Israeli attack targets Hamas military commander and kills at least 90 people in southern Gaza Strip

July 13, 2024

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel said it carried out a massive attack on Hamas’ secretive military commander in the crowded southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 90 people, including children, according to local health officials. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was “still no absolute certainty” that Mohammed Deif and a second Hamas commander, Rafa Salama, were killed.

Hamas rejected the claim that Deif was in the area, saying: “These false claims are only intended to cover up the extent of the brutal massacre.” The attack took place in an area that the Israeli military had declared safe for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Deif and the highest-ranking Hamas official in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, are considered in Israel to be primarily responsible for the October 7 attack that killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and sparked the war between Israel and Hamas. Deif, who has not been seen in public for years, was long at the top of Israel’s most wanted criminals list and is said to have escaped several Israeli assassination attempts. On October 7, Hamas released a rare voice recording of Deif announcing Operation Al Aqsa Flood.

The attack came at a sensitive time for ceasefire efforts. Deif’s death would be a major victory for Israel and a painful psychological blow for Hamas. It could also provide an opportunity for Netanyahu. On Saturday, the prime minister reiterated that Israel would not end the war until Hamas’ military capabilities were destroyed. Deif’s death would be a significant step in that direction.

All Hamas leaders are sentenced to death and “we will get to them all,” Netanyahu said. He added that there were no hostages nearby at the time of the attack, but did not explain how he knew that.

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – A Palestinian woman mourns over the body of a relative killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, in the morgue of a hospital in Deir al-Balah, Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Abdel Kareem Hana

Deif’s killing could also encourage Hamas to harden its position in the talks. Deif has been in hiding for more than two decades and is considered paralyzed. One of the only known images of him is a 30-year-old passport photo released by Israel. Even in Gaza, only a handful of people would recognize him.

Saturday’s attack was one of the deadliest of the war. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported 90 dead and at least 300 injured. Associated Press journalists counted more than 40 bodies in the nearby, overcrowded Nasser Hospital. Eyewitnesses described an attack with multiple blows.

“Numerous victims still lie under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulances and civil protection teams are unable to reach them,” the Health Ministry said.

The Israeli military claimed that “more terrorists were hiding among civilians” and described the site as surrounded by trees and several buildings. An Israeli official said the attack hit a fenced area of Khan Younis controlled by Hamas, not a tent complex but an operations camp. The official described the attack as precise. The army said the camp belonged to Salama.

According to eyewitnesses, the attack landed in Muwasi, the Israeli-designated security zone that stretches from northern Rafah to Khan Younis. The Palestinians have fled to the coastal strip and are mostly living in tents with little access to basic services. More than 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been driven from their homes.

Footage of the aftermath showed a huge crater, charred tents and burnt-out cars. The victims were carried on the hoods and tailgates of cars, on donkey carts and on carpets.

At the hospital, a baby in a pink shirt, his face covered in sand, cried while receiving first aid. A little boy lay motionless at the other end of the bed, one shoe missing. Many injured people were being treated on the floor.

There was “the overwhelming stench of blood,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees who visited the hospital and spoke to several patients. Staff said they had run out of cleaning supplies.

The explosion hurled a 2-year-old child into the air and left his mother missing, Wateridge said. Another boy’s feet were blown off and an 8-year-old boy was killed. “They told me to go there to be safe,” his grieving mother told her of the area hit.

Neighbouring Egypt, which is acting as a mediator in the ceasefire talks, condemned the attack. “These ongoing attacks against Palestinian citizens seriously complicate the current efforts to achieve calm and a ceasefire,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It also criticised the “shameful silence and inaction of the international community”.

Mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States are pushing to reduce differences between Israel and Hamas over a proposed agreement on a three-stage ceasefire and the release of hostages in the Gaza Strip.

The US-backed proposal calls for an initial ceasefire with limited hostage release and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from populated areas of Gaza. At the same time, the two sides will negotiate the terms of the second phase, which calls for full hostage release in return for a permanent ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Netanyahu said he would not back down from the US-backed proposal, but set out conditions: Israel has the right to continue the war until its goals are achieved, the return of as many hostages as possible in the first phase of the agreement, no return of Hamas fighters to northern Gaza and the prevention of arms smuggling, including control of the important Philadelphia Corridor between Gaza and Egypt.

Israel launched its campaign in the Gaza Strip following the October 7 Hamas attack, in which militants entered southern Israel and kidnapped about 250 people.

Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombings in Gaza have killed more than 38,400 people and injured more than 88,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The ministry makes no distinction between fighters and civilians in its count.

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Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Jack Jeffery in Ramallah in the West Bank, Fatma Khaled and Sarah el Deeb in Cairo and Abby Sewell and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

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For more AP coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.