GAZA: The Zionist entity hammered the Gaza Strip from the air, sea and land Monday as the war in the Palestinian territory showed no sign of abating, with Hamas saying it was pulling out of truce talks. Shells rained down on the neighborhoods of Tal Al-Hawa, Sheikh Ajlin and Al-Sabra in Gaza City, AFP correspondents reported, while eyewitnesses said the Zionist army had shelled the Al-Mughraqa area and the northern outskirts of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Paramedics from the Palestinian Red Crescent said they had retrieved the bodies of five people, including three children, after Zionist air strikes in the Al-Maghazi camp, also in the central Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, eyewitnesses reported Zionist gunship fire east of Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, and shelling and Apache helicopter attacks in western areas of the southernmost city of Rafah.
The relentless bombardments came as prospects dwindled for a truce and hostage release deal being secured any time soon. Hamas, the Islamist group that the Zionist entity has been fighting in Gaza for over nine months,
said on Sunday it was withdrawing from ceasefire talks. The decision followed a Zionist strike targeting the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, which the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said killed 92 people.
Deif’s fate remains unknown, with Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying there was "no certainty” he was dead while a senior Hamas official told AFP that Deif was "well and directly overseeing” operations. Speaking after the strike on Al-Mawasi, a second senior official from the militant group cited Zionist "massacres” and its attitude to negotiations as a reason for suspending negotiations.
But according to the official, Haniyeh told international mediators Hamas was "ready to resume negotiations” when the Zionist government "demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal”. Last week, US President Joe Biden had suggested a deal might be close, saying at a NATO summit that both sides had agreed to a framework he had set out in late May.
Hamas on Monday lashed out at the US, accusing it of supporting "genocide” by supplying the Zionist entity with "internationally banned” weapons. "We condemn in the strongest terms the... American disdain for the blood of the children and women of our Palestinian people... by providing all types of prohibited weapons to the (Zionist) occupation,” a statement from the Hamas government media office said.
The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 38,584 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to data provided by the Gaza health ministry. The war and accompanying siege have devastated the Palestinian territory, destroying much of its infrastructure, leaving the majority of its 2.4 million residents displaced and causing a dire shortage of food, medicines and other basic goods.
Among the devastated facilities have been multiple schools. On Sunday, Zionist forces struck a UN-run school in Nuseirat camp that was being used as a shelter for displaced people but which the military said "served as a hideout” for militants. The civil defense agency in Gaza said 15 people were killed in the strike.
The civil defense agency said on Monday that a Zionist strike on a school in Gaza City killed at least one person. The strike on Salah al-Din School in Gaza City’s Al-Rimal neighborhood was the latest to hit schools, many of which have been turned into shelters for people displaced by the war in the Palestinian territory. At least six schools have been hit over the past nine days. – Agencies