Israeli strike kills top Hamas official's son in Gaza: hospital, Hamas

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A Gaza hospital and Hamas on Thursday said the son of the Palestinian Islamist movement's chief negotiator had died from wounds sustained in an Israeli strike a day earlier.

Azzam Khalil al-Hayya, 23, the son of top Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, "was martyred after succumbing to wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike targeting him yesterday", Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital said in a statement.

The city's Al-Ahli hospital and a security source said on Wednesday that a strike on the Al-Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City in the evening killed one person and wounded 10 others, including Azzam Khalil al-Hayya.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment on the incident.

In a video published Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was "eliminating terrorist cells" in Gaza, "including yesterday", without elaborating.

Azzam Khalil al-Hayya is the fourth of Khalil al-Hayya's seven sons to be killed in Israeli attacks, according to a Hamas source.

Two of those were killed before the Gaza war erupted in October 2023.

The third, Hammam, was killed in an Israeli strike targeting Hamas leaders in Doha in September, which killed six people.

Khalil al-Hayya is the head of Hamas in Gaza despite living in exile in Qatar. He is currently vying for the leadership of the movement.

He survived the strike on Doha.

In a statement, Hamas said the killing of Azzam Khalil al-Hayya "came within the framework of attempts to exert pressure on the resistance leadership and its negotiating delegation, after the occupation's failure to impose its conditions or achieve its declared objectives".

The US-brokered ceasefire that came into effect in October has largely halted the Gaza war, which began with Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

But Gaza remains gripped by daily violence as Israeli strikes continue, with both the military and Hamas accusing one another of violating the truce.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said it had struck a "Hamas command centre" in the territory's north with an unspecified number of fighters inside.

Gaza's interior ministry later announced the deaths of three members of Hamas's "internal security force" in an Israeli strike in Gaza City.

More than 840 Palestinians have been killed since the truce began, according to Gaza's health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

Over the same period, the Israeli military said five soldiers have been killed in Gaza.