Israeli forces say the Hamas military chief, Mohammed Deif, the mastermind of the 7 October attack, was the target of a strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, which according to the territory’s emergency services has killed 71 people and injured hundreds more.
Deif, 58, who has been on Israel’s most-wanted list since 1995 and escaped multiple Israeli assassination attempts, is believed to be the chief architect of the attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and triggered the Israel-Hamas war.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Rafa Salama, another top Hamas official, was also targeted in the strike. The IDF did not have details on whether the two were killed.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday that Israel’s strike on a camp for displaced people in Khan Younis killed at least 71 Palestinians and injured 289 others.Residents said they witnessed at least five “big warplanes bombing in the middle of Al Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis”.
Most of the injured were sent to Nasser hospital. However, according to officials and medics, the facility is “no longer able to function” as doctors are “overwhelmed with large numbers of casualties”.
Hamas says that Israeli claims of targeting leaders of the Palestinian militant group are “false” and are aimed at “justifying” the attack.
The Israeli military said its strike on Deif was in a “fenced Hamas area” and that most people there were militants.
Earlier, a senior Hamas official called the Israeli allegations “nonsense”. “All the martyrs are civilians and what happened was a grave escalation of the war of genocide, backed by the American support and world silence,” Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters, adding that the strike showed Israel was not interested in reaching a ceasefire deal. He did not confirm whether Deif had been present.
Deif, known as “guest,” has frequently changed locations to elude Israeli detection. Engaged with Hamas from a young age, the former science student orchestrated a series of suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians in the 1990s and then again a decade later.
Speculations suggest that Deif may have been disabled in one of the numerous Israeli attempts on his life, with his spouse and young children having died in a 2014 airstrike.
Referred to by Israeli authorities as “a dead man walking”, Deif’s actual name is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri.
The Saudi channel Al-Hadath reported that Salama, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, was killed in the strike and that Deif was seriously wounded.
More details soon …