DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli rescue services said more than 60 people were wounded Sunday, three of them critically, in a drone strike in the central city of Binyamina. The Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group claimed responsibility for one of the most serious strikes to land in Israel in a year of war.

Israel’s advanced air-defense systems mean that it’s rare for so many people to be hurt by drones or missiles. Israeli media reported that two drones were launched from Lebanon, and the military said one was intercepted.

It was not immediately clear who was hurt, military members or civilians, or what was hit.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it targeted an Israeli military training camp in retaliation for two Israeli strikes Thursday in Beirut that killed 22 people.

It was the second time in two days that a drone has struck in Israel. On Saturday, during the Israeli holiday of Yom Kippur, a drone struck in a suburb of Tel Aviv, causing damage but no injuries.

The latest strike came on the same day that the United States announced that it would send a new air-defense system to Israel to help bolster its missile shield.

Israel is now at war with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — both Iran-backed militant groups — and is expected to strike Iran in retaliation for a missile attack this month, although it has not said how or when. Iran has said it will respond to any Israeli attack.

A year into the war with Hamas, Israel continues to strike what it says are militant targets in Gaza nearly every day. One strike late Saturday hit a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing the parents and their six children, ages 8 to 23, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies there.

“They were safe, while he was sleeping, and he and all his children died,” said the man’s brother, Mohammad Abu Ghali. Women, in tears, stroked the body bags.

Israel’s military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas and other armed groups because they operate in densely populated areas.

International criticism is growing because Israeli forces have repeatedly fired on U.N. peacekeepers since the start of the ground operation in Lebanon. The military says Hezbollah operates in the vicinity of the peacekeepers, without providing evidence.

The peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL said Israeli tanks forcibly entered the gates of one of its positions early Sunday and destroyed the main gate, and later fired smoke rounds near peacekeepers in that location, causing skin irritation. UNIFIL said the incident is a “further flagrant violation of international law.” Israeli strikes have wounded five peacekeepers in recent days.

Israel’s military said a tank trying to evacuate wounded soldiers backed into a U.N. post while under fire. It said a smoke screen was used to provide cover.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani asserted that Israel has tried to maintain constant contact with UNIFIL and that any instance of U.N. forces being harmed will be investigated at “the highest level.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Sunday for UNIFIL to heed Israel’s warnings to evacuate, accusing them of “providing a human shield” to Hezbollah.

“We regret the injury to the UNIFIL soldiers, and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this injury. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is simply to get them out of the danger zone,” he said in a video addressed to the U.N. secretary-general, who is banned from entering Israel.

Israel has long accused the United Nations of being biased against it, and relations have plunged since the start of the war in Gaza.

In northern Gaza, Israeli air and ground forces have been attacking Jabaliya, where the military says militants have regrouped. Over the past year, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the built-up refugee camp, which dates to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, and other areas.

Israel has ordered the full evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City. An estimated 400,000 people remain in the north after a mass evacuation ordered in the war’s opening weeks. Palestinians fear that Israel intends to permanently depopulate the north to establish military bases or Jewish settlements there.

The United Nations says no food has entered northern Gaza since Oct. 1.

The military confirmed that hospitals were included in evacuation orders but said it had not set a timetable and was working with local authorities to facilitate patient transfers.

Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service, said the bodies of a “large number of martyrs” remain uncollected from the streets and under rubble.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Around 100 hostages are still in Gaza, a third believed to be dead.

Israel’s bombardment and its ground invasion of Gaza have killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and left much of the territory in ruins. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.

In Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes overnight destroyed an Ottoman-era market in Nabatiyeh in the south, killing at least one person and wounding four. Lebanon’s Civil Defense said it battled fires in 12 residential buildings and 40 shops in the market, which dates to 1910.