The Israeli military said Friday it had killed a senior Hamas official it described as one of the militant group’s last remaining senior officials in Gaza.
In a statement on social media, the Israeli military said Izz al-Din Kassab, the head of national relations for Hamas’s political bureau, was killed in an airstrike in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said Kassab was “responsible for national relations within the organization and oversaw the coordination and liaison between Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza.”
The military also claims he had the authority to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel.
Hamas confirmed Kassab’s death in its own statement, saying he was killed along with another Hamas official in an Israeli attack on their car, as reported by Reuters.
But the militant group pushed back on claims that he was as senior as Israel claimed, telling Reuters that Kassab was a local group official in the enclave but not a member of the political decision-making bureau.
Israel has continued to bombard Gaza with airstrikes, killing about 64 people and wounding dozens overnight and Friday morning, according to medics in the area.
The heads of United Nations humanitarian agencies on Friday called the situation in northern Gaza “apocalyptic” and called the entire Palestinian population there “at immediate risk of death from disease, famine and violence.”
Two White House officials, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, were in Israel on Thursday to try to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as in Israel’s other conflict in Lebanon, but they returned to the United States on Friday after making little progress.
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