after Palestinian 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:

WHO working to arrange medical evacuation from Gaza

GENEVA — The World Health Organization says it’s working to arrange medical evacuations for more than 100 people from Gaza on Wednesday, which would be the largest such operation of its kind in six months.

Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said the U.N. health agency was helping coordinate the evacuations through the Kerem Shalom crossing based on a list of priority candidates drawn up by the Health Ministry in Gaza.

Speaking by video from Gaza to reporters in Geneva, Peeperkorn said medical evacuations have been arranged for 282 people since Israeli forces forced the closure of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on May 6.

Before the Rafah closure, nearly 4,700 people were ferried out of Gaza in medical evacuations since the Oct. 7 attacks last year, he said.

The largest one since May involved 97 people who were evacuated on Sept. 11. Thousands of people remain on waiting lists to get out.

WHO said people with chronic conditions like cancer as patients from trauma cases – injuries -- were among those to be evacuated. Peeperkorn said most would be taken to the United Arab Emirates for further care, while about 30 were to go to Romania. (edited)

Iran’s top diplomat says Tehran would respond to Israel’s strike in a ‘measured’ way

ISLAMABAD — Iran’s foreign minister on Tuesday reiterated that his country does not seek an escalation in the Middle East but reserved the right to defend itself against Israel’s attack with a “measured and calculative” response.

Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking at a news conference during a visit to Pakistan, said that “unlike the Israeli regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran does not seek escalation.”

“We reserve our inherent rights to legitimate defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and we will certainly respond to the Israeli aggression in a proper time and in a proper manner in a very measured and very calculated manner,” he said.

Araghchi met with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, who called for an urgent cease-fire to de-escalate tensions in the region.

The Lebanese Red Cross will try again to remove bodies from a strike site

BEIRUT — The Lebanese Red Cross will send another convoy Tuesday to Wata al-Khiam in southern Lebanon to search for and remove the bodies of 15 people killed in an Israeli airstrike, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.

Paramedics accessed the site of the strike two days prior and removed five other bodies, but needed to return with larger vehicles to remove the rubble. The NNA said the deployment is in coordination with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, which is the usual procedure.

The Red Cross did not immediately comment on the news, but expressed concern in recent weeks over several instances where Israel has struck in or close to areas where they have deployed paramedics to search for wounded people and casualties.

The Israeli military said it issued warnings to the residents there in late October to evacuate ahead of strikes on Hezbollah militant targets, and told ambulances to avoid the area.

Israeli airstrike kills 20 people in northern Gaza, Palestinians officials say

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip has killed at least 20 people, mostly women and children.

Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of a nearby hospital that received the casualties, said the strike late Monday hit a home in the town of Beit Lahiya where multiple families were sheltering.

The dead included eight women and six children, according to a list provided by the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service.

The Israeli military said it targeted a weapons storage facility from which a militant had operated, and that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”

Israel has been waging a massive offensive in northern Gaza — which was already the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory — for nearly a month. It ordered the complete evacuation of Beit Lahiya, the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, and has allowed almost no humanitarian aid into the area for over a month.

Tens of thousands of people have fled to nearby Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement in the war, which began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israeli strikes kill 10 in Gaza

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes early Tuesday killed 10 people in the Gaza Strip, including four children and two women.

One strike hit a house in the Tufah neighborhood in Gaza City, killing two children and their parents, according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service. Two other children were wounded, it said.

In the central town of Zuweida, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent where a displaced family was sheltering, killing four people, including a mother and her two children, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah.

Another strike hit a house in Deir al-Balah, killing two people, the hospital said.

An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the hospital morgue.

The Israeli military says it only targets militants and accuses them of hiding among civilians. It rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which says over half were women and children. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israeli forces kill 4 people in the occupied West Bank

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian officials say Israeli forces have killed four people in the occupied West Bank.

Two were killed in an airstrike early Tuesday near the northern city of Jenin, a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent years. Two other people were fatally shot in the village of Tamoun, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The Israeli military said it called in an airstrike on a militant cell near Jenin. It also said it killed two armed militants in an airstrike in the Tamoun area.

Israeli forces have carried out near-daily military raids in the West Bank since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the Israel-Hamas war. The Health Ministry says at least 767 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since then. Most appear to have been militants killed in battles with Israeli forces, but the dead also include civilian bystanders and people killed during protests.

Israel says the raids are aimed at dismantling Hamas in the West Bank and preventing attacks. Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis since the start of the war.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state.