Haniyeh says three of his sons killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza

Three sons and four grandchildren of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed on Wednesday in Israeli air attack on Gaza refugee camp, relatives and official Hamas media said.

Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder”.

Haniyeh tells Al Jazeera that Palestinian leaders will not back down if their families are targeted by the Israeli army, and that the killings will not affect Hamas’s demands in ceasefire talks.

At least 33,482 Palestinians have been killed and 76,049 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.

Yemen’s Ansarullah movement has offered condolences to the Hamas leader for the deaths of family members, saying “an aggressive Israeli raid” reveals the extent of the Israeli failure on the ground.

“These great sacrifices, along with the rest of the people of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, only strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinian people in the face of this Israeli arrogance,” the movement’s spokesman, Mohammed Abdulsalam, said on X.

Ansarullah has been carrying out strikes on commercial and military ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The top diplomat made the remarks in a message addressed to the Hamas leader.

Haniyeh’s sons and four grandchildren were killed in the Israeli airstrike that targeted a vehicle at the al-Shati refugee camp in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

Amir Abdollahian condemned the atrocity as “a criminal and cowardly attack by the usurping Zionist regime.”

The martyrdom of the Hamas leader’s family members “serves as a precursor to divine assistance and victory for the Palestinian nation, and a source of eternal shame, defeat, abasement, and ignominy for the criminal Zionists and their supporters,” he said.

Such instances of sacrifice “will undoubtedly increase the Palestinian nation’s steely faith and resolve to [exercise] steadfastness and resistance towards liberation of the dear Palestine and will speed up the foundationless Zionist regime’s inevitable defeat and collapse,” concluded the message.

Earlier, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had addressed a similar message to Haniyeh, calling the Israeli bombardment another sign of Tel Aviv’s savagery.

(TEHRAN TIMES)