Hamas pulls out of Gaza truce talks after deadly Israeli strike

Health ministry says 92 dead, 300 wounded in Al-Mawasi strike

GAZA:

A Hamas official said Sunday the Palestinian group was withdrawing from Gaza truce talks, following a deadly Israeli strike that targeted militant commander Mohammed Deif more than nine months into the war.

Another Hamas official told AFP that “Commander Mohammed Deif”, the Islamist group’s military chief, was “well and directly overseeing” operations despite the bombing raid on a southern Gaza displacement camp on Saturday, which Israel said was an attempt to kill him.

Another senior official said Hamas was pulling out of negotiations towards a ceasefire because of Israeli “massacres” and repeated stalling.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political chief, told international mediators of the “decision to halt negotiations due to the (Israeli) occupation’s lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians”, the official said.

But Hamas was “ready to resume negotiations” when Israel’s government “demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal”, the official quoted Haniyeh as saying.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said at least 92 people had been killed, more than half of them women and children, and 300 wounded in a strike on Al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated “safe zone” on the Mediterranean coast.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described the area as “a sandy 14-square-kilometre (5.4-square-mile) agricultural land, where people are left out in the open with little to no buildings or roads”.

“The claim that people in Gaza can move to ‘safe’ or ‘humanitarian’ zones is false”, said Lazzarini on social media site X. At the site of the strike, an AFP photographer saw the charred remains of tents as Palestinians searched through the wreckage for any salvageable items.

Plastic covers, broken water tanks and other equipment used for makeshift shelters was scattered on the sand.