Hamas says pulling out of Gaza truce talks after deadly Israeli strike

GAZA STRIP: A Hamas official said on Sunday the Palestinian group was withdrawing from Gaza truce talks, following a deadly strike that killed at least 92 and wounded more than 300 people in the besieged and bombarded territory.

Israel claimed the strike had targeted Hamas commander Mohammed Deif.

Deif was “well and directly overseeing” operations, another Hamas official told AFP, despite the bombing raid on a southern Gaza displacement camp on Saturday, which Israel said was an attempt to kill him.

The health ministry in Gaza said at least 92 people had been killed and 300 wounded in the strike on Al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated “safe zone” on the Mediterranean coast.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political chief, told international mediators of the “decision to halt negotiations due to the (Israeli) occupation’s lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians”, the official said.

Gaza officials say 90 Palestinians killed as Israel targets Hamas military chief

But Hamas was “ready to resume negotiations” when Israel’s government “demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal”, the official quoted Haniyeh as saying.

Talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with United States support, have for months tried but failed to bring a halt to the Israeli aggression in Gaza.

Israeli demonstrators, sometimes in the tens of thousands, have stepped up their actions demanding the government reach a deal to free the captives taken by Hamas on October 7.

Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The Palestinian group seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.

Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,584 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Gaza health ministry.

Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says 71 dead in camp strike

An Israeli security source said that the Saturday strike showed Israel “will continue to target senior Hamas leadership” even as it “pursues negotiations for a hostage agreement”.

‘Horrific scenes’

Al-Mawasi, near the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, had in May been declared a safe humanitarian zone by the Israeli military, which told civilians to evacuate to it. However, there have been multiple deadly incidents there blamed on Israeli strikes.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on social media site X: “The claim that people in Gaza can move to ‘safe’ or ‘humanitarian’ zones is false.”

Israel said it had on Saturday targeted Deif, who heads the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as an associate, Rafa Salama.

Israeli army radio says Hamas military chief targeted in Gaza strike

Israel’s military on Sunday said Salama, commander of Hamas’s Khan Yunis brigade, had been killed by a strike “in the area of Khan Yunis.”

Israel accuses both Salama and Deif of helping to “mastermind” the October 7 attack.

Deif has been among Israel’s most wanted men for decades and is blamed by Israeli authorities for the killings of multiple civilians and soldiers.

At the site of the strike, an AFP photographer saw the charred remains of tents as Palestinians searched through the wreckage for any salvageable items.

Israeli forces pull back after Gaza City offensive, leaving dozens of bodies, rescue service says

Plastic covers, broken water tanks and other equipment used for makeshift shelters was scattered on the sand.

Scott Anderson, director of UNRWA affairs in the Gaza Strip, said that on a visit to Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital, where many of the casualties were taken, he had “witnessed some of the most horrific scenes I have seen” in Gaza.

“I saw toddlers who are double amputees, children paralysed and unable to receive treatment, and others separated from their parents,” he said in a statement.

Anderson added that “impediments to humanitarian operations prevent us from supporting people anywhere near the scale necessary”.

Gaza City strikes

The deaths in Al-Mawasi drew condemnation from governments across the region, with Egypt’s foreign ministry saying such “crimes… cannot be accepted under any justification whatsoever”.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, during a press conference with his visiting Saudi counterpart, said Israel does not intend to end its aggression and commits “new massacres each time there is a positive atmosphere” towards peace.

The Israeli military said of its attack targeting Deif that “the area that was struck… was not a tent complex, but an operational compound”.

Separately on Sunday, rescuers said at least eight people were killed in strikes on different parts of Gaza City, where the Israeli military said its operations were ongoing.

The war has sent regional tensions soaring, with violence drawing in Hamas allies including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group, which has traded regular fire with Israeli forces, and Yemen’s Houthis whose maritime attacks have disrupted Red Sea shipping.

Israel has also intensified attacks on Syria, where on Sunday state media said a soldier was killed in strikes on Damascus.

The Israeli military – in a rare acknowledgement of military action in Syria – said it was responding after the launch of two drones from Syrian territory.