Three sons and ‘several’ grandchildren of Hamas’ top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, relatives and official Hamas media said today.
Reports state that Hazem, Ameer, and Mohammed Haniyeh were killed alongside family members in a fatal strike near the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.
The Hamas political chief confirmed the deaths to Al Jazeera.
‘I am grateful to God for the honor he has given me in the deaths of three of my children and a few of my grandchildren,’ Haniyeh said, from Qatar.
‘My sons were awarded this honor. They remained with our Palestinian people in Gaza, did not leave and did not run,’ he added.
Three sons of Hamas’ supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip
The Qatar-based political head of the Palestinian militant group confirmed to Al Jazeera ‘the martyrdom of my three sons and some of my grandchildren’.
He claimed his family was targeted while driving in a car near the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.
The terror leader hit out at Israel, stating they are ‘driven by the spirit of revenge’ as he claimed around 60 members of his family have been killed since the start of the war.
The terror chief said: ‘Through the blood of the martyrs and the pain of the injured, we create hope, we create the future, we create independence and freedom for our people and our nation,’ the terror chief said.
Ismail Haniyeh, who now lives in exile in Qatar, is originally from Shati.
There was no immediate comments from the Israeli army.
The deaths were confirmed by Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV station as well as Haniyeh family members on social media.
It comes after the Hamas Chief said last Wednesday that his Palestinian Islamist movement at war with Israel was sticking to its conditions for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, including an Israeli military withdrawal.
Israeli officials visited Egypt at the start of last week in a bid to secure a deal, but a Palestinian official close to the mediation procedure said there had been no signs that a breakthrough was underway.
‘We are committed to our demands: the permanent ceasefire, comprehensive and complete withdrawal of the enemy out of the Gaza Strip, the return of all displaced people to their homes, allowing all aid needed for our people in Gaza, rebuilding the Strip, lifting the blockade and achieving an honourable prisoner exchange deal,’ Haniyeh said in a televised speech marking Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day.
The ‘exchange deal’ the supreme leader mentioned would be the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in return for Israeli hostages being held by militants in Gaza since the deadly October 7 massacre on the Supernova music festival in Israel, led by Hamas.
Israel responded saying it was only interested in a temporary truce to free hostages, but Hamas said it will only let them go as part of a deal to permanently put an end to the war.
U.S. President Joe Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza a mistake and called for his government to flood the beleaguered territory with aid, ramping up pressure on Israel to reach a cease-fire and widening a rift between the staunch allies.
Palestinians in Gaza marked a muted Eid al-Fitr holiday ending the holy fasting month of Ramadan, visiting the graves of loved ones killed in the war.
In the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, people sat quietly by graves surrounded by buildings destroyed by Israel’s offensive in response to the deadly Hamas attack on October 7.
Biden has been an outspoken supporter of Israel’s war against Hamas. But in recent weeks his patience with Netanyahu has appeared to wane and his administration has taken a more stern line with Israel, rattling the countries’ decades-old alliance and deepening Israel’s international isolation over the war.
The most serious disagreement has been over Israel’s plans for an offensive in the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah.
The rift was worsened by an Israeli airstrike last week on an aid convoy that killed seven workers with the World Central Kitchen charity, most of them foreigners. Israel said the deaths were unintentional but Biden was outraged.
Biden’s latest comments, made in an interview that aired late Tuesday and recorded two days after the WCK strike, highlight the differences between Israel and the U.S. over humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, where the war has led to warnings of imminent famine for more than a million people.
‘What he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,’ Biden told Spanish-language broadcaster Univision when asked if Netanyahu was prioritizing his political survival over Israel’s interest.
Biden said Israel should agree to a cease-fire, flood beleaguered Gaza with aid for the next six to eight weeks and allow other countries in the region to help distribute aid. ‘It should be done now,’ he said.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza in the early days of the war, but under U.S. pressure has slowly increased trucks allowed to enter the territory.
Still, aid groups say supplies are not reaching desperate people quickly enough, blaming Israeli restrictions and noting that thousands of trucks are waiting to enter Gaza.
Countries have attempted less efficient ways to deliver aid including airdrops and by sea.
Israel says its has opened up more entry points for trucks to enter and reach especially hard-hit areas like northern Gaza, an early target of Israel in the war.
Israel also accuses aid groups of being too slow to deliver aid once it’s inside Gaza.
Aid groups say logistical issues and the precarious security situation – underscored by the WCK strike – complicate deliveries.
Israel and Hamas are engaged in talks meant to bring about a cease-fire in exchange for the release of hostages captured by Hamas and others on Oct. 7. But the sides remain far apart on key issues, including the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza. Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet met late Tuesday to discuss the hostage negotiations but did not appear to make any decisions.
Netanyahu has vowed to achieve ‘total victory’ in the war, pledging to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7 attacks and to return the hostages. He says that victory must include an offensive in Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’ last major stronghold, but more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are currently seeking shelter there.
Six months into the war, Israel is growing ever more isolated, with even its closest partner increasingly vocal about its discontent in the war’s direction and longtime trading partners like Turkey taking potentially painful economic steps to express dismay.
Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, is under pressure to decide on a postwar vision for Gaza. But critics say he is delaying because he doesn’t want to anger his ultranationalist governing partners, who support resettling the Gaza Strip, which Israel withdrew from in 2005 and an idea Netanyahu has ruled out.
Netanyahu’s governing partners also oppose making significant concessions to Hamas in the ongoing negotiations. They have threatened to exit the government – a step that would cause the ruling coalition to collapse and trigger new elections.
‘If the prime minister thinks that there’s going to be a reckless deal here, it isn’t going to pass,’ Limor Sonn Har Melech, a lawmaker in the hard-line Jewish Power party, said in an interview to an Israeli radio station. ‘If we realize that the meaning of stopping this war is capitulation to Hamas, we won’t be there.’
Israel launched the war in response to Hamas’ cross-border assault, where militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 33,400 Palestinians have been killed in the relentless fighting, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel says it has killed some 12,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has ignited a humanitarian catastrophe. Most of the territory’s population has been displaced and with vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape leveled in the fighting, many areas are uninhabitable.
