Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike early Tuesday killed 10 family members of Hamas’s Qatar-based chief Ismail Haniyeh, including his sister.
The Israeli military, which is on a campaign to destroy Hamas over the October 7 attack, told AFP that it “was aware of the reports but we cannot confirm” them.
The strike hit the Haniyeh family home in the Al-Shati refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, said Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the Hamas-ruled territory’s civil defence.
“There are 10 martyrs… as a result of the strike, including Zahr Haniyeh, sister of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh,” Basal told AFP.
He said a number of bodies were likely still under the rubble but “we do not have the necessary equipment” to extract them.
Civil defence crews transferred the bodies to Al-Ahli hospital in nearby Gaza City, Basal added, also reporting “several wounded” in the attack.
Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that rules Gaza, is considered a terrorist organisation by Israel and key Western allies, including the United States.
Hamas in a statement named the Haniyeh family home as being bombed in a list of “massacres” it said were committed by Israel in the Palestinian territory.
It said the alleged bombing showed Israel “continues to defy all international laws, human norms and values by deliberately targeting innocent civilians and committing the most horrific massacres against them”.
Haniyeh lost three sons and four grandchildren in an Israeli strike in April in central Gaza, with the military accusing them of “terrorist activities”.
Haniyeh at the time said that about 60 members of his family had been killed since the war broke out on October 7.
The war began after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s withering air, land and sea campaign since then has killed at least 37,626 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
