Hezbollah names new leader as Israeli strike kills 60 in Gaza

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, more than half of them women and children, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

In a separate development, Lebanon’s militant group Hezbollah said it had chosen Sheikh Naim Kassem to succeed longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month.

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. Israel has long accused it of militant ties, allegations denied by the agency.

A spokesperson for the UN children’s agency said the decision “means that a new way has been found to kill children.”

Hezbollah’s new leader has vowed to keep fighting Israel. Hezbollah said in a statement that 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 fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, killing at least one person in Maalot-Tarshiha, authorities said.

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 said another 17 people are missing.

Who is Naim Kassem?

• Born in 1953 in Kfar Fila in southern Lebanon, Sheikh Naim Kassem studied chemistry at the Lebanese University before working for several years as a chemistry teacher. He simultaneously pursued religious studies.
• Kassem, a white-turbaned cleric with a grey beard, has often been the public face of the Lebanese militant group.
• He is one of its founding members but is widely seen by supporters as lacking his predecessor’s charisma and oratory skills.
• Kassem has been sanctioned by the United States, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist group.
• He had served as Nasrallah’s deputy for 32 years and had also long been Hezbollah’s public face, giving interviews to local and foreign media outlets.