Israel’s army says Hamas’s top military commander, Mohammed Deif, was killed in an Israeli air raid in southern Gaza on July 13.
“We can now confirm: Mohammed Deif was eliminated,” the Israeli military said on Thursday.
There was no immediate response from the Palestinian group.
Izzat al-Rashq, a Hamas member, said the news of Deif’s killing was unconfirmed.
“Confirming or denying the martyrdom of any of the Qassam leaders is a matter for the leadership of the Qassam Brigades and the leadership of the movement,” he said on Telegram, referring to Hamas’s military wing.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called Deif “the Osama Bin Laden of Gaza” and hailed his death as “a significant milestone in the process of dismantling Hamas as a military and governing authority in Gaza”.
“Hamas terrorists may either surrender or they will be eliminated. Israel’s defense establishment will pursue Hamas terrorists – both the planners and the perpetrators of the 07.10 massacre. We will not rest until this mission is accomplished,” he posted on X.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Hamas’s collapse was “closer than ever” after Deif’s killing.
“We must not stop a moment before victory,” the far-right minister wrote on X, adding that the Israeli military would continue to target the group’s leaders until “we destroy them all”.
Israeli opposition leaders also welcomed the news. The head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, Avigdor Liberman, congratulated the military for the “killing of the mass murderer Mohammed Deif” and said the strike was “evidence of our ability to face any threat”.
Yesh Atid party chairman Yair Lapid said the operation was an “unprecedentedly important military achievement”.
Deif was targeted in an attack that killed at least 90 people and wounded 300 in al-Mawasi, an Israeli designated “safe zone” west of Khan Younis.
The attack by Israeli warplanes targeted tents housing displaced Palestinians and a water distillation unit. Images from the scene showed Palestinians trying to rescue people from under the rubble with children and paramedics among the wounded.
In the aftermath of the attack, the Israeli military claimed in a statement that it acted based on “precise intelligence” to hit an area where “two senior Hamas terrorists” and additional fighters were hiding among civilians.
In a subsequent news conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the two Hamas officials targeted were Deif and senior Hamas commander Rafa Salama. He said it was not immediately clear if either was killed.
Who was Deif?
Deif, 58, was one of the founders of the Qassam Brigades in the 1990s and led the force for more than 20 years.
Born as Mohammad Masri in 1965 in the Khan Younis refugee camp, set up after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, he became known as Mohammed Deif after joining Hamas during the first Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which began in 1987.
Rising up the ranks, Deif developed the group’s network of tunnels and its bomb-making expertise and topped Israel’s most wanted list for decades.
His wife, seven-month-old son and three-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli air raid in 2014.
He is believed to have survived seven previous Israeli assassination attempts, the most recent in 2021, which earned him respect and fame among many Palestinians.
The Israeli military regarded him as being part of a three-man military council that planned the October 7 attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,139 people while more than 200 were taken captive.
In an audio tape broadcast on the same day, Deif named the raid “Al-Aqsa Flood”, signalling it was payback for Israeli raids at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.
Netanyahu’s government has promised to kill all three leaders, namely Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza; Deif; and Marwan Issa, his deputy, who was reported killed by Israel in March.
Deif is thought to have directed military operations from the tunnels and backstreets of Gaza with senior colleagues in the months since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
In May, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Deif, Sinwar and Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday – all for alleged war crimes committed during the October 7 attacks. He also requested warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant over alleged war crimes carried out during the war in Gaza.
At least 39,480 people have been killed and 91,128 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health.
