Israel says it killed elusive Hamas’ military leader Mohammed Deif, in an airstrike in Gaza’s Khan Younis area. The strike on July 13, eliminated one of the masterminds of the Oct 7,2023 attack on southern Israel.
It is seen as a huge blow to the militant Islamist group more than nine months after the Oct. 7 attack triggered Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza.
The Israeli military on Thursday confirmed his death. Hamas did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Israeli announcement.
Deif had survived seven previous Israeli assassination
attempts, the most recent in 2021. In the months since Oct. 7,
he was believed to have been directing military operations from
the tunnels and backstreets of Gaza, alongside senior
colleagues.
Rising up the Hamas ranks over 30 years, Deif developed the
group’s network of tunnels and its bomb-making expertise. He had topped Israel’s most wanted list for decades, held personally
responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israelis in suicide
bombings.
Hamas sources said Deif lost an eye and sustained serious
injuries in one leg in one of Israel’s past attempts to kill
him. His survival over the years made him a folk hero for some
Palestinians.
He and two other Hamas leaders in Gaza formed a three-man
military council that planned the Oct. 7 raid, in which 1,200
people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies, in the bloodiest attack in Israel’s 75-year
history.
After the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
government vowed to kill the three – Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader
in Gaza, Deif, head of the military wing, and Marwan Issa his
deputy, who was reported killed by Israel in March.
In an audio tape broadcast as Hamas fired thousands of
rockets on Oct. 7, Deif named the raid “Al-Aqsa Flood”,
signalling the attack was payback for Israeli raids at
Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.
A source close to Hamas said Deif began planning the
operation in May 2021, after a raid on Islam’s third holiest
site that enraged the Arab and Muslim world.
“It was triggered by scenes and footage of Israel storming
Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan, beating worshippers, attacking
them, dragging elderly and young men out of the mosque,” the
source said. “All this fuelled and ignited the anger.”
At the time, Israel accused Palestinians of trying to incite
violence in Jerusalem. Palestinians rejected the allegation.
The storming of the mosque compound, long a flashpoint for
violence over matters of sovereignty and religion in Jerusalem,
helped set off 11 days of fighting that year between Israel and
Hamas.
With Reuters inputs
