There was no immediate comment on the casualties. The military said the houses contained Hezbollah facilities, but the claim could not be independently verified.

Lebanon’s civil defense said at least 16 people were killed in an attack on the village of Ain Yaacoub in northern Lebanon late Monday night. Four of the dead were Syrian refugees, and 10 people were injured. No statement was made by the Israeli military regarding the attack.

Israel has been carrying out intense bombardment of Lebanon since the end of September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end more than a year of cross-border fire from the Lebanese militant group.

At the same time, Israel continued its campaign in Gaza, which has lasted more than 13 months, triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

An Israeli attack late Monday hit a makeshift cafeteria used by displaced people in Muwasi, the center of a “humanitarian zone” declared by the Israeli army early in the war.

According to Nasser Hospital officials, where the injured were taken, at least 11 people, including two children, died. Video from the scene showed men pulling bloody wounded from among tables and chairs set up in the sand inside an enclosure made of corrugated metal sheets.

Another 11 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on vehicles in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital.

Another attack early Tuesday hit a house in the urban Nuseyrat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing three people, including a woman, according to Al Awda Hospital, where the injured were located. It was also stated that 11 people were injured in the attack.

Another attack hit a group of people near a UN agency-run clinic for Palestinian refugees in the city of Deir al-Balah, killing at least six people, including two children, according to the city’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies.

The Israeli army has not yet commented on the attacks.

Hours earlier, the Israeli military announced a small expansion of the humanitarian zone in which it told Palestinians evacuated from other parts of Gaza to take shelter. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are housed in vast tent camps in and around Muwasi, a largely desolate area of ​​sand dunes and farmland along the Mediterranean coast with few facilities or services.

Israeli forces have also besieged the northernmost part of Gaza since early October and are fighting Hamas fighters who they say have regrouped there.

The siege, which has seen virtually no food or aid allowed for more than a month, has raised fears of famine among tens of thousands of Palestinians still thought to be sheltered there.

The Oct. 13 letter, signed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, gave Israel 30 days to, among other things, allow at least 350 truckloads of goods into Gaza each day.

So far Israel has fallen short. According to official Israeli figures, an average of 57 trucks entered Gaza per day in October; So far in November, 87 trucks have entered per day. The UN has been reducing this number to 39 trucks per day since the beginning of October.

Israel has announced a series of measures in recent days to increase aid, including opening a new crossing into central Gaza. But so far its impact is unclear.

The army said on Tuesday it had allowed hundreds of packages of food and water into Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun, two besieged areas in Gaza’s far north. The Palestinian civil defense agency said three trucks carrying flour, canned food and water arrived in Beit Hanoun.

This was only the second delivery allowed into the region since the beginning of October; A smaller cargo was accepted last week, although not all of it reached shelters in the north, according to the UN

The army announced on Tuesday that four soldiers were killed in Jabaliya, bringing the number of soldiers killed since the beginning of the offensive to 24.

Palestinian health officials say hundreds of Palestinians died, but the actual numbers are unknown because rescue teams could not reach the buildings destroyed in the attacks. Israel ordered the evacuation of residents in the area. But the UN estimates about 70,000 people remain.

Many Palestinians here fear that Israel aims to permanently depopulate the region so it can more easily control it. On Tuesday, witnesses told The Associated Press that Israeli troops surrounded at least three schools in Beit Hanoun, forcing hundreds of displaced people who had taken shelter inside to leave.

Speaking as gunshots were heard from one of the schools, Mahmoud al-Kafarnah said drones were making announcements demanding people go south to Gaza City. “The tanks are out there,” he said. “We don’t know where to go.”

Hashim Afanah, who was sheltering with at least 20 other people in his family’s home, said forces were evacuating people from homes and shelters.

Israel’s operation in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, but more than half of the dead were women and children, according to local health authorities, which do not distinguish between civilians and militants in their numbers. Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants hiding among civilians.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants raided southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostage. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, and about a third of them are believed to be dead.

Associated Press reporters Samy Magdy in Cairo and Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.