Battle of Gaza

The Gaza civil defense agency said an Israeli air strike early on Tuesday killed 10 members of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh's family, in an attack the Israeli military did not immediately confirm.

“Since the election of the Hamas government in 2006 & the coup by which Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007 religious tension has only intensified”

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has engaged in discussions with Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, as confirmed by diplomatic sources.

The meeting, which took place at an undisclosed time and location, focused on urgent matters related to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah said on Telegram that it views the killings of senior Hamas members in Beirut as a "serious attack on Lebanon" and a "dangerous development in the course of the war between the enemy and the axis of resistance," Reuters reported.

The United Nations Security Council was expected to vote Friday on a resolution to boost aid to Gaza, as the world body warned the Israel-Hamas war was pushing the Palestinian territory towards famine.

Separate diplomatic efforts were also under way for a fresh pause in the worst-ever Gaza war, which was triggered by an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel in October.

Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, senior Hamas official Ali Baraka recently made claims about the future of the United States, comparing it to the collapse of the USSR. In an interview with a Lebanese YouTube channel on November 2, Baraka expressed his belief that one day the United States would become a "thing of the past."

Hamas said it was engaged in "heavy fighting" with Israeli troops on Sunday inside northern Gaza, where besieged residents were again told to flee.

After weeks of ferocious air strikes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared a new "stage" in what he warned will be a "long and difficult" war.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Nov. 11 accused the Islamist movement Hamas of trying "to destroy" efforts to broker national unity through a series of bomb blasts in Gaza last week.

More than 60 Palestinians were killed Sunday as Israeli forces pounded northern Gaza, sending thousands more fleeing in terror in the deadliest assault on the enclave in five years.
      

Fighting resumed in the Gaza neighborhood of Shejaia on July 20 less than an hour after a "humanitarian truce" was agreed to allow the evacuation of wounded from the area.