A son of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of the Palestinian Hamas resistance group, has reportedly been killed after Israeli warplanes launched a series of airstrikes in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Unconfirmed media reports said 22-year old Hazim Haniyeh lost his life on Saturday as Israeli warplanes struck a residential neighborhood in the coastal territory.
Palestinian sources said Israeli fighter jets have targeted Haniyeh's family and relatives in the Gaza Strip multiple times since the Tel Aviv regime started its genocidal war against Palestinians early October last year, killing at least 14 of them in the process.
Hamas has warned that the Israeli military will commit massacres in Rafah following an order by the regime’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to to carry out a ground invasion in the southern Gaza Strip city .
The resistance group also noted that the US administration’s position of not supporting the attack on Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians are displaced in harsh humanitarian conditions, does not absolve it of full responsibility for its fallout.
Meanwhile, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has lashed at Israeli troops, arguing that the forces press ahead with their atrocities in Gaza 15 days after an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on genocidal crimes in the region.
The Israeli army continues to carry out systematic and widespread destruction of residential areas and neighborhoods, civilian infrastructure and facilities, the rights group said.
Euro-Med said Israeli forces have killed 1,864 Palestinians, including 690 children and 441 women, in addition to injuring more than 2,933 people since the court’s ruling last month.
“Thus, Israel continues to violate its international obligations and the decision of the highest court in the world by committing the crime of all crimes – the crime of genocide,” the group said.
The ICJ, also called the World Court, issued an interim ruling last month, ordering Israel to take “all measures within its power” to prevent acts that could amount to genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Hague-based court, however, stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
Israel waged the bloody war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas launched Operation al-Aqsa Storm in the occupied territories in retaliation for the Tel Aviv regime’s incessant crimes against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 27,947 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the territory.
The campaign has devastated large swathes of Gaza, destroyed hospitals and displaced half of its population of 2.4 million.
Israel has also imposed a “complete siege” on the coastal sliver, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.