Hamas denied it’s pulling out of cease fire talks, a day after an Israeli air strike on Gaza aimed at killing two top Hamas officials left at least 90 people dead and 300 injured.
Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, described as “baseless” an AFP report that the group will quit the talks. Israel’s latest “escalation” had been engineered to “block the way to reaching an agreement,” he added in a brief statement.
Earlier, AFP cited an official saying that Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh had told international mediators Qatar and Egypt that the organization would halt negotiations due to Israel’s “lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians.”
Israel security officials said Sunday they were confident that their targeted attack against Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif was successful despite the group’s assertion that he was “well” and continuing to oversee operations of the Hamas military wing.
The second main target of Saturday’s strike - Rafa Salama, commander of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade - was killed, Israel’s IDF said in a statement. His elimination “significantly impedes Hamas’ military capabilities,” the IDF said.
Deif and Salama were two of the alleged masterminds behind the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel in which almost 1,200 people killed and 250 abducted – 120 of whom are still being held in Gaza.
The IDF said separately on Sunday that it struck a number of Hamas members operating in the area of UNRWA’s Abu Oraiban School building in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza.
“This location served as a hideout and operational infrastructure from which attacks against IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip were directed and carried out,” Israel’s military said. The Hamas government media office said 15 people were killed in the strike.
President Joe Biden put forward the cease-fire proposal in late May, describing a three-phase approach that would lead to a permanent end to the conflict, now into its tenth month. He said it had Israel’s full support — something that Israeli officials backed away from at the time.
Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union.
Earlier in July, a person familiar with the matter said Hamas had dropped its objections over the US-backed cease-fire proposal to halt the Gaza conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said a delegation was headed back to the region.
In a news conference Saturday evening, Netanyahu suggested that he didn’t believe the strike would be a setback for the long-running talks.
Netanyahu said he stands by the outlines of the US-backed cease-fire proposal. But he contended Hamas has requested more changes, and that Israel remains committed to several goals, including the right to meet its war aims and the release of as many live hostages in the first phase of a three-stage deal.
Israel launched a punishing war against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attacks. More than 38,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, which doesn’t distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.
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