Hamas spokesman killed in Gaza attack, claims Israel

The Israeli military says it has killed a long-time spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, as the country’s security cabinet met to discuss the expanding offensive in some of Gaza’s most populated areas.

Israeli defence minister Israel Katz identified the spokesman as Abu Obeida, a pseudonym for the official who represented Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, who was killed over the weekend. Hamas has not commented on the claim.

Mr Obeida’s last statement was issued on Friday as Israel began the initial stages of the new offensive and declared Gaza City a combat zone.

His statement said the militants would do their best to protect living hostages but warned they would be in areas of fighting. He said the remains of dead hostages would “disappear forever”.

Israel’s military said the spokesman, whom it identified as Hudahaifa Kahlout, had been behind the release of videos showing hostages as well as footage of the Hamas-led attack that sparked the war.

Israel has killed many of Hamas’s military and political leaders as it attempts to dismantle the group and prevent an attack like the one on October 7 2023, when militants abducted 251 people and killed around 1,200, mostly civilians, in southern Israel.

At least 43 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Saturday, most of them in Gaza City, according to local hospitals. Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest, said 29 bodies were brought to its morgue, including 10 people killed while seeking aid and others struck across the city.

“Where are the resistance fighters that (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu claims he is bombing? Does he consider stones resistance fighters?” said a relative of one of the dead at Shifa Hospital, who did not give her name. She said they would not be displaced.

Hospital officials reported 11 other deaths from strikes and gunfire. Al-Awda Hospital said seven were civilians trying to reach aid.

Witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire on crowds in the Netzarim Corridor, an Israeli military zone that bisects Gaza.

“We were trying to get food, but we were met with the occupation’s bullets,” said Ragheb Abu Lebda, who saw at least three people bleeding from gunshot wounds. “It’s a death trap.”

The corridor has become increasingly perilous. Civilians have been killed as United Nations humanitarian convoys are overwhelmed by looters and desperate crowds, or shot on their way to sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed US contractor.

The GHF told the Associated Press there was “no incident at or near our site today”.

Israel has for weeks been operating on the outskirts of Gaza City and the Jabaliya refugee camp to prepare for the offensive’s initial stages. The military has intensified air attacks on coastal areas of the city, including Rimal.

The military has urged the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza City to flee south, but many say they are exhausted after repeated displacements or unconvinced that any safe place in Gaza remains.

The UN says about 65,000 Palestinians have left since August 1, including 23,199 in the past week. More than 90% of the over two million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced at least once during the war, many of them multiple times, according to the UN.

Israel has signalled that aid to Gaza City could be cut, and has announced new infrastructure projects in southern Gaza — steps that Palestinians say amount to forced displacement.

Seven more Palestinian adults have died of malnutrition-related causes over the last 24 hours, Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday.

That brought the adult death toll from malnutrition-related causes to 215 since June when the ministry started to count them, it said, and 124 children have died of malnutrition-related causes since the war began.

A flotilla of ships left Barcelona on Sunday heading for Gaza with humanitarian aid and activists on board, seeking to break the Israeli blockade of the territory. Similar attempts in the past have failed.

At least 63,371 Palestinians have died during the war, said the ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians but that around half have been women and children.

The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The UN and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on war casualties. Israel disputes the figures but has not provided its own.