Israel claims it killed one of Hamas's last high-ranking members

The Israeli military said Friday it had killed a senior Hamas official it described as one of the last surviving senior officials in the Gaza militant group.

In a statement posted to social media, the Israeli military said Izz al-Din Kassab, the head of national relations in Hamas’s political bureau, was killed in an airstrike in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. 

The Israeli military said Kassab “was responsible for national relations within the organization, overseeing the coordination and connection between Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza.”

The military also claims he held the authority to direct terrorist attacks be carried out against Israel.

Hamas confirmed Kassab’s death in its own statement and said he was killed along with another Hamas official in an Israeli attack on their car, as reported by Reuters.

But the militant group pushed back on assertions he was as high-ranking as Israel claimed, telling Reuters that Kassab was a local group official in the enclave but not a member of its decisionmaking political office.

Israel has continued to hammer Gaza with airstrikes, which medics in the territory say killed about 64 people and injured dozens overnight and into Friday morning. 

The heads of United Nations humanitarian agencies on Friday called the situation in north Gaza “apocalyptic” and that the entire Palestinian population there is at “imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” 

Two White House officials, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, were in Israel on Thursday to attempt to bring together a cease-fire in Gaza as well as in Israel’s other conflict in Lebanon, but they returned stateside on Friday having made little progress.