Gaza authorities: Israeli airstrike kills ten family members of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh
Gaza’s civil defense said an Israeli air strike early Tuesday killed ten family members of Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, including his sister.
The Israeli military, which has been waging a campaign to destroy Hamas since the October 7 attack, told AFP it was “aware of the reports but could not confirm them.”
The attack hit the Haniyeh family’s home in the Al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, said Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for civil defense in the Hamas-ruled area.
“There are 10 martyrs … as a result of the attack, including Zahr Haniyeh, the sister of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh,” Basal told AFP.
He said numerous bodies were probably still under the rubble, but “we do not have the necessary equipment” to recover them.
Civil defense teams took the bodies to Al-Ahli Hospital in nearby Gaza City, Basal added, also reporting “several injured” in the attack.
Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that controls the Gaza Strip, is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and key Western allies, including the United States.
In a statement, Hamas listed the Haniyeh family home as one of the bombed houses in a list of “massacres” allegedly carried out by Israel in the Palestinian territories.
It said the alleged bombing showed that Israel “continues to disregard all international laws, human norms and values by deliberately targeting innocent civilians and committing cruel massacres against them.”
Haniyeh lost three sons and four grandchildren in an Israeli attack in central Gaza in April. The military accused them of “terrorist activities.”
Haniyeh said at the time that about 60 members of his family had been killed since the war began on October 7.
The war began after Hamas’ unprecedented attack on southern Israel, which killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP news agency count based on official Israeli figures.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israel’s devastating air, land and sea attacks have since killed at least 37,626 people in the Gaza Strip, again mostly civilians.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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