Leader of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Shigeru Ishiba was reelected as the country's prime minister on Monday after securing the most votes in both houses of the Japanese Diet.
The Diet, or parliament, convened an extraordinary session Monday afternoon to choose the prime minister. As the ruling coalition of the LDP and Komeito lost its majority in the general election last month, the vote ran into a runoff between Ishiba and major opposition Constitutional Democratic Party leader Yoshihiko Noda.
In the runoff voting in the House of Representatives, 67-year-old Ishiba received 221 votes, outperforming Noda to become the country's 103rd prime minister.
He will later be formally inaugurated at a ceremony at the Imperial Palace and hold a press conference in the evening.
Ishiba took office as the country's 102nd prime minister in early October and promptly called a snap election, aiming to solidify his position.
But instead of a strengthened mandate, the LDP and Komeito got a total of 215 of the 465 seats in the powerful House of Representatives in the general election on Oct 27, below the 233 seats needed for the majority.
Shigeru Ishiba reelected as Japanese PM
The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has risen to 45,317, with 107,713 others injured, the Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Monday.
During the past 24 hours, the Israeli military killed 58 people and wounded 86 others in Gaza, according to the statement.
The Hamas-run media office said on Monday that more than 50 Palestinians were killed or injured in an Israeli military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
The office described the Israeli army's actions as a "horrific, brutal crime," claiming that the camp was stormed by over 17 tanks, bulldozers, military vehicles, and dozens of heavily armed soldiers, supported by drones.
The statement said that the casualties were all civilians, and more than half of them were women and children. It also reported that over 20 housing units were destroyed, with significant and widespread damage sustained during the Israeli attacks.
Israel's military and Shin Bet security agency also announced on Monday that they had killed Muhammad Ahmed Albec, the head of the National Security Directorate of Hamas' Security Services, in an airstrike on a school in Gaza.
At least eight people were killed in the strike Sunday on the Musa bin Nusair school in Gaza City's Daraj al-Tuffah neighborhood, which was sheltering displaced people, according to Palestinian health officials.
The Israeli military and Shin Bet claimed in a joint statement that a Hamas command center was located within the school compound, which was struck by the air force. It described Albec as "a central figure" in Hamas' security apparatus.
Palestinian death toll from Israeli attacks in Gaza rises to 45,317
