UN Security Council calls for urgent aid to Gaza

Palestinians line up to receive bread outside a bakery in Khan Yunis, Nov. 18, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

State Department —

Members of the United Nations Security Council, including the United States and the United Kingdom, urged an immediate increase in aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, warning that the humanitarian situation there is worsening.

Meanwhile, the United States warned Turkey on Monday against hosting Hamas leadership, saying there can be “no more business as usual” with what the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.

Several media reports indicate that senior members of Hamas\’ leadership outside of Gaza have been in Turkey in recent days after being asked to leave Qatar.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said he was not in a position to dispute these reports, leaving it to the relevant governments to address the whereabouts of Hamas leaders.

“We don\’t believe the leaders of a vicious terrorist organization should be living comfortably anywhere, and that certainly includes in a major city in one of our key partners,” Miller told reporters during a briefing on Monday.

At the United Nations, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called for a “huge rise in aid” to Gaza, where the displacement of most of the 2.3 million residents has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis.

Firefighters and rescuers gather outside a computer shop hit in an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Nov. 17, 2024.

Hezbollah spokesperson Mohammad Afif was among four people killed in the Ras al-Nabaa district, Hezbollah and the Israeli military said.

Israel has rarely hit senior Hezbollah personnel who do not have clear military roles, and its airstrikes have mostly targeted Beirut\’s southern suburbs, where the group has its heaviest presence, Reuters reported.

Israel Defense Forces issued a statement about the “precise, intelligence-based strike” that killed Afif.

The IDF said that Afif, a key figure in Hezbollah\’s military operations, was in contact with senior officials and directly involved in advancing and executing Hezbollah’s terrorist activities against Israel.

On Monday, the United Nations cultural and scientific agency, UNESCO, granted provisional enhanced protection to 34 cultural properties in Lebanon, including the World Heritage sites of Baalbek and Tyre, following recent Israeli strikes near these sites.

Deaths in Gaza

An Israeli strike in a tent sheltering displaced people in Gaza’s Khan Younis killed two children and their parents overnight, Palestinian officials said Monday.

The dead children were ages 7 and 9, and a 10-year-old child was also wounded, civil defense officials said.

On Sunday, Gaza\’s civil defense agency said 34 people were killed, including children, and dozens were missing after an Israeli airstrike hit a five-story residential building in Beit Lahia.

"The chances of rescuing more wounded are decreasing because of the continuous shooting and artillery shelling," civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse.

The war in Gaza began with the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, during which the militants killed about 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. Hamas is still holding about 100 hostages, with a third of them believed to be dead.

Israel’s counteroffensive has killed nearly 44,000 Palestinians, with women and children more than half the verified total, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

After months of rocket fire and airstrikes between Hezbollah and Israel, the fighting expanded in Lebanon in mid-September. More than 3,200 Lebanese have been killed, most of them in the past six weeks.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas have been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States.

Information from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse was used in this report.

By：VOA