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14-07-2024
GAZA CITY: The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says hundreds more Palestinians have been martyred in an Israeli air strike on a designated humanitarian area, in an attack which Israel says targeted senior Hamas leaders.
More than 289 people were injured, according to the health ministry’s statement.
Hamas says the strike hit the al-Mawasi area near Khan Younis, which the Israeli military has designated as a humanitarian zone, urging Palestinians to seek shelter there.
An Israeli official said the strike targeted the head of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif, in an “open area” where there were “only Hamas terrorists and no civilians”.
Rafa Salama, the Hamas commander for Khan Younis, was also targeted in the strike, the official said, calling the intelligence that led to the incident “accurate” but Hamas said the claim that their leaders were targets is “false”.
“It is not the first time Israel claims to target Palestinian leaders, only to be proven false later,” the group said in a statement.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold security talks through the day, his office said according to Reuters.
An eyewitness in al-Mawasi told media that the site of the strike looked like an “earthquake” had hit, and videos from the area show smoldering wreckage and bloodied casualties being loaded onto stretchers. People can be seen trying desperately to pick through the rubble of a large crater with their hands.
Footage from the nearby Kuwait field hospital showed scenes of chaos with patients being treated on the floor.
The Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis is “overwhelmed” and no longer able to function, said British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).
On Wednesday, the Israeli military told all residents of Gaza City to evacuate south to the central Gaza Strip, amid intensified operations in the north.
Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing the al-Qassam Brigades, is a top target for Israel’s military.
Deif has near-mythical status in Gaza after escaping capture and surviving several assassination attempts.
He is believed to be one of the masterminds behind the 7 October Hamas attack, when about 1,200 Israelis and foreigners mostly civilians were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages.
It led to the major Israeli military operation in Gaza which has killed more than 38,400 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
A Hamas official, cited by Reuters, called the attack a “grave escalation” that showed Israel was not interested in reaching a ceasefire agreement.
The ceasefire negotiations being held in Qatar and Egypt ended on Friday without success.
Since Hamas blindsided Israel with its most ambitious attack ever launched from Gaza, questions have been raised over who masterminded the deadly invasion.
Many of the highest-ranking men belonging to the militant Palestinian group controlling Gaza keep a low public profile, while others have spent much of their lives evading assassination attempts by Israel.
These are Hamas’s most prominent leaders.
Ismail Haniyeh is widely considered Hamas’s overall leader.
A prominent member of the movement in the late 1980s, Israel imprisoned Haniyeh for three years in 1989 as it cracked down on the first Palestinian uprising.
He was then exiled in 1992 to a no-man’s-land between Israel and Lebanon, along with a number of Hamas leaders. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
