Israel struck and critically wounded the son of the Hamas militant group’s top negotiator on Wednesday in air strikes that also killed at least five people across the Gaza Strip, according to medics and Hamas sources.
Azzam Al-Hayya, son of Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ exiled Gaza chief who had been leading indirect talks with Israel over the Palestinian enclave’s future, was wounded in a strike that also killed another person in Gaza City, they said.
Hayya had already lost three sons in previous Israeli attempts on his life – two in Gaza in the 2008 and 2014 rounds of fighting, while the third was killed in an Israeli attempt to kill Hamas leadership in Doha last year.
“Targeting Azzam Khalil Al-Hayya with shelling represents a peak of moral and ethical degradation,” said Taher Al-Nono, a Hamas official and an aide to Hayya, in a Facebook post.
“Shelling and killing only make the negotiator more steadfast in his positions, in defending his people’s rights, and in their free will,” he added.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the incident.
Earlier in the day, two other Israeli air strikes killed four Palestinians, including a colonel in the Hamas-run police force, health officials said.
Medics said an Israeli airstrike killed Naseem al-Kalazani, the head of the anti-narcotics force in Khan Younis, south of the enclave, when it targeted his vehicle near the al-Mawasi area on the western side of the city. The attack wounded at least 17 other people, they added.
Reuters previously reported that Israel has intensified its attacks on Gaza’s Hamas-run police force, which the militant group has used to reinforce its hold in the areas it controls in the strip.
The Israeli military confirmed it had conducted a strike in al-Mawasi, saying it was targeting a Hamas operative but did not immediately comment on the other strike.
STRUGGLING TALKS
The violence comes as leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian factions held talks with mediators and the Board of Peace’s lead envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, this week in Cairo, to push U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan into its second phase, officials said.
Trump’s Gaza plan, which Israel and Hamas agreed to in October, involves Israeli troops withdrawing from Gaza and reconstruction starting as Hamas lays down its weapons.
But Hamas’ disarmament is a sticking point in talks to implement the plan and cement an October ceasefire that halted two years of full-blown war.
Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for the violence that has continued in the Palestinian territory, much of which remains in ruins.
A Hamas official told Reuters on Wednesday that the group told Mladenov it wouldn’t engage in serious talks over the implementation of the second phase before Israel concludes obligations stemming from the first phase of the Gaza deal.
