Israeli MPs vote to cut off all UN help for suffering Gaza as latest blast kills 60

The Israeli parliament has voted to cut off all aid provided by the United Nations to Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, where the Israeli onslaught continues to kill innocent people

Israel has banned the UN agency dedicated to providing aid to Palestinians as its onslaught on Gaza continues.

MPs in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, voted to outlaw the UN Relief and Works Agency from working in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The ban will take effect in 90 days, meaning contact between UNRWA employees and Israeli officials will be severed.

Co-operation with the Israeli military is essential for UNRWA to transfer aid into the territory. Almost all the Strip’s population of more than two million people depend on the agency.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: “This legislation risks making UNRWA‘s essential work for Palestinians impossible, jeopardising the entire international response in Gaza. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is simply unacceptable. We need to see an immediate ceasefire, the release of the hostages and an increase in aid to Gaza.

“Under its international obligations, Israel must ensure sufficient aid reaches civilians in Gaza. Only UNRWA can deliver aid at the scale and pace needed.”

Early yesterday an Israeli strike on a five-story building full of displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 60 people. At least 12 women and 20 children – some of them babies – were among the dead, according to health officials in Gaza. They included a mother and her five children, some of them adults, and a second mother and her six children.

Dr Marwan al-Hams, director of the field hospitals department at the Gaza Health Ministry, said another 17 people are missing after the strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been waging war in northern Gaza for more than three weeks. It says it is targeting pockets of Hamas militants who have regrouped there.

The death toll from Israel’s year-long bombardment has topped 43,000. Hamas attacked Israeli towns on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 and taking hundreds of hostages.

Meanwhile, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has 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”.

Kassem, 71, a founding member of the militant group, had been Nasrallah’s deputy and was serving as acting leader.