( NYPost )
Israeli announced Thursday that it had killed the Hamas military chief blamed for planning the Oct. 7 terror attacks that killed more than 1,100 people.
“Muhammad Deif, the ‘Osama Bin Laden of Gaza,’ was eliminated,” Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant wrote on X of the July 13 attack.
“This is a significant milestone in the process of dismantling Hamas as a military and governing authority in Gaza and in the achievement of the goals of this war.”
Deif, the head of Hamas’ military, is suspected by the Jewish state of being one of the chief architects behind the Oct. 7 attacks, which triggered the Israel-Hamas war.
Israel targeted Deif in a strike that hit a compound on the outskirts of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said that “following an intelligence assessment, it can be confirmed that Mohammed Deif was eliminated in the strike,” in a statement Thursday, using a more often-sed spelling for his first name.
Another top Hamas commander, Rafa Salama, was also killed in the strike.
Gallant called the strike that killed Deif a “significant milestone” toward achieving the goals of the war.
“This operation reflects the fact that Hamas is disintegrating and that Hamas terrorists may either surrender or they will be eliminated,” Gallant wrote, adding Israel will continue to “pursue Hamas terrorists” behind the October massacre and “not rest until this mission is accomplished.”
Deif is believed to have coordinated the October attack with Yahya Sinwar, the top Hamas leader in Gaza, who is believed to remain in hiding in Gaza.
He was one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, in the 1990s and led the unit for decades.
Under his command, the terrorist organization carried out dozens of suicide bombings against Israelis on buses and at cafes and built up an arsenal of rockets used to conduct strikes deep into Israel.
Considered an underground figure in Gaza, Deif never appeared in public, was hardly ever photographed and only rarely was his voice heard in audio statements.
Deif had been at the top of Israel’s most wanted list for decades and during his reign as military commander, survived multiple assassination attempts carried out by the Jewish state.
The news of the head of Hamas’ military wings death comes a day after an apparent Israeli strike in the Iranian capital killed Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
Israel has yet to confirm or deny if they were behind Tuesday’s strike in Tehran that killed Haniyeh.
Haniyeh was attending the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president when he was killed, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and representatives of Palestinian militias attended a funeral for the Hamas political leader in Tehran on Thursday.
After the funeral services in Tehran, Haniyeh’s remains are to be transferred to Qatar for burial on Friday.
Comments