MUWASI, Gaza Strip – Hamas said on Sunday that Gaza ceasefire talks were continuing and that the group’s military commander was healthy, a day after the Israeli military attacked Mohammed Deif with a massive airstrike that local health officials said killed at least 90 people, including. children.
Deif’s condition remains unclear after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday night there was “no absolute certainty” he had died. Hamas representatives did not provide evidence to support their claims about the health of the chief architect of the October 7 attack that sparked the war.
The Israeli military announced Sunday that Rafa Salama, a Hamas commander described as one of Deif’s closest associates, was killed in Saturday’s attack. Salama commands the Khan Younis Hamas brigade. The statement did not provide an update on Deif, who has long been on Israel’s most wanted list and has been in hiding for years.
Hamas rejected the idea that ceasefire mediation had been suspended after the strike. Spokesman Jihad Taha said there was “no doubt that the horrific massacre will affect any efforts at negotiations” but added that “the efforts and efforts of the mediators are ongoing.”
Deif’s killing would mark the highest assassination of a Hamas leader by Israel since the war began. It would be a huge victory for Israel and a deep psychological blow for militant groups. Netanyahu said all Hamas leaders were “marked for death” and insisted that killing them would bring Hamas closer to accepting a ceasefire deal.
Hamas political officials confirmed that communication channels remained functional between leaders inside and outside Gaza after the attack in the southern region. Witnesses said the incident took place in an area Israel has designated as safe for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians. The Israeli military would not confirm.
On Sunday, some survivors were outraged that the attack targeting Deif happened without warning in an area they said was safe.
“Where are we going?” asked Mahmoud Abu Yaseen, who said he heard two attacks and clutched his children, then woke up in the hospital to find his son had died. The family has been to war five times since the war, he said.
United Nations officials described the chaos at Nasser’s hospital where victims were taken, many being treated on blood-stained floors with few supplies available.
“I witnessed some of the most horrific scenes I’ve seen in my nine months in Gaza,” Scott Anderson said in a statement. “I saw little children who were double amputees, children who were paralyzed and incurable and others separated from their parents.” He said the ban on humanitarian aid to Gaza was hampering efforts to provide much-needed medical and other care.
On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant praised the pilots who carried out the attack and said Hamas was being eroded every day, without the ability to support, organize or “care for the wounded.”
At least 300 people were wounded in the attack, one of the deadliest in the nine-month war sparked by an Oct. 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel that killed an estimated 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 200 hostages.
More than 38,400 people in Gaza have been killed in Israeli ground attacks and bombings since then, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in the count.
On Sunday, an Israeli attack on Nuseirat in central Gaza killed at least 14 people at the gates of a school used as a shelter for displaced people, according to Associated Press reporters who visited two hospitals. The children were among 15 others injured. The Israeli military in a statement said it struck a “terrorist” operation in the area of ​​the school opened by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Also on Sunday, police said Palestinians in east Jerusalem carried out a car attack in central Israel that injured four Israelis, two seriously. Israeli border police at the scene shot dead the attacker after he rammed into people waiting at two bus stops along the busy road. The Israeli military said four personnel were wounded, two seriously.
Israeli Commissioner Kobi Shabtai said the attacks were often “triggered” by incidents like Saturday’s airstrikes in Gaza.