The Israeli military announced on Thursday that it had killed the top of Hamas's military wing, Mohammed Deif, in an airstrike in July.
“We can now confirm: Mohammed Deif has been eliminated,” the Israel Defense Forces said posted on his official X account.
The military said it had spent weeks trying to verify whether Deif, the goal of the attack within the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, was killed within the blast, while Hamas denied his death. Hamas didn’t immediately comment on the IDF's Thursday announcement when contacted by CNBC.
Israel says Deif and Yahya Sinwar, the highest Hamas leader in Gaza, were the primary planners of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people and took one other 253 hostage. Around 116 of those prisoners have since been released.
The October attack sparked the 10-month war between Israel and Hamas and the Israeli military offensive within the Gaza Strip, which local authorities say has already killed greater than 39,000 people.
The Israeli military said the attack that killed Deif took place on July 13 and hit a compound on the outskirts of Khan Younis, near a tent camp for displaced Palestinians. More than 90 people were killed within the attack, lots of them living within the tents, Gaza health authorities said on the time.
The Israeli statement got here only a day after Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an attack on Tehran. Hamas and Iran claim the attack was carried out by Israel, while the Jewish state declined to comment on Haniyeh's death.
Haniyeh's death had been triggered just hours earlier by an Israeli attack on southern Beirut that, in keeping with the Israeli military, killed Fuad Shukr, a senior leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group who ordered and took part in quite a few terrorist attacks on Israeli and US targets.
The triple death of high-ranking Hamas and Hezbollah leaders inside barely three days is a severe blow to Hamas, say regional analysts, but in addition a severe blow to any hopes of a ceasefire within the near future.
“Israel may feel it has exacted revenge on two of its greatest enemies with sophisticated attacks,” said Hugh Lovatt, senior policy fellow on the European Council on Foreign Relations, before Deif's death was announced. “But its actions have once again brought the Middle East to the brink of dangerous escalation.”
Deif operated in secret for a very long time and was almost never seen in public. There are few photos of him. In the Nineties, he founded the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, and led quite a few suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israel.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called Deif the “Osama Bin Laden of Gaza” in An entry on the social media platform X and said his death marked “a significant milestone in the process of defeating Hamas as the military and government authority in the Gaza Strip and in achieving the goals of this war.”
Gallant added: “Israel's defense apparatus will pursue Hamas terrorists – both the planners and perpetrators of the July 10 massacre. We will not rest until this mission is accomplished.”
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