The announcement of Deif’s killing comes after the Wednesday killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which heightened fears of a wider Middle East conflict and a major blow to cease-fire negotiations to end the war in Gaza. Hamas and Iran blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s assassination, but Israeli officials have declined to comment on the operation.
It also comes after the Tuesday killing of senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli strike outside Beirut. The Israeli military held Shukr responsible for a strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children at a soccer field. Hezbollah denied carrying out that attack.
Deif was believed by Israel to have been among the key architects of the attacks on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took more than 250 hostage. As the founder of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, and its leader for more than two decades, Deif had long been on Israel’s kill list and survived at least seven assassination attempts, Israeli media reported.
He was targeted alongside Rafa Salameh, leader of Hamas forces in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, according to a joint statement July 14 by the Israeli military and the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. Salameh was one of Deif’s “closest associates” and also played a central role in planning the Oct. 7 assault, according to the statement.
Hamas denied the previous day that Deif had been killed. “You have failed,” Khalil al-Hayya, the deputy head of Hamas in Gaza, told Al Jazeera, addressing Netanyahu. “Mohammad Deif is listening to you now and mocking your false, empty statements.”
Deif was a shadowy figure, rarely photographed or seen in public, but he helped oversee the construction of Gaza’s extensive tunnel network and was thought to direct day-to-day combat operations for Hamas.
In May, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, announced he was applying for an arrest warrant for Deif, along with other militant leaders, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to keep fighting until Hamas is eliminated as a military and political force, a goal his own generals have conceded is unrealistic.
“One way or another, we will reach every senior member of Hamas,” Netanyahu said after the July 13 strikes, adding that no hostages were in the area at the time.
More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
