Hamas chief’s sister, 9 other relatives are killed in Israeli air strike

An Israeli airstrike has killed 10 family members of a top Hamas terror chief — including one of his sisters, Gaza health officials said Tuesday.

Hamas’s Qatar-based chief Ismail Haniyeh’s relatives were taken out when Israeli forces bombed their home in Al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, family members and medics said.

“There are 10 martyrs… as a result of the strike, including Zahr Haniyeh, sister of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh,”  Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the Hamas-ruled territory’s civil defense, told Agence France-Presse.

He added that a number of bodies were likely still buried under the rubble but they didn’t have the necessary equipment to dig them out.

Haniyeh, who leads Hamas’ diplomacy and is the public face of the group that has been running Gaza, has lost a slew of family members in Israeli air strikes since the Oct. 7 terror attacks.

Three of his sons and four grandchildren were killed in a single strike in central Gaza in April.

At the time, the terror chief said that about 60 of his family members had been killed since the war broke out.

Meanwhile, the latest attack was among three separate airstrikes carried out by Israeli forces on Tuesday that left at least 24 Palestinians dead, the Gaza health officials said.

The other airstrikes hit two schools in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people, local medics said.

The Israeli military confirmed two of the structures were school compounds but said the buildings “were used by Hamas as a shield for its terrorist activities.”

As part of the strikes, the Israeli Air Force targeted militants who had been involved in planning the attacks on Israel, including some involved in holding hostages captive and others who took part in the Oct. 7 cross-border bloodshed, military officials added.

Hamas, who has denied using civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals for military purposes, described the attacks on the two schools and the house in the Al-Shati camp as “massacres.”

Meanwhile, Israeli tanks also pressed deeper into western areas of Rafah in the south of the enclave overnight — blowing up homes there, soo, according to residents.

The armed wings of Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad groups said in a joint statement that their fighters had fired mortar bombs overnight against Israeli forces in the Yibna neighborhood of eastern Rafah.

And, in nearby Khan Younis, medics said Israeli tank shelling had wounded several people at a tent camp in the west of the city.

With Post wires