Israel attacks Hamas military chief – Palestinian authorities assume at least 70 dead

CNN
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Israel said it had targeted the Hamas military chief and a suspected mastermind of the October 7 attacks in the southern Gaza Strip in which local authorities said at least 71 Palestinians were killed.

Mohammed Deif, the leader of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, was attacked on Saturday in Al-Mawasi, a refugee camp west of the city of Khan Younis, an Israeli security official told CNN.

The Israeli military said the move was part of an investigation into whether Deif was killed in the attack, which was carried out along with Khan Younis Brigade chief Rafe Salama.

The attack left scenes of devastation in the region, with Gaza’s Health Ministry reporting that at least 71 people were killed and nearly 300 injured.

The attacks hit an area where displaced people had sought shelter, the ministry said. Videos from the scene show locals and rescue teams trying to rescue several people who are still trapped.

Al-Mawasi has been declared a safe zone by Israel for Palestinians fleeing the raging fighting in the Gaza Strip.

The local hospitals in Kuwait and Nasser are currently struggling to cope with the large number of dead and injured civilians admitted, the ministry said.

Residents of Al-Mawasi described the horrific moment of the attack.

“I was sitting in the bathroom, and before I heard the explosions of the attack, the bathroom blew away,” a young boy named Hammoud told a CNN employee on the scene. “Then the whole area filled with smoke, and then the shells started falling.”

Hammoud’s younger brother was killed in the attack, while his sister is currently being treated in hospital for her injuries, his family told CNN.

Hamas denied Israeli claims that it targeted Deif and Salama and called the killings a “horrific massacre.”

“The occupying power’s claims that it is targeting Palestinian politicians are false, and this is not the first time that the occupying power has claimed that it is targeting Palestinian politicians only to expose its lies later,” it said in a statement.

A shadowy figure

Israel’s security and intelligence services had only received information in the last few days about a possible opportunity to attack Hamas’ top military commander. But a clear window of opportunity for the attack on Deif only emerged in the last 24 hours, an Israeli official said.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and senior Shin Bet officials held several talks overnight to assess the feasibility of an attack before giving the green light, the official said.

A focus of the talks was the evaluation of Israeli intelligence indicating that there were no hostages in the area, the official added, and the impact of such a significant attack on ongoing negotiations on a ceasefire and hostage agreement.

Little is known about Deif. Believed to have been born in the 1960s, Deif is a bomb maker who was responsible for a wave of four suicide bombings in 1996 that killed 65 people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as other atrocities that were intended to derail the peace process.

His full name is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, but he became known as El Deif (the guest) because he spent decades staying in a different house every night to escape persecution and killing by Israel.

Deif has been the target of Israeli assassinations before. His wife, seven-month-old son and three-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli attack in 2014.

In May, the International Criminal Court said it was requesting arrest warrants for Deif and other senior Hamas figures because there were “sufficient grounds” to believe they were responsible for the October 7 attacks that killed around 1,200 Israelis.

This is a developing story and will be updated.