Palestinians gather near the bodies of their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah on Saturday.
Abdel Karim Hana/AP
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Abdel Karim Hana/AP
TEL AVIV — Heavy Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of Palestinians and wounded many more Saturday in southern Gaza, officials said. An Israeli military official said the target was Hamas’ military wing leader Mohammed Deif. But his status was not immediately clear.
The Israelis shelled the town of Khan Younis and the nearby area of al-Muwasi, which has been designated a humanitarian security zone by the Israeli army and where thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge.
According to witnesses and the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 70 Palestinians were killed in the bombings at the two sites. Many civilians were injured. This was the latest in a series of Israeli air strikes targeting Hamas that have also caused heavy civilian casualties.
Shortly after the strike, reports began circulating that the target was Deif, a mysterious figure who has led Hamas’ military wing for more than two decades and has survived several Israeli attempts to assassinate him.
At a news conference, an Israeli military official speaking on condition of anonymity said the attack targeted Deif, as well as another senior Hamas official, Rafah Salameh. The official added that the army had struck an “operational compound” surrounded by trees, small buildings and shelters, which provided cover and made surveillance difficult.
The Israeli military said it was still assessing the strike and provided no information about Deif.
Hamas said in a statement that Israel was making “false statements with the sole aim of concealing the scale of this horrific massacre.” The statement did not mention Deif.
Hamas’s two main figures in Gaza are Yahya Sinwar, the group’s political leader in the territory, and Deif, who heads its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades.
Israel accuses the two Hamas leaders of being primarily responsible for the October 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages. The attack sparked the current war in Gaza, in which more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Shortly after the October attack, a Hamas television station broadcast a recording in which Deif was purportedly seen. “That’s enough,” the figure in the video said. He appeared only as a silhouette.
While Sinwar appeared in public before October 7, Deif remained out of sight for decades. He was imprisoned by Israel for just over a year in 1989-90, but was released. He has led Hamas’s military wing since 2002, when his predecessor was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
At the time, Deif was known as a master bomb maker who provided the arsenal for Hamas’s suicide bombing campaign. He is also credited with helping to develop Hamas’ rockets, which can now reach the distance from Gaza to Tel Aviv.
Israel attempted to kill him several times and he reportedly suffered numerous injuries, including the loss of an eye. His wife and two of their young children were killed in a 2014 airstrike targeting Deif in Gaza.
His nom de guerre “Deif” means “guest” in Arabic, referring to the widely held belief that he never stays in one place for long, always changing locations in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the Israelis.
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