Hamas says cabinet headquarters hit in Israeli strike

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories – Israeli air strikes hit the cabinet headquarters of Gaza’s Hamas government, the group said early Saturday, with eyewitnesses reporting extensive damage to the building.

An additional strike on the house of a Hamas official in the northern Gaza Jabalia refugee camp left at least 35 people injured, health officials said.

“The cabinet headquarters was targeted with four strikes and the government stresses that it remains committed to its positions and its stand alongside the people,” the Hamas government said in a statement.

“The IDF (army) has targeted (Hamas prime minister) Ismail Haniya’s headquarters in Gaza,” an Israeli army spokesman told AFP.

“Over the past six hours, the IDF targeted 85 more terror sites,” the military spokesperson’s official Twitter account added.

Eyewitnesses and Hamas officials said the headquarters in the Nasser neighbourhood of Gaza City was virtually leveled in the strike.

“The headquarters was completely destroyed and neighbouring houses were damaged as a result of the barbaric Israeli bombing,” a Hamas official told AFP.

On Friday morning, Haniya and a slew of other top Hamas government officials lined up in front of the building to welcome Egypt’s Prime Minister Hisham Qandil, on a brief solidarity trip to the Gaza Strip.

The raid on the building came as Israel renewed strikes across Gaza, bombing the headquarters of the Hamas police force in western Gaza City and the government’s internal security headquarters in the north of the city.

In the northern Jabalia camp, a strike left at least 35 people injured, according to emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya, who said the raid targeted the home of interior ministry official Ibrahim Salah.

A search was underway for additional victims in the rubble of the house, he said.

The string of attacks came after a relative lull in the violence that began on Wednesday with an Israeli strike that killed a senior Hamas commander.

Since then, at least 30 Palestinians have been killed, with over 280 wounded, and Gaza militants have fired hundreds of rockets at Israel, killing three people and wounding 16. – Agence France-Presse