The Israeli military thinks it is highly likely that Hamas commander Muhammed Deif, was killed in an airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday.
According to reports in the Times of Israel, the IDF is waiting for confirmation before making a public announcement.
The army believes Deif arrived at a compound belonging to Rafa’a Salameh, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade.
The IDF says its intelligence was highly accurate, and they believe the pair were together when the building was targeted.
On Sunday, the IDF announced it had confirmed Salameh was killed in the strike.
While it has yet to receive the same confirmation about Deif, assessments given to the Time Of Israel suggest it is more than likely that Deif is dead.
The IDF said its recent campaign in Gaza has put pressure on the network of tunnels in which Hamas commanders like Deif had been hiding.
IDF sources told the Times of Israel that Deif was forced to leave the tunnels where he was hiding and joined Salameh, who the IDF say had been at the compound for several weeks.
Deif is believed to be one of the chief architects of the October 7 massacres that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 hostages taken from Israel to Gaza.
Deif – known as The Shadow – is the commander of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and has been one of the most wanted men by Israel since 1995 for his involvement in several terror attacks, including bus bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The IDF said that a small number of civilians were harmed in the attack on Deif and Salameh.
If Deif has been killed it would make him the most senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip to be eliminated by Israel.
His deputy, Marwan Issa, was killed in an airstrike in March while Hamas’s deputy political leader, Salah al-Arouri, was assassinated by Israel in an airstrike in Lebanon’s capital Beirut in January.
The IDF said it was “taking advantage of every minute” in Gaza to continue operations until a potential hostage deal.
It also said it was ready to deal with the consequences of a truce with Hamas, which could include the IDF being forced to withdraw entirely from the Strip temporarily.
The IDF said it was increasingly seeing evidence of Hamas struggling to fight back in the area.
Sources told reporters Hamas operatives and commanders are being forced to leave the terror group’s tunnels in the Gaza Strip, with more frequency.
The IDF said it was finding more evidence of command centers, staging grounds, and even makeshift weapons manufacturing within civilian shelters.