Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s sister is charged by Israel with ‘praising, encouraging and supporting’ terror group’s barbaric October 7 attacks – as video shows dramatic moment armed police make arrest

Israeli prosecutors on Sunday indicted the sister of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on charges of sedition and showing solidarity with a terrorist group after she allegedly praised the October 7 Hamas attack that prompted the six-month-old war in Gaza.

Sabah al-Salem Haniyeh, 57, lives in the southern Israeli city of Tel Sheva. Her brother is based in Qatar, as are other officials of Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip.

Bodycam footage taken by armed police shows two unmarked vans filled with officers driving to her home ahead of the arrest.

They were seen talking to someone in a hallway before arresting her. She can be seen calmly submitting to the arrest as the police handcuff her.

Haniyeh has been in custody since her arrest on April 1, Israel’s Justice Ministry said. There was no immediate comment from her attorney.

Her brother Ismail Haniyeh (pictured) is based in Qatar, as are other Hamas officials

According to the indictment, in the days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel, Haniyeh sent messages to dozens of contacts, including her brother, praising the cross-border attack and calling for further “slaughter.”

One of her messages mentioned in the indictment includes the line, “Oh God, count them and kill them and leave none of them behind, oh God.”

Hamas killed some 1,200 Israelis and foreigners in the Oct. 7 attack, sparking the war that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health authority.

Israeli attacks on the southern Gaza town of Rafah killed 22 people overnight, including 18 children, health officials said on Sunday.

Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also pledged to expand its ground offensive into the city on the border with Egypt, despite international calls for restraint, including from the US.

The first Israeli attack in Rafah killed a man, his wife and their three-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti hospital, which received the bodies. The woman was pregnant and doctors managed to save the baby, the hospital said.

Bodycam footage taken by armed police shows two unmarked vans filled with officers driving to her home ahead of the arrest

She can be seen calmly submitting to the arrest as the police handcuff her

Haniyeh has been in custody since her arrest on April 1, Israel’s Justice Ministry said

According to hospital records, the second strike killed 17 children and two women, all from extended families. Mohammed al-Beheiri said his daughter Rasha and her six children, the youngest of whom was 18 months old, were among the dead. Her husband’s second wife and their three children were still under the rubble, al-Beheiri said.

About 80% of the area’s population has fled to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.

The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest, pitting Israel and the US against Iran and allied militant groups in the Middle East. Israel and Iran exchanged direct fire this month, raising fears of an all-out war between the old enemies.

Tensions have also increased in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli forces killed two Palestinians who the army said attacked a checkpoint with a knife and a gun early Sunday morning near the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the two dead were 18 and 19 years old and from the same family. No Israeli troops were injured, the army said.