Senior Hamas official says group withdraws from Gaza truce talks

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: A senior Hamas official told AFP Sunday that the Palestinian militant group has withdrawn from talks on a ceasefire in the Gaza war because of Israeli massacres and its attitude in negotiations.

Another Hamas official said the group’s military leader Mohammed Deif was “fine” and working despite Israel’s huge bomb attack on a southern Gaza camp that it said targeted the wanted Hamas commander.

Gaza’s health ministry said the attack left 92 dead.

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh told international mediators Qatar and Egypt of the end of the talks on a ceasefire plan first outlined by US President Joe Biden in May, according to the senior official.

The first phase of the deal would have seen a six-week ceasefire with the exchange of most hostages taken in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Haniyeh said Hamas would “halt negotiations due to the occupation’s (Israel) lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians,” according to the official.

“Hamas has shown great flexibility to reach an agreement and end the aggression and is ready to resume negotiations when the occupation government demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal.

Haniyeh said in a statement late Saturday that he had called the mediators and other countries to urge them to put pressure on Israel to halt the attacks.

Israel said Deif, who it considers one of the “masterminds” of the October 7 attacks, was the target of the strikes on the Al-Mawasi camp in southern Gaza where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians from other districts have gathered.

But Hamas, without confirming that Deif was at the camp, said he was alive and working.

“Commander Mohammed Deif is well and directly overseeing Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades and resistance operations,” the official said, referring to Hamas’s armed wing.

The October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.

Israel has responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,443 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.