Israeli troops launch a new assault into Gaza’s Khan Yunis as mediators push for cease-fire talks
DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli troops launched a new assault Friday into the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, targeting Hamas fighters who the military claims still operate there despite repeated offensives, as American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators renewed their push for Israel and Hamas to reach a cease-fire deal.
Israeli evacuation orders triggered yet another exodus of Palestinians from the heavily destroyed eastern districts of Khan Yunis, where many had just returned less than two weeks ago — after the Israeli military’s last incursion into the city in July.
A wave of Israeli airstrikes in the city Friday killed at least 21 Palestinians, medics at the city’s Nasser Hospital said. Israeli bombardment also continued to pound central Gaza on Friday, with the bodies of eight Palestinians — all women and children — arriving at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital from a barrage of airstrikes that hit the town of Deir al Balah and Nuseirat refugee camp.
With tensions running high along the Israel-Lebanon border, an Israeli drone strike on Friday hit an SUV in the Lebanese city of Sidon, killing a Hamas official identified as Samer al Haj, Lebanon’s state media reported.
The explosion engulfed Al Haj’s car in flames just outside the sprawling Palestinian refugee camp of Ein al Hilweh, where Lebanese media reported that he oversaw security matters. Israel confirmed it targeted Al Haj, describing him as a senior commander in Hamas and accusing him of recruiting militants to attack Israel as well as directing rocket launches.
In the Gaza Strip, one of the airstrikes in Khan Yunis hit the home of the Abu Moamar family, killing a Palestine TV journalist, his wife and three daughters.
Another strike smashed into tents housing displaced people in Mawasi, a costal community just west of Khan Yunis that the Israeli military has designated as a humanitarian zone, killing a journalist for the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV channel and five others. A third airstrike targeted a car in Khan Yunis.
Thousands had fled the city Thursday, carrying essentials such as small gas cylinders, mattresses, tents, backpacks and blankets.
It’s at least the third time that Israeli forces have launched a major incursion into Khan Yunis. Officials from Israel and the United States have said they believe Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ newly named top leader and one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, could be hiding in tunnels there. Much of the city has been reduced to ruins.
The Israeli military said Friday its warplanes struck 30 Hamas targets in the city, including fighters and weapons storage sites. It said troops were searching for Hamas tunnels and other infrastructure while engaging in combat “above and below ground.”
After 10 months of war in Gaza, the mediators’ push aims to resume indirect negotiations for a cease-fire that have been on hold since Sinwar’s predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in a presumed Israeli blast in Tehran on July 31.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed Thursday that it would send negotiators to talks that mediators have called for on Thursday, to be held in either Qatar’s capital of Doha or Egypt’s capital of Cairo.
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was a key figure in negotiations to end Israel-Hamas war. How will the U.S. react?
Netanyahu’s far-right allies have resisted calls for a cease-fire, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich calling the latest proposal a “dangerous trap” that amounts to an Israeli surrender.
On Friday, the White House sharply rebuked Smotrich for his opposition to negotiations, with U.S. national security advisor John Kirby telling reporters that his criticism is “ridiculous” and “dead wrong.”
“The views expressed by Mr. Smotrich would in fact sacrifice the lives of Israeli hostages, his own countrymen,” Kirby said, in unusually pointed public comments.
There was no immediate response from Hamas, which announced Tuesday that Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza, would replace Haniyeh, who previously served as the key interlocutor in the negotiations.
Haniyeh’s killing and that of a top Hezbollah commander in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut brought vows of retaliation from Hezbollah and Iran.
Israel has assassinated two dozen Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon since last fall amid an intelligence war employing cellphones, drones and fake rocks.
The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, which leads the guard’s operations around the region, repeated promises of retaliation in a letter to Sinwar, a copy of which was seen by the Associated Press. “We are preparing to avenge his blood,” Ismail Qaani wrote, referring to Haniyeh.
International diplomats have been scrambling to prevent an escalation and to seal a deal to stop the fighting in Gaza and release hostages. In a joint statement, the United States, Egypt and Qatar called for the new round of talks, to be held either in Doha or Cairo, and pressed both sides to move ahead.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas chooses Yahya Sinwar, its top official in Gaza who masterminded the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, as its new leader.
A key question hanging over the talks is the effect the elevation of Sinwar, seen as a hard-liner, will have. Sinwar has already been closely involved in negotiations from behind the scenes. Hamas officials and mediators have said Hamas negotiators regularly sought his approval on the group’s positions as it pressed for a deal to bring an end to the war and withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza, in return for the release of all hostages.
Israel says it aims to destroy Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack, in which militants from Gaza stormed into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and abducting about 250 others. After a round of release exchanges in November, Israel says 111 hostages remain in Gaza, including 39 bodies.
Israel’s attacks in Gaza have killed more than 39,600 Palestinians and wounded more than 91,700 others, according to health officials in the territory. More than 1.9 million of Gaza’s prewar population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, fleeing repeatedly across the territory to escape offensives. Most are now crowded into ramshackle tent camps in less than 20 square miles on the Gaza coast.
With sanitation systems collapsed, diseases have run rampant, health officials say, and humanitarian groups are trying to feed the population. The United Nations says a half-million Palestinians facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
Cardiologist and Palestinian moderate Mustafa Barghouti tries to drum up support on Capitol Hill, California for the Palestinian cause.
Israel’s military said Friday that its forces were still battling Hamas fighters in Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah, in an assault there that has lasted three months. Its new attacks in Khan Yunis, where it has waged multiple offensives this year, drove more people into the camps and neighboring areas.
Ghazi Abu Daka, one of the evacuees, said he and his family have had to flee eastern Khan Yunis four times now.
“Every day there is war. Every day there are rockets,” he said. “There is no safe place in the eastern area. Now, we are displaced in the streets and don’t know where to go.”
Yasser Abu Alyan, another evacuee, said he was displaced around six times from the Beni Seheila area east of the city. He said he took nothing with him except his two little girls: “Everything is gone.”
Shurafa writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
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