The military said Friday it is seeing “increasing signs” that Hamas’s military chief Muhammad Deif was killed in an airstrike last weekend in the Gaza Strip.
Deif was targeted in a strike at a compound belonging to Rafa’a Salameh, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade. While the military has confirmed the death of the latter, it has yet to confirm that Deif was killed in the strike.
“The signs are increasing as to the success of the elimination of Muhammad Deif,” IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in response to a question at a press conference.
“[Hamas commander] Rafa’a Salameh was definitely eliminated. Deif and Salameh were next to each other at the time of the strike. Hamas is hiding what happened to Deif,” he said, referring to statements by Hamas officials claiming their military chief is alive.
Deif was one of the chief architects of the October 7 massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists broke through the border, killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. He has been one of the figures most wanted by Israel since 1995 for his involvement in the planning and execution of many terror attacks, including bus bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Saturday’s strike was Israel’s eighth attempt to eliminate the shadowy terror leader, who survived multiple attempts on his life between 2001 and 2021. He was seriously injured in two of them.
Deif would be the most senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip to be killed by Israel amid the ongoing war, after his deputy, Marwan Issa, was killed in an airstrike in March. Hamas’s deputy political leader, Salah al-Arouri, was killed by Israel in an airstrike in Lebanon’s capital Beirut in January.
The IDF believes that its intelligence on the strike against Deif was highly accurate and that he was together with Salameh in the building that was targeted with several heavy munitions.
According to IDF assessments described to The Times of Israel earlier this week, military pressure exerted on Hamas caused Deif to venture out from the underground tunnels where he was thought to be hiding, and join Salameh, who had been at the compound for several weeks.
The military has also assessed that a very small number of civilians were harmed in the attack, despite its proximity to tent camps for displaced Palestinians in the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone.
The IDF’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee released Thursday what he said were recordings of phone conversations between Gazans in the wake of the strike in which they were apparently happy to hear of the news of Deif’s apparent elimination.
“They killed Deif! Got willing they will kill Sinwar,” one of the people was heard saying, referencing Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s ruler in Gaza.
“God willing, god willing, I wish,” the person’s friend replied, expressing hope that the war would finish.
“They killed Muhammad Deif,” another Gazan said in a separate conversation with a woman.
“Ah, ok, the report is real?” asked his friend, who replied, “Yes.”
“It will be ok. I wish this war would end,” she replied.