Hamas said Sunday that Gaza cease-fire talks continue and the group’s military commander is in good health, a day after the Israeli military targeted Mohammed Deif with a massive airstrike that local health officials said killed at least 90 people, including children.
Deif’s condition remained unclear after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night “there still isn’t absolute certainty” he was killed. Hamas representatives gave no evidence to back up their assertion about the health of a chief architect of the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.
The Israeli military on Sunday announced that Rafa Salama, a Hamas commander it described as one of Deif’s closest associates, was killed in Saturday’s strike. Salama commanded Hamas’ Khan Younis brigade. The statement gave no update on Deif, who has long topped Israel’s most-wanted list and has been in hiding for years.
Hamas rejected the idea that mediated cease-fire discussions had been suspended after the strike. Spokesperson Jihad Taha said “there is no doubt that the horrific massacres will impact any efforts in the negotiations” but added that “efforts and endeavors of the mediators remain ongoing.”
The killing of Deif would mark the highest profile assassination of any Hamas leader by Israel since the war began. It would be a huge victory for Israel and a deep psychological blow for the militant group. Netanyahu said all of Hamas’ leaders are “marked for death” and asserted that killing them would move Hamas closer to accepting a cease-fire deal.
Hamas political officials insisted that communication channels remained functional between the leadership inside and outside Gaza after the strike in the territory’s south. Witnesses said it occurred in an area that Israel had designated as safe for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians. Israel’s military would not confirm that.
On Sunday, some survivors were angry that the attack targeting Deif occurred without warning in an area they had been told was safe.
“Where are we supposed to go?” asked Mahmoud Abu Yaseen, who said he heard two strikes and clutched his children, then woke up in the hospital to find his son had died. The family had already been displaced five times since the war began, he said.
A United Nations official described utter chaos at Nasser hospital where victims were taken, many treated on bloodstained floors with few supplies available.
“I witnessed some of the most horrific scenes I have seen in my nine months in Gaza,” Scott Anderson said in a statement. “I saw toddlers who are double amputees, children paralyzed and unable to receive treatment and others separated from their parents.” He said restrictions on humanitarian aid to Gaza hamper efforts to provide needed medical and other care.
On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant praised the pilots who carried out the strike and said Hamas is being eroded every day, with no ability to arm itself, organize or “care for the wounded.”
At least 300 people were wounded in the strike, one of the deadliest in the nine-month war sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 200 hostage.
More than 38,400 people in Gaza have been killed in Israeli ground offensives and bombardments since then, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
On Sunday, an Israeli strike in Nuseirat in central Gaza killed at least 13 people at the gate of a school, according to Associated Press journalists at Al-Awda hospital. Israel’s military in a statement said it struck “terrorists” operating in the area of a school run by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
Also on Sunday, police said a Palestinian resident of east Jerusalem carried out a car-ramming attack in central Israel that injured four Israelis, two of them seriously. Israeli border police at the scene shot dead the attacker after he hit people waiting at two bus stops along a busy road. Israel’s military said four of its personnel were wounded, two of them severely.
Israel Commissioner Kobi Shabtai said such attacks were often “triggered” by events like Saturday’s airstrike in Gaza.
READ ALSO: Hamas clears the way for a possible cease-fire after dropping key demand: Officials
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Lidman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
Wafaa Shurafa And Melanie Lidman, The Associated Press
