Dozens killed in Israeli operation to target two Hamas officials

At least 90 people were killed and several wounded in an Israeli crackdown on Saturday in the al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Yunis, according to Palestinian state officials, in an operation in which Israeli security forces killed two Hamas militants, including Mohammed Deif. Targeted key officials. The top of Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades.

Palestinian state officials have called the attack a “massacre”. In an interview with Reuters, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuri He rejected studies that the accident was focused on Deif, calling it “nonsense”, while the size of the attack threatened additional disruption to the already tense ceasefire talks currently underway in Cairo and Doha.

Pictures taken by Reuters showed scores of people, women and children running through huge plumes of smoke on the horizon. Many carried their bloodied and unconscious wounded on their hands or on makeshift stretchers.

Smoke from a burning and torn-up car fogs the air as a girl cries amid the chaos. “They are all gone, my whole family is gone,” she said. “Where is my brother? They’re all gone, they’re all gone. There are no survivors.” At a news conference on Saturday, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said the attack was a casualty focused on a Hamas compound surrounded by bushes, structures and sheds, and not a tent complex. He said senior military commanders Deif and Rafa Salama, as well as other Hamas militants, were also present in the area, but did not share details of that information and said the IDF was still confirming the consequences of the crash.

Abu Zuri told Reuters that all those killed were civilians. NBC Information is not in a position to independently verify statements by either the IDF or Hamas.

Reuters video confirmed the damage and debris as the public sifted through some of the old white tents of Palestinians displaced during the destruction. Another video posted on Instagram and verified and geolocated by NBC News shows dozens of members of the public digging inside a large breakout crater with shovels and their naked fingers.

The IDF declared al-Mawasi a covered humanitarian zone in December, although the area has been repeatedly attacked since then. During the press conference, Hagari noted that the IDF had called for civilians to walk in the area, although high-ranking Hamas leaders, including some from their families, had caused casualties.

The number of casualties has increased in nearby hospitals. Nasser Sanatorium spokesman Mohammed Saqer told NBC News that the clinic did not have the capacity or medical supplies to care for the wounded and injured, and that he expected “many of the wounded will die due to lack of treatment.” ,

Within a few hours, Dr. Muhammad Saqr, director of the nursing sector at Nasser Sanatorium, told Quds News Network That the clinic was “unable to continue medical and nursing services due to the high number of deaths, injuries and disabilities.”

Palestine Crimson Crescent Population Posted on x Al-Amal Sanatorium in Khan Yunis rescued dozens of victims after the move, some of whom were displaced and living in the group’s refuge camp in the affected area.

It is unclear how the crash will affect ceasefire talks, as the attack occurred only once, while then-US President Joe Biden said in remarks that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a framework.

“Six weeks ago I laid out a comprehensive outline to achieve a ceasefire and bring the hostages home,” he posted on Twitter. “There’s still work to do and these are complex issues, but that’s the framework we both agree on now.” Israel and Hamas.”

“My team is making progress, and I’m committed to getting it done,” Biden said.

However, the ongoing attacks on Gaza have repeatedly complicated the already difficult negotiations. Abu Zuri told Reuters that Saturday’s attack showed that Israel was not interested in achieving an honorable ceasefire. Hamas has so far criticized Israel for delaying a note of respect, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel will not abide by any resolution that would limit Hamas’ resumption of its military campaign until the end. Will impose restrictions. US Environment Secretary Antony Blinken warned in May that Israel would no longer be able to completely get rid of Hamas’ presence in Gaza.

Netanyahu has accused Hamas of making demands that contradict what Biden has offered, though he did not specify what those demands were.

Hamas has dropped its demand that Israel commit to a permanent cease-fire, but the Associated Press reported that the gang still wants written promises that talks will continue until a permanent cease-fire is reached.

Nine months after Israel’s war on Gaza, Palestinians are still facing airstrikes, charred bodies being pulled from the debris, hospitals filled with dead and injured and an unprecedented level of devastation.

More than 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people were displaced, sometimes repeatedly as Israeli forces returned with a renewed crackdown in parts of the enclave that had been cleared so far.

On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Palestinians were being “forced to move like human pinballs in a landscape of destruction and death,” Guterres said during a donor conference. “The extreme level of fighting and destruction is beyond comprehension and inexcusable – and the level of chaos is affecting every Palestinian in Gaza and all those who are desperately trying to get aid to them.”

“Just when we thought the situation in Gaza couldn’t get any worse – somehow, horrifyingly, civilians are being pushed deeper into the depths of hell,” the Secretary-General said.

On Friday, an NBC Information Group video in the garden captured the scene after which Israeli troops withdrew from Tel al-Hawa, a business cluster in west Gaza Town. The tall towers for which the area used to be famous have been reduced to rubble, old houses have been gutted, gutted and demolished. Disaster workers say they found 20 bodies in the debris, charred inside their homes.

“First, we were displaced to Shujaiyah, Alsa and El Tufah, and then we moved into the industrial zone,” Moussa Atiya Eldahdouh, who spent 20 days in Tel al-Hawa before the attack, told NBC News.

“They attacked us, and suddenly at 2 o’clock in the night, everyone was running. They saw tanks, saw aviation, so they all ran away. Planes started colliding; what can we do? We will either live or die.”