Israeli forces hit a school in Shejaya, part of Gaza City, today, killing at least 15 people and wounding 29, Palestinian emergency services said, while fighting continues in different parts of the Gaza Strip, Reuters reports.
The military said it targeted fighters operating in a compound inside the school that it said was being used as a hideout for Hamas commanders and fighters.
"Prior to the attack, numerous steps were taken to minimize the risk of harm to civilians, including the use of precision munitions, surveillance and additional intelligence," the statement said.
The Israeli military has not released any information on casualties, but Hamas has accused it of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure.
Hamas denies using civilian facilities such as hospitals and schools for military purposes.
Palestinian Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed Wednesday morning by a "sophisticated remote-controlled bomb" smuggled into the residence in Tehran where he was staying, not by a rocket, as previously reported, the New York Times reports today.
According to a newspaper report citing seven Middle Eastern officials, including two Iranians and one American, the bomb was smuggled into the Iranian Revolutionary Guards building in Tehran two months ago.
Iranian officials, members of the Guard, said the precision of the attack resembled the remote-controlled automatic rifle used by the Israeli Mossad team to kill Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Farkhizadeh in 2020.
There has been no official comment from Israel on the killing of Haniyeh, although suspicion has largely fallen on the country.
The American newspaper quoted Middle Eastern officials as saying that Israeli intelligence had informed the US and other Western governments of the details of the operation immediately after its completion.
"Some US officials who asked to remain anonymous" concluded that Israel was responsible for the murder, writes the New York Times.
Haniyeh arrived in Tehran on Tuesday to attend the inauguration of Iran's new president, Massoud Pezeshkian.
The New York Times cited officials as saying that a remotely triggered bomb killed Haniyeh and his bodyguard.
The report says that the residence was used for vacations, secret meetings and the accommodation of prominent guests such as Haniyeh.
The explosion shattered windows and collapsed part of the building's wall, but the damage was so minor that it was a sign that it was not hit by a rocket.
Israel threatened to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders after a deadly attack by Palestinian extremists from Gaza, led by Hamas, on the southern Israeli territory on October 7 last year, in which about 1.200 people were killed and more than 250 hostages were kidnapped and taken to the Palestinian territory.
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Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas, will not affect the peace process that should lead to the end of the war between Israel and Hamas.
"I don't think it will affect the chances of peace in any way, because it is not on the agenda at all at the moment. It could create additional difficulties in the process of reaching an agreement about the hostages," Olmert said in an interview with Radio Farda Radio. Free Europe (RSE).
The former Israeli prime minister believes that Iran's response to Hani's assassination will be based on the belief that Israel carried out the attack, despite the fact that the country has not claimed responsibility.
"It's less important whether we did it or not. That's what Iran thinks and that will probably determine their reaction," said Olmert, who was involved in unsuccessful efforts to find a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority, while held the position of prime minister from 2006 to 2009.
Olmert was prime minister as a member of the conservative Likud party, which is currently chaired by current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The former prime minister said that the fact that the Israeli government did not officially take responsibility for the liquidation of Haniyeh will make the Iranian reaction more moderate than it would have been under different circumstances.
Olmert expressed hope that the expected Iranian response would not trigger a wider war in the Middle East that would lead to a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel, like the one in April.
"I think the lesson they should have learned from the April conflict is that even when hundreds of missiles and drones are fired, they will not cause the planned damage, and they lose the power of their threat," he said.
Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles into Israeli territory on April 13 and 14, in retaliation for an attack on the Iranian embassy compound that Tehran claimed was carried out by Israel earlier that month.
Seven members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, including top commanders, were killed in that attack on April 1, for which Israel did not claim responsibility.
Senior Iranian officials will meet with representatives of regional allies from Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen to discuss possible retaliation against Israel following the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran, five sources told Reuters.
The region faces the risk of a widening conflict between Israel, Iran and their proxies following the assassination of Ismail Hanihe in Tehran on Wednesday and the killing of a top Hezbollah commander on Tuesday in an Israeli attack on the outskirts of the Lebanese capital Beirut, the Guardian reports.
The head of Hamas' military wing, Mohamed Deif, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza last month, the Israeli military said, a day after the group's political leader was killed in Tehran, the Guardian reports.
"The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) announces that on July 13, 2024, IDF warplanes carried out a strike in the Khan Yunis area and that after an intelligence assessment, it can be confirmed that Mohamed Deif was eliminated in that strike," the army said.
Hamas did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Israeli announcement, which came as crowds gathered in Tehran for the funeral of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Reuters reported.
Deif is believed to have been one of the masterminds of the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, which sparked the Gaza war, now 300 days old.
One of Hamas' most dominant figures, Deif rose through the ranks of the group over the past 30 years, developing a network of tunnels and bomb-making expertise.
He was at the top of Israel's most wanted list for decades, held personally responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israelis in suicide attacks.
It built a significant arsenal of rockets that could hit targets deep inside Israel, which they often did.
Deif remained a mysterious figure in Gaza. He almost never appeared in public or was photographed, only sometimes his voice could be heard in published audio statements. He had previously survived a series of Israeli assassination attempts on him.
In its 39.480-month campaign of bombings and offensives in Gaza, Israel has killed an estimated 91.100 Palestinians and wounded more than 80 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 2,3 percent of the population of XNUMX million people have been driven from their homes, and the vast majority are housed in tent camps in the southwestern part of the territory, with limited amounts of food and water.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called today on all parties in the Middle East to end escalating actions and reach an agreement on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
He said this to journalists during his visit to Mongolia, and after the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an attack in Tehran, for which Iran blamed Israel.
Blinken said a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is the only way to begin to break the cycle of violence and suffering.
Blinken warned that the Middle East is headed for more conflict, more violence, more suffering, more insecurity, and that it is crucial to break that cycle.
"It starts with the ceasefire we've been working on," Blinken told reporters.
"And to get there, it first requires all parties to talk, to stop taking any escalating actions, it requires them to find reasons to reach an agreement," Blinken said.
He did not directly comment on the death of the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Blinken also declined to discuss the impact Haniyeh's killing could have on a potential ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, which the US is working on with Egypt and Qatar.
The strike that killed Haniyeh came just hours after Israel said it had killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukur in a retaliatory strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut.
The killings of Haniyeh and Shukur came as regional tensions were already heightened by the war in the Gaza Strip, a conflict that has drawn in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
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