Azzam al-Hayya, the son of Hamas leader in Gaza Khalil al-Hayya, died Thursday of wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike, the terrorist organization confirmed.
Al-Hayya died following an Israeli strike in Gaza City’s Daraj Tuffah area late on Wednesday, a source at the city’s Shifa Hospital told Al Jazeera.
In a statement cited by the Qatari media outlet on Thursday, Hamas said the killing of was an attempt by the Jewish state to “influence the will of the resistance and its political stances.”
Hamas warned that what it described as Jerusalem’s “crimes” would not persuade the terrorist group to change its positions in negotiations aimed at disarming it.
Israeli officials told the Hebrew-language Ynet outlet on Wednesday that Azzam al-Hayya was an operative of Hamas’s Nukba Force, which led the invasion of the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, 2023, slaughtering some 1,200 people, wounding thousands of others and taking 251 hostages.
Khalil Al-Hayya was elected Hamas’s senior leader in the Strip earlier this week, in an internal vote that left the terrorist group’s leadership structure largely unchanged ahead of an upcoming election for its top political post.
Khalil al-Hayya has lost several sons in Israeli airstrikes over the years. In 2014, during “Operation Protective Edge,” his eldest son, Osama, was killed along with his wife. Another son, Hamza, was killed in 2008. A third son, Hammam, was killed in an Israeli strike in Doha targeting senior Hamas officials, though most survived.
Before Oct. 7, al-Hayya served as deputy to Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar. Al-Hayya left the Gaza Strip before the Oct. 7 onslaught and has since mostly been based in Qatar, though he has also made visits to Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. He has since headed Hamas’s negotiating team in ceasefire talks with the United States.
A U.S.-brokered ceasefire that took effect on Oct. 10, 2025, ended the two-year war in Gaza that was sparked by the Oct. 7 massacre.
Senior Hamas leaders including Khaled Mashaal and Musa Abu Marzouk have rejected key parts of Washington’s peace plan in recent months, including disarmament, despite having agreed to the proposal in October.
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s “military wing,” last month denounced calls for its disarmament under the ceasefire plan as “extremely dangerous.”
