Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh says 3 sons in Gaza killed by Israeli airstrike

Israeli aircraft killed three sons of Hamas’s top political leader in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, striking high-stakes targets during a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed.

Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.”

The killings threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far apart on key issues.

They also come as Israel is under intensifying pressure — increasingly from its top ally, the U.S. — to change tack in the war, especially when it comes to humanitarian aid for desperate people in Gaza.

Haniyeh said Hamas would not cave to the pressure levelled by the strike on his family.

“The enemy believes that by targeting the families of the leaders, it will push them to give up the demands of our people,” Haniyeh told the Al Jazeera satellite channel. “Anyone who believes that targeting my sons will push Hamas to change its position is delusional.”

Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV station aired footage of Haniyeh receiving the news of the deaths through the phone of an aide while visiting wounded Palestinians who have been transported to a hospital in Qatar, where he lives in exile. Haniyeh nodded, looked down at the ground and slowly walked out of the room.

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Hamas said Haniyeh’s sons — Hazem, Amir and Mohammed — were killed in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, where Haniyeh is originally from. The militant group said three of Haniyeh’s granddaughters and a grandson were also killed. It did not disclose their ages.

Al-Aqsa TV said the brothers were travelling with family members in a single vehicle targeted by an Israeli drone.

The Israeli military said Mohammed and Hazem were Hamas military operatives, and that Amir was a cell commander. It said the brothers had conducted militant activity in the central Gaza Strip, without elaborating. It did not comment about the grandchildren killed.

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The strike on Haniyeh’s family is the latest high-profile bloodshed in a war with no end in sight.

Earlier, Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz claimed Hamas has been defeated militarily, although he also said Israel will fight against it for years to come.

“From a military point of view, Hamas is defeated. Its fighters are eliminated or in hiding” and its capabilities “crippled,” Gantz said in a statement to the media in Sderot.

But, he added: “Fighting against Hamas will take time. Boys who are now in middle school will still fight in the Gaza Strip.”

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Gantz reiterated the Israeli government’s commitment to go into Rafah, the city in the far southern tip of the Gaza Strip where more than half the territory’s population of 2.3 million people is now sheltering. “Wherever there are terrorist targets — the IDF will be there,” he said.

The strike came as 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 in Israel’s offensive, which was in response to the deadly Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7.

Israel launched the war in response to the assault, during which 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 levelled in the fighting, many areas are uninhabitable.