UPDATE - Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's 3 sons killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza refugee camp

UPDATES WITH HANIYEH’S STATEMENT

By Rania Abu Shamala

ISTANBUL (AA) – Three sons of the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, along with several of his grandchildren, were killed on Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike on a refugee camp in western Gaza City.

An Israeli airstrike targeted a car carrying members of the Haniyeh family in the Al-Shati refugee camp as they were giving good wishes to the camp's residents for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, eyewitnesses told Anadolu.

The eyewitnesses said the airstrike effectively destroyed the car, killing or injuring everyone inside.

Medical sources told Anadolu that the airstrike resulted in the deaths of three of Haniyeh's sons – Hazem, Amir, and Mohammed – as well as several of their own children, in addition to injuring others.

The Gaza media office said of the deadly attack: “The Israeli occupation army committed a horrendous massacre today, Eid al-Fitr day, against the Ismail Haniyeh family, the head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement-Hamas, when Israeli warplanes targeted a civilian car carrying some of his sons and grandchildren.”

The airstrike killed five people and injured others, the office added in a statement.

The office condemned “in the strongest terms the ongoing Israeli occupation crimes against the Palestinian people, as hospitals received more than 125 martyrs killed by the Israeli occupation army in the past 24 hours, cold-bloodedly and without regard for the feelings of Muslims.”

Haniyeh himself said in a televised statement: “The occupation believes that by targeting the sons of the leaders, they will break the resolve of our people, but this bloodshed will only strengthen our steadfastness in our principles and attachment to our land.”

He added: “My sons remained in Gaza and did not leave the territory; like all the sons of our people, they are paying a heavy price in the blood of their sons, and I am one of them.”

“We say to Israel: What you haven't taken by destruction, massacres, and extermination, you won't take at the negotiating table.”

On the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where some 1.5 million Palestinians have taken refuge, Haniyeh said Israel’s “threats to invade the densely populated Rafah, filled with refugees, do not intimidate our people or our resistance.”

Israel has waged a military offensive on the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 33,500 people, since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas which killed some 1,200. It has also imposed a crippling blockade on the seaside enclave, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while much of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which has urged Israel to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​