By James Shotter in Jerusalem and Andrew England in London
Israel confirmed on Thursday that it had killed Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, one of the masterminds of the October 7 attack, in an air strike in Gaza last month.
The Israeli military targeted Deif and other top officials in the Palestinian militant group in a series of strikes on the outskirts of the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis three weeks ago, killing dozens of Palestinians.
Deif, who is the most senior Hamas leader killed in Gaza, is believed to have orchestrated the attack that killed about 1,200 people, according to Israel, with Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in the besieged strip. Sinwar remains at large.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said that Deif’s death “reflects the fact that Hamas is disintegrating, and that Hamas terrorists may either surrender or they will be eliminated”.
Hamas’s political office said it would not confirm whether Deif had been killed.
It was impossible to independently verify Israel’s claim. It comes amid soaring tensions in the region after the assassination this week of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader in Tehran, and a senior commander of Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant movement, in Beirut.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied carrying out the attack that killed Haniyeh, who lived in exile and was based in Qatar. But it did claim responsibility for the strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut that killed Hizbollah’s Fuad Shukr, one of the group’s senior military commanders, on Tuesday night.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to hold all those responsible for the October 7 attack wherever they are.
The strike on Shukr in a Hizbollah stronghold was in retaliation for a rocket attack on Saturday that killed 12 youngsters in the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel blamed on the Lebanese militants.
Israel and Hizbollah have traded almost daily fire across the Israeli-Lebanese border since October 8.
But this week’s assassinations have raised fears that the region is sliding towards a full-blown war as western and regional diplomats desperately seek to ease tensions.
Iran, which supports Hizbollah and Hamas, has vowed to avenge Haniyeh’s death, with the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning that Israel would face “severe punishment”.
Netanyahu said on Wednesday evening that Israel had struck “crushing blows” against Hamas and Hizbollah.
But he added that “challenging days are before us”.
“Since the attack in Beirut, we have heard threats from all sides,” Netanyahu said. “We are prepared for any scenario and we will stand united and determined against any threat.”
Israel has been fighting in Gaza for almost 10 months in its effort to destroy Hamas, which has controlled the strip since 2007. The Israeli offensive has devastated the besieged enclave, killed almost 40,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials, and caused a humanitarian crisis.
The strikes that targeted Deif last month also killed another senior Hamas commander, Rafa’a Salameh. At the time, Hamas denied that Deif, who had survived previous Israeli assassination attempts, was dead.
Deif is believed to have joined Hamas in his 20s, shortly after the Islamist group formed at the end of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the late 1980s. He joined the military wing and is said to have trained under Yahya Ayyash, a bombmaker with the nickname “The Engineer” who was assassinated by Israel in 1996.
Health authorities in Gaza said more than 90 people were killed and about 300 were injured in the strikes that killed Deif, including women, children and medical personnel.
The strikes targeted buildings in an area on the western outskirts of Khan Younis, bordering what Israel has designated a humanitarian “safe zone” in al-Mawasi. It is a strip of land bordering the coast where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been forced to seek sanctuary.
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Source: The Financial Times Limited 2024.
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