BREAKING: Israeli airstrike kills Hamas top commander, Ayman Nofal, in central Gaza

A strike in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed a top Hamas commander, Ayman Nofal, the group’s military wing said.

Associated Press reports that Nofal was described as the most high-profile militant known to have been killed in the war.

Nofal was in charge of Hamas militant activities in the central Gaza Strip and was associated with creating the “joint operations” room that coordinated between Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other militants in the territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that his country’s retaliation against Hamas aims to eradicate the group’s political and military rule over Gaza.

’We are not fighting just our war. We’re fighting the war of all civilized countries and all civilized peoples,” he said.

Israel has massed troops at the border for an expected ground offensive, but no concrete decisions have been made despite Israel’s mass evacuation order for the north of the Gaza Strip.

More than 1 million Palestinians have fled their homes — roughly half of Gaza’s population — and 60% are now in the approximately 14-kilometer (8-mile) long area south of the evacuation zone, the U.N. said.

Aid workers warned that the territory was near complete collapse.
Hospitals were on the verge of losing electricity, threatening the lives of thousands of patients, and hundreds of thousands of people searched for bread and water.