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Israel has launched a strike on Hamas officials meeting in Qatar’s capital, Doha, reportedly including the group’s chief ceasefire negotiator, in an attack the White House said “does not advance Israel or America’s goals”.
Hamas said six people had been killed, including the son of its exiled Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya. It said its top leadership, including the negotiations team, had survived.
The Israeli strike came hours after its military warned all of Gaza City’s residents to evacuate before a planned offensive to take control of what it portrays as Hamas’s last remaining stronghold, where hundreds of thousands of people are living under famine conditions.
White House officials later confirmed that the US had been informed in advance of the attack, which took place on the soil of an important regional US ally and a key mediator in attempts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.
The impending strike led to a flurry of diplomatic activity, including a warning from the White House to the Qatari government about the attack and a follow-up phone call between Donald Trump and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The US president’s spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said he was informed by the US military of the impending strike on Tuesday morning and had directed his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to tip off the Qataris.
However, Qatari officials told Reuters they had received the warning only as the explosions began in Doha.
The White House appeared to be taking steps to limit the diplomatic fallout from the attack.
“Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard in bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” Leavitt said.
“However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal. The president views Qatar as a strong ally and friend of the United States, and feels very badly about the location of this attack.”
Netanyahu insisted that the attack was Israel’s responsibility alone, saying in a statement: “Today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation. Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility.”
Qatar condemned the attack as a “blatant violation of international law” – language echoed by António Guterres the UN secretary general.
As Turkey accused Israel of adopting “terrorism as state policy”, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Arab League secretary general, accused Israel of violating Qatar’s sovereignty, saying it “does not care about the consequences of its shameful actions”.
Keir Starmer condemned the attack, which he said “violated Qatar’s sovereignty and risked further escalation across the region”. But UK sources confirmed that the prime minister still intended to meet the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, in London on Wednesday.
Israel said it had launched the attack on Doha in response to a Hamas-claimed shooting in Jerusalem on Monday that killed six Israelis. Gaza health officials say Israel has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in the coastal territory.
The attack follows a post on Trump’s Truth Social account two days ago in which he told Hamas it had received its final “warning”.
Along with the US and Egypt, Qatar has led several attempts to end the Israel-Hamas war, which was sparked by the Palestinian militants’ unprecedented attack on 7 October 2023.
Qatar hosts the huge Al Udeid airbase used by the US, which was targeted by Tehran during the Israeli-US attacks on Iran’s nuclear programme earlier this year. During that episode, the US provided critical real-time intelligence to Qatar’s armed forces.
Video footage from Doha, shared on social media and local television channels, showed the aftermath of a huge blast centred on a residential area with smoke towering above the city and residents running for safety.
Hamas claimed the US proposal they were sitting down to consider was a “deception aimed at bringing Hamas members to a meeting in order to attack them”.
Witnesses described several blasts in the Katara district of Doha, an area popular with tourists. Al Jazeera reported that Hamas sources had told it the blasts struck a meeting of a delegation involved in the talks.
In a joint statement, the IDF and Shin Bet said: “Prior to the strike, measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence.”
Tuesday’s strike comes less than two weeks after the IDF chief, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, vowed to target the group’s leaders based abroad.
“Most of Hamas’s leadership is abroad, and we will reach them as well,” he said on 31 August.
“May all your enemies perish, Israel,” the country’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, posted on X.
Hamas had said on Sunday that it was ready to “immediately sit at the negotiating table” after what it described as “some ideas from the American side aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement”.
Commenting on the claims that Israel had sought a green light from the Trump administration for the attack, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft said: “What is the value of an American security umbrella [for Qatar] and hosting a US base on your soil if the United States itself conspires to attack you?
“That is a question that all GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] leaders are asking themselves today, given that they have put all of their security eggs in the US basket.”
Matt Duss of the US-based Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, was equally scathing. “This is an attack in the capital of a major non-Nato US ally in the midst of US-supported negotiations – against officials who were originally hosted there at the United States’ request,” he said.
“It’s an attack on diplomacy itself, making clear that Netanyahu intends to see Israel’s accelerating campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza through to the end. If it was conducted with the approval of the US, it’s the latest nail in the coffin of Trump’s claim to be a ‘peacemaker’.”
