The Israeli military says Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif was killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza on July 13.
“We can now confirm: Mohammed Deif has been eliminated,” the Israeli army said on Thursday.
The Palestinian group did not immediately respond.
Hamas member Izzat al-Rashq said the news of Deif’s death was unconfirmed.
“Confirming or denying the martyrdom of any of the Qassam leaders is a matter for the leadership of the Qassam Brigades and the leadership of the movement,” he said on Telegram, referring to Hamas’ military wing.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called Deif “Gaza’s Osama bin Laden” and hailed his death as “an important step in the process of dismantling Hamas as a military and governmental authority in Gaza.”
“The Hamas terrorists can either surrender or be eliminated. The Israeli defense apparatus will pursue the Hamas terrorists – both the planners and the perpetrators of the July 10 massacre. We will not rest until this mission is accomplished,” he wrote on X.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the collapse of Hamas was “closer than ever” after Deif’s assassination.
“We must not stop for a moment before victory,” the far-right minister wrote on X, adding that the Israeli army would continue to target the group’s leaders until “we destroy them all.”
Israeli opposition leaders also welcomed the news. Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman congratulated the military on “the assassination of mass murderer Mohammed Deif” and said the strike was “proof of our ability to confront any threat.”
Yesh Atid party chairman Yair Lapid called the operation a “military achievement of unprecedented significance.”
Deif was the target of an attack that killed at least 90 people and wounded 300 in al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated “safe zone” west of Khan Younis.
The Israeli warplanes’ attack targeted tents housing displaced Palestinians and a water distillation unit. Footage from the scene showed Palestinians trying to rescue people from under the rubble, with children and paramedics among the injured.
The day after the attack, the Israeli army said in a statement that it had acted on the basis of “precise intelligence” to strike an area where “two senior Hamas officials” and other fighters were hiding among civilians.
At a later news conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the two Hamas officials targeted were Deif and senior Hamas commander Rafa Salama. He added that it was not immediately clear whether either had been killed.
Who was Deif?
Deif, 58, was one of the founders of the Qassam Brigades in the 1990s and led the force for more than 20 years.
Born Mohammad Masri in 1965 in the Khan Younis refugee camp, which was established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he became known as Mohammed Deif after joining Hamas during the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which began in 1987.
As he rose through the ranks, Deif developed the group’s tunnel network and bomb-making expertise and found himself at the top of Israel’s most wanted list for decades.
His wife, seven-month-old son and three-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2014.
He is believed to have survived seven Israeli assassination attempts, the most recent in 2021, earning him the respect and fame of many Palestinians.
The Israeli military considered him part of a three-man military council that planned the October 7 attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,139 people and took more than 200 prisoners.
In an audio recording released the same day, Deif called the raid the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” signaling that it was revenge for Israeli raids on Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.
Netanyahu’s government has vowed to kill the three leaders, namely Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Deif and Marwan Issa, his deputy, who was reportedly killed by Israel in March.
Deif is believed to have led military operations from Gaza’s tunnels and alleyways with senior colleagues in the months after the outbreak of the Gaza war.
In May, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Deif, Sinwar and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday – all three for alleged war crimes committed during the October 7 attacks. He also requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for alleged war crimes committed during the Gaza war.
At least 39,480 people have been killed and 91,128 injured in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to the enclave’s health ministry.