Israeli air strike kills 10 family members of Hamas chief Haniyeh in Gaza
Men search through the rubble of the home of Ismail Haniyeh’s sister in the Shati camp near Gaza City, June 2024
Al Jazeera reports on 25 June 2024:
An Israeli air strike has killed 10 members of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh’s family in northern Gaza’s Shati refugee camp, according to the Palestinian group and the enclave’s civil defence agency.
Confirming the attack on the Haniyeh family and the number of the dead, Hamas said on Tuesday that it held the administration of US President Joe Biden responsible for the continuation of the war of “extermination” against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
It said the United States was continuing to give Israel “political and military cover and time to accomplish the task of destruction and extermination in the Strip”.
Mahmud Basal, a spokesman for the civil defence agency, told the AFP news agency that the Tuesday morning attack targeted the Haniyeh family home in Shati. “There are 10 martyrs … as a result of the strike, including Zahr Haniyeh, sister of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh,” Basal said, adding that 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 said, also reporting “several wounded” in the attack.
In a statement, Hamas called “on the international community and the United Nations to shoulder their responsibilities towards these ongoing horrific crimes, to take urgent action to protect innocent civilians, and to hold the terrorist leaders of the occupation accountable for their crimes”.