CAIRO: Israel cannot force its choices on Hamas and the Palestinian movement will accept no deal that does not achieve security for Palestinians, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Saturday in response to an Israeli military offensive in Gaza’s Al-Nuseirat area, Arab News reported.
Israeli forces have rescued four hostages alive from two separate locations in the central Gaza area of Al-Nuseirat on Saturday, the military said.
“Our people will not surrender and the resistance will continue to defend our rights in the face of this criminal enemy,” Haniyeh said in his statement.
“If the (Israeli) occupation believes that it can impose its choices on us by force, then it is delusional,” he added.
Hamas’s government media office said at least 210 Palestinian people were killed in Israeli attacks on a central Gaza refugee camp from which four hostages were rescued.
“The number of victims from the Israeli occupation’s massacre in the Nuseirat camp has risen to 210 martyrs and over 400 injured,” the press office said in a statement.
The Hamas government had in an earlier statement reported 94 Palestinians killed in and around Nuseirat, adding that they had been taken to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
It said the hospital was “unable to accommodate the number of martyrs and injured”, appealing to the international community and aid organizations for help.
The rare rescue comes eight months into the ongoing Israeli bombardment in Gaza.
Since October 7 last year, Israel has launched relentless bombardments and ground offensive on Gaza killing more than 36,801 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
A Gaza hospital said Israeli strikes in central areas of the territory, including in Nuseirat camp, killed at least 15 Palestinian people on Saturday.
“Intense Israeli air strikes in central governorate left at least 15 martyrs and tens injured who have been brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital,” the spokesman for the facility, doctor Khalil al-Dakran, told AFP.
Dakran said the casualties had come from in and around Nuseirat camp as well as Deir al-Balah, where the hospital is located.
Hamas said in a separate statement: “There are dozens of bodies of martyrs and wounded lying on the ground, in the streets, and in safe rooms.”
The Palestinian group added that Israeli forces were engaged in a “brutal and savage aggression on Nuseirat camp”.
In recent weeks, the Israeli military has carried out intense air and ground assaults in and around Nuseirat.
On Thursday, the military struck a school-turned-shelter run by the UN agency for supporting Palestinian refugees, also known as UNRWA, which the Al-Aqsa hospital said had killed 37 Palestinian people.
The Israeli military acknowledged it conducted the strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp that targeted the UN school.
