A hospital in Gaza and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas have said that the son of the group’s senior negotiator has died from injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike a day earlier.
The Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said Azzam Khalil al-Hayya, 23, died after “succumbing to wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike targeting him yesterday.” The same information was confirmed by Hamas sources.
According to Al-Ahli Hospital and a security source, the strike occurred on Wednesday evening in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City, killing one person and injuring about 10 others, including al-Hayya.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the incident.
In a video statement on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was continuing to target militant groups in Gaza, saying it was “eliminating terrorist cells,” though he did not refer specifically to the reported strike.
Hamas said Azzam al-Hayya was the fourth son of senior official Khalil al-Hayya to be killed in Israeli attacks. Two of his sons were reportedly killed before the current Gaza war began in October 2023, while another died in a separate strike in Doha in September that also killed several other people.
Khalil al-Hayya, a leading Hamas figure involved in negotiations and based in exile in Qatar, survived that earlier strike.
In a statement, Hamas said the killing of al-Hayya’s son was part of what it described as an attempt to pressure its leadership amid ongoing negotiations and military confrontation.
The incident comes despite a US-brokered ceasefire that took effect in October and has largely paused full-scale fighting in Gaza following the war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
However, both sides have continued to accuse each other of violating the truce, with sporadic violence reported across the enclave.
The Israeli military said separately on Thursday that it had struck what it described as a Hamas command centre in northern Gaza, while Gaza’s interior ministry reported the deaths of three members of Hamas’s internal security forces in another strike in Gaza City.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 840 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began, while the Israeli military says five of its soldiers have died in the same period.
