Hamas says pulling out of Gaza truce talks as Israel keeps up strikes

GAZA STRIP

A child peers into a treatment area as a wounded Palestinian sits in the al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat refugee Camp after the Israeli military bombardment of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) run Abu Araban school, turned shelter, where internally displaced Palestinians are living, in the Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip on July 14, 2024

A Hamas official said Sunday that the Palestinian group was withdrawing from Gaza truce talks, as Israeli bombardments hit a school a day after a deadly strike targeting the militant commander Mohammed Deif.

Speaking after the strike on southern Gaza's Al-Mawasi, which the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said killed at least 92 people, a senior official from Iran-backed Hamas cited Israeli "massacres" as a reason for suspending negotiations.

A second Hamas official said Deif, commander of the Hamas' military wing, was "well and directly overseeing" operations despite the Israeli bombing raid that the military said was an attempt to kill him.

On Sunday, Israeli forces struck a U.N.-run school in the central Nuseirat refugee camp that the military said "served as a hideout" for militants.

The civil defense agency in Gaza said 15 people were killed in the strike, the fifth attack in just over a week to hit a school used as shelter by displaced Palestinians.

The first Hamas official, quoting the group's Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh, said Israel's "lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians" were behind the "decision to halt negotiations".

But according to the official, Haniyeh told international mediators Hamas was "ready to resume negotiations" when Israel's government "demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal".

Talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with United States support, have for months tried but failed to bring a halt to the war.

Israeli demonstrators, sometimes in the tens of thousands, have stepped up their actions demanding the government reach a deal to free the captives taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

The military's chief of staff Herzi Halevi said in a video message that "continuous... military pressure" could help create "the conditions for an agreement to return the hostages".

  Schools turned shelters 

Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,190 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures.

Hamas seized 251 hostages. Of these 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 42 of them are dead.

Israel's offensive has killed more than 38,580 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

In Nuseirat, an AFP photographer saw part of the bombarded school complex damaged. Crowds of Palestinians, some visibly shaken and in tears, gathered in the courtyard.

At the nearby Al-Awda hospital, the wounds of several children were bandaged.

With most of Gaza's 2.4 million people displaced at least once during the war, many have sought refuge in school buildings.

Four previous strikes on schools turned shelters since July 6 killed a total of at least 49 people, according to officials, medics and rescuers.

Israel says Hamas uses schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure for military purposes. Hamas denies the accusation.

Separately on Sunday, rescuers said at least 10 people were killed in strikes on different parts of Gaza City, where the Israeli military said its operations were ongoing in the territory's north.

An AFP journalist at the site of a strike in the city's Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood saw buildings reduced to rubble. The civil defense agency said rescuers had extracted the bodies of "two martyrs".

At the site of Saturday's strike in Al-Mawasi, on the Mediterranean coast, an AFP photographer saw the charred remains of tents as Palestinians searched through the wreckage for salvageable items.

  'Right to live' 

Al-Mawasi, near the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, had in May been declared a safe humanitarian zone by the Israeli military, which told civilians to evacuate to it. However, there have been multiple deadly incidents there blamed on Israeli strikes.

Israel's military on Sunday said one of Deif's associates, Rafa Salama, had been killed by the strike a day earlier "in the area of Khan Yunis".

Israel accused both Salama, commander of Hamas's Khan Yunis brigade, and Deif of helping to "mastermind" the Oct. 7 attack.

Halevi, Israel's army chief, said that Deif was at the site targeted along with "other terrorists and accomplices", but that it was "too early to conclude the results of the strike".

"Very few" civilians "were harmed", he added.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on social media that the Al-Mawasi "attack and the mass casualties are a stark reminder that no one is safe in Gaza, wherever they are".

"The people of Gaza are children, women and men who... have the right to live and hope for a better future."

The deaths drew condemnation from governments across the region.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Israel did not intend to end the war and committed "new massacres each time there is a positive atmosphere" towards a truce.