Palestinian party leader killed in Israeli strike on Gaza Strip

GAZA CITY, Palestine

The Palestinian Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said Monday that its political bureau member, Talal Abu Zarifa, was killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a house in southern Gaza City.

“Abu Zarifa was killed while fighting against the barbaric Israeli invasion in the Sabra neighborhood, southeast Gaza City, alongside his comrade Mahmoud Hamam,” the front said in a statement.

The Palestinian party leader was killed, along with three others, in an Israeli airstrike targeting a house in the Sabra neighborhood late Sunday evening, according to witnesses.

Despite international warnings, the Israeli army expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip a week ago by launching a ground operation in Rafah city in the south of the Strip, penetrating the Zaytoun neighborhood southeast of Gaza City, and carrying out a large-scale military operation in the town and refugee camp of Jabalia in the north of the Strip.

More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 76,600 others injured in a brutal Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip since an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year that killed nearly 1,200 people.

More than seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

In an interim ruling in January, The Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) said it is "plausible" that Tel Aviv is committing genocide in Gaza, ordering it to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in the enclave.

South Africa on Friday asked the ICJ to order Israel to withdraw from the southern Gaza city of Rafah as part of additional emergency measures over the war.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio in Istanbul