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Hamas commander Mohammed Deif has been killed in an airstrike, the Israeli military said today, a day after the group’s leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran.
“IDF fighter jets struck the Khan Yunis area and, following an intelligence assessment, it can be confirmed that Mohammed Deif was killed in the strike,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement today.
The one-eyed Hamas commander was reportedly killed on July 13, Hamas confirmed Thursday.The Israeli political leader was killed after being hit by an “air missile” in Tehran. Israel did not immediately claim responsibility for Haniyeh’s death.
Deif is believed to have been responsible for planning and executing the bloody October 7 raid in Israel, in which Hamas members and their allies killed some 1,200 Israelis and took about 240 hostage.
Mohammed Deif, head of the Al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in an airstrike, according to the IDF
Palestinians evacuate a body from a site hit by Israeli shelling in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, July 13.
Deif, head of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, had been among Israel’s most wanted men for nearly three decades and had been on a US list of “international terrorists” since 2015.
Israel had tried to kill him five times: in 2001, 2002, 2006, 2014 and in May 2021.
In the attempts he lost both legs and an arm and killed his wife and two children.
Amid the ongoing war in Gaza, Israel targeted Deif in a strike on July 13 that hit a compound outside the town of Khan Younis, but there was no immediate confirmation of his death.
More than 90 other people, including displaced civilians in nearby tents, were killed in the attack, Gaza health officials said at the time.
The house where Deif is believed to have lived was hit by a 2,000-pound (900 kg) bomb, leaving a gigantic body behind.
A former bombmaker, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, in the 1990s, he led the unit for decades.
Under his command, he carried out dozens of suicide attacks against Israelis on buses and in cafes and built up a formidable arsenal of rockets that could reach deep into Israel.
Deif operated alongside Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, the Israeli military said.
“During the war, he commanded Hamas’s terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip by issuing orders and instructions to senior members of Hamas’s military wing,” he added.
There were rumors that the sinister mastermind of the October 7 attacks had been assassinated earlier this month, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu He said in mid-July that he was “still not absolutely sure” whether Deif was dead.
The announcement came a day after political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike in Tehran.
Haniyeh, a billionaire who had been living in exile in Qatar since 2019, was killed when an “airborne projectile” hit his compound in Tehran. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack.