Daily TribuneTalks mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with United States support, have for months tried but failed to bring a halt to the war in the Gaza Strip
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The strike on southern Gaza's Al-Mawasi displacement camp drew condemnation from across the region
Bashar TALEB / AFP
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES (AFP) — A Hamas official on Sunday said the group is pulling out of Gaza truce talks, following an Israeli strike that targeted the militants’ commander Mohammed Deif, who was “fine” despite the attack according to another Hamas figure.
“Commander Mohammed Deif is well and directly overseeing” the operations of the Hamas military wing, the official told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Israel staged a huge bombing raid on a camp for displaced people in southern Gaza on Saturday that it said was an attempt to kill Deif.
Another senior official from the Iran-backed Islamist group, which has been fighting a nine-month-long war with Israel in the Gaza Strip, said Hamas was withdrawing from ceasefire talks because of Israeli “massacres” and the country’s attitude in negotiations.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said at least 92 people had been killed, more than half of them women and children, and 300 wounded in a strike on the Al-Mawasi camp.
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political chief, told international mediators of the “decision to halt negotiations due to the occupation’s (Israel) lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians,” the official said.
Talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with United States support, have for months tried but failed to bring a halt to the war in the Gaza Strip.
‘No certainty’
Al-Mawasi, where the health ministry said dozens had been killed, had in May been declared a safe humanitarian zone by the Israeli military and civilians ordered to evacuate to it. However, there have been multiple deadly incidents there blamed on Israeli strikes.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described the area as “a sandy 14-square-kilometer agricultural land, where people are left out in the open with little to no buildings or roads.”
“The claim that people in Gaza can move to ‘safe’ or ‘humanitarian’ zones is false,” said Lazzarini on social media site X.
Israel said it had targeted Deif, the head of the Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as Rafa Salama, a brigade commander, in a strike on Saturday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Saturday there was “no certainty” either man had been killed in the strike.
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. There have been at least six previous attempts on his life.
He announced in an audio message the start of Hamas’s surprise 7 October attack on southern Israel, which sparked the Gaza war, and the military has labeled him and Salama “two of the masterminds” of the attack.
Separately on Sunday, rescuers said at least eight people were killed in three separate strikes on different parts of Gaza City.
The Israeli military meanwhile said operations were continuing throughout the territory, including in Gaza City and Rafah.
Hamas’s 7 October attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
