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

GAZA CITY (AFP): 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.

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.

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 that 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.”

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

At least 846 Palestinians have been killed since the truce began, according to Gaza’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.