GAZA: A Hamas official said Sunday the Palestinian group was withdrawing from Gaza truce talks, following a deadly Zionist strike that targeted commander Mohammed Deif more than nine months into the war. The Islamist group’s military chief Deif was “well and directly overseeing” operations, another Hamas official told AFP, despite the bombing raid on a southern Gaza displacement camp on Saturday, which the Zionist entity said was an attempt to kill him.

The first senior official from the group said Hamas was pulling out of negotiations towards a ceasefire partly because of Zionist massacres. The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said at least 92 people had been killed and 300 wounded in a strike on Al-Mawasi, a Zionist-designated “safe zone” on the Mediterranean coast.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ Qatar-based political chief, told international mediators of the “decision to halt negotiations due to the (Zionist) occupation’s lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians”, the official said. But Hamas was “ready to resume negotiations” when the Zionist entity’s government “demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal”, the official quoted Haniyeh as saying.

Talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with United States support, have for months tried but failed to bring a halt to the war. The Zionist entity’s military offensive has killed at least 38,584 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to data provided by the Gaza health ministry. Al-Mawasi, near the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, had in May been declared a safe humanitarian zone by the Zionist military, which told civilians to evacuate to it. However, there have been multiple deadly incidents there blamed on Zionist strikes.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on social media site X: “The claim that people in Gaza can move to ‘safe’ or ‘humanitarian’ zones is false.” The Zionist entity said it had on Saturday targeted Deif, who heads the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as an associate, Rafa Salama. The Zionist military on Sunday said Salama, commander of Hamas’ Khan Yunis brigade, had been killed by a strike “in the area of Khan Yunis”.

The Zionist entity accuses both Salama and Deif of helping to “mastermind” the Oct 7 attack. Deif has been among the Zionist entity’s most wanted men for decades and is blamed by Zionist authorities for the killings of multiple civilians and soldiers. At the site of the strike, an AFP photographer saw the charred remains of tents as Palestinians searched through the wreckage for any salvageable items. Plastic covers, broken water tanks and other equipment used for makeshift shelters was scattered on the sand.

Scott Anderson, director of UNRWA affairs in the Gaza Strip, said that on a visit to Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital, where many of the casualties were taken, he had “witnessed some of the most horrific scenes I have seen” in the war. “I saw toddlers who are double amputees, children paralyzed and unable to receive treatment, and others separated from their parents,” he said in a statement. Anderson added that “impediments to humanitarian operations prevent us from supporting people anywhere near the scale necessary”.

The deaths in Al-Mawasi drew condemnation from governments across the region, with Egypt’s foreign ministry saying such “crimes... cannot be accepted under any justification whatsoever”. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, during a press conference with his visiting Saudi counterpart, said the Zionist entity does not intend to end the war and commits “new massacres each time there is a positive atmosphere” towards peace.

Separately on Sunday, rescuers said at least eight people were killed in strikes on different parts of Gaza City, where the Zionist military said its operations were ongoing. The Zionist entity has also intensified attacks on Syria, where on Sunday state media said a soldier was killed in strikes on Damascus. The Zionist military — in a rare acknowledgment of military action in Syria — said it was responding after the launch of two drones from Syrian territory. – AFP