Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military wing head was killed in an airstrike, the militant group in Gaza confirmed months after Israel announced his death in the embattled Strip.
Israel in August last year had announced the death of Deif, Hamas’s longtime shadowy military leader and one of the alleged masterminds of the 7 October attack on Israel, in an airstrike.
Hamas on Thursday issued a statement on his condition and announced the death of four more top members.
Arab television networks cut into live-streams of the Palestinian prisoner release to carry a press conference delivered by Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, who confirmed the death of Deif.
Deif had been on Israel’s most-wanted list and survived a string of alleged Israeli assassination attempts while not showing his face in public for decades.
He was considered iconic among Hamas fighters and particularly hard to replace.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2024 issued an arrest warrant for Deif along with Israeli prime minister PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza.
Deif was one the founders of the group’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, in the 1990s and led the unit for decades. Under his command, Qassam Brigades carried out dozens of suicide bombings against Israelis on buses and at cafes and built up a formidable arsenal of rockets that could strike deep into the country.
Israel says Deif and former political leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in October, were behind the attacks on Israel. The militants unleashed an unprecedented attack that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 others hostage into Gaza.
Israel retaliated by launching a war in Gaza and killing more than 47,460 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Strip’s health ministry.
Hamas also announced the death of deputy military commander Marwan Issa, who the US claimed was killed in March 2024. Rafaa Salameh, the Hamas commander in the southern city of Khan Younis, was also killed in airstrikes, the group said.
Over the past two weeks of the ceasefire, Hamas has projected dominance as the main Palestinian power in Gaza despite the Israeli military’s stated goal of destroying and dislodging the organisation.
Dozens of uniformed, gun-toting Hamas militants have welcomed displaced Palestinians back home to their homes in the north, popped back up on the streets as policemen and featured prominently in the chaotic handovers of Israeli hostages to the Red Cross.