The Israel Defense Forces believes that Hamas terror chief Mohammed Deif was killed in an airstrike in Gaza on July 13, according to a Channel 14 report on Sunday.
Deif and his deputy, Rafa’a Salameh, were targeted in a structure close to the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone near Khan Younis. The military confirmed last Sunday that Salameh, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, was killed in the strike.
Salameh joined Hamas in the 1990s and played a central part in the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006.
On Friday, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that “there are increasing signs that we succeeded in the elimination of Mohammed Deif.
“Rafa’a Salameh was certainly eliminated; Mohammed Deif and Salameh sat side-by-side during the strike. Hamas is hiding what happened,” added Hagari.
Last week, the IDF released recordings of Gazans praising Deif’s death in Arabic and expressing their hope Israel would kill Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar as well.
Deif, the head of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, was the second in command in Gaza after Sinwar, the IDF’s top target after the two men led the planning and execution of the Oct. 7 massacre of over a thousand people in southern Israel.
Deif, 58, was also responsible for planning several bus bombings in the 1990s and 2000s. He oversaw Hamas’s armament program and tunnel project, as well as attempts to kidnap Israelis and use them as bargaining chips to secure the release of Palestinian security prisoners.
In January, the IDF released a picture of Deif found on a laptop during operations in Gaza. The image shows Deif missing one eye, purportedly due to Israeli attempts on his life that he narrowly escaped.
Though Israeli intelligence agencies believed for years that Deif was paraplegic, IDF troops operating in Gaza in December uncovered recent videos of the terrorist mastermind walking, though with a slight limp.
The IDF pursued Deif for two decades. In a 2014 effort to kill him during “Operation Protective Edge,” Deif escaped but lost his wife and infant son.
On Oct. 7, Deif called on Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East to “set the Earth on fire under the feet of the occupiers [Israel].” In the audio message, he dubbed Hamas’s multi-pronged attack “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” and called to “expel the occupiers and demolish the walls” of the Jewish state.
