Israel Launches Major Attack Against a Senior Hamas Commander

[Pelican Press 0]

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******* Launches Major ******* Against a Senior ****** Commander

******* conducted a major airstrike in southern Gaza on Saturday morning that it said had targeted a top ****** military commander who is considered one of the architects of the Oct. 7 ******* on *******, according to six senior ******** officials.

The Gaza Health Ministry said that 90 people had been ******* in the ********, half of them women and children, and 300 wounded.

The commander targeted in the *******, Muhammad Deif, is the leader of the Qassam Brigades, ******’s military wing. He is the second most senior ****** figure in Gaza, after its leader in the territory, Yahya Sinwar.

As of Saturday night, the status of Mr. Deif and Rafah Salameh, the leader of ****** forces in Khan Younis, who ******** officials say was also targeted in the *******, was unclear.

Speaking to reporters Saturday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of ******* confirmed that ******** forces had tried to ************ Mr. Deif but that ******* did not yet have “absolute clarity” as to whether he had been *******.

****** said in a statement that *******’s “allegations about targeting leaders are false,” and are “merely to cover up the scale of the horrific massacre.”

The strike hit a strip of coastal land known as Mawasi, which ******* has designated as a humanitarian zone. Thousands of displaced Palestinians live there in tents, west of the city of Khan Younis and close to the Mediterranean Sea.

Despite the area’s designation, ******* has dropped ****** there and accused ************ militants of operating amid the civilian population to ***** rockets.

Mr. Netanyahu said that Ronen Bar, the director of the Shin Bet intelligence agency, had presented the details of the operation to him early Saturday. The prime minister said he asked the security chief whether there were hostages in the area, the scale of the strike’s collateral damage and what kinds of munitions were to be used. “When I received answers that soothed my concerns, I gave the go-ahead,” he said.

The ******** military and the Shin Bet issued a ****** statement saying that the strike had hit “an open area surrounded by trees, several buildings and sheds,” and it posted an aerial photograph of a plot of land filled with palm trees and a few houses. Three ******** officials added that the military had targeted Mr. Deif while he was inside a fenced ******-run compound that was not used as a camp for displaced people.

Video filmed at the scene of the strike by Mustafa Abutaha, a professor of English, appeared to corroborate parts of *******’s statement but not others.

The footage showed a large crater in a tree-lined plot of land close to a four-story residential building. A high wall separated part of the plot from the road, suggesting that it was an enclosed compound. But as he filmed the video, Mr. Abutaha said the plot had housed displaced people. Shortly afterward, a second man passed in front of the camera, holding a motionless child.

“You see this — a child, a little girl,” Mr. Abutaha said as the child was carried past. “You see the situation is very terrible.”

Two other ******** officials said that Mr. Deif had been targeted while he was above ground, after leaving ******’s tunnel network under Gaza. All the ******** officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Mohammad Yousef, 48, said he and his mother were having breakfast when “suddenly the tent collapsed over our heads and the sand ******* us.” The blast and shrapnel wounded four of his nine family members who were taken to nearby hospitals, he said.

Mr. Yousef said he helped dig people from under the sand and debris. “Many were fatal injuries,” he said in a phone call Saturday, adding. “The survivors were rare.”

The ******** military did not warn the civilians in the area to evacuate before the strikes, and they came as “a complete surprise,” Mr. Yousef said. “That’s why the ****** toll was so high.”

Mr. Deif has been one of *******’s most wanted men for decades.

He is revered within some ************ circles for overseeing the development of ******’s military capabilities and has been a symbol of the group’s resilience, finding ways to survive despite being a top target of one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East.

Considered a chief architect of the Oct. 7 ******* on *******, Mr. Deif released a recorded speech as that operation got underway, declaring that it would make Israelis “understand that the time of their rampaging without accountability has ended.”

An undated handout photo said to be of Muhammad Deif, the ****** military leader.Credit…AFP — Getty Images

He has not been seen publicly in years, and there are few photos of him in the public domain. He is believed to be disabled, possibly missing an eye and some limbs. ******* bombed his home in 2014, ******** his wife and infant son.

Mr. Deif was born in the mid-1960s to a poor ************ family and grew up in the Khan Younis ******** camp near Mr. Sinwar, the leader of ****** in Gaza, and Mohammed Dahlan, an exiled leader of ******, another ************ faction that rivals ******.

“He’s a legendary figure in ******,” Ibrahim Madhoun, an analyst close to ******, said in an interview, comparing him to Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of ******. “His fingerprints are on the transformation of the Qassam Brigades from a limited number of armed cells to a formal army that has tens of thousands of fighters.”

Mr. Deif has commanded the so-called Shadow Brigade, which guards ******** captives held by ******, and invested significantly in manufacturing weapons and bringing new technologies like reconnaissance drones to the Qassam Brigades, Mr. Madhoun said.

******** analysts agree that Mr. Deif had a central role in transforming the Qassam Brigades into a powerful and well-organized fighting force.

Michael Milshtein, a former ******** intelligence officer specializing in ************ affairs, described Mr. Deif as one of ******’s most important military strategists.

“He’s the beating heart of ******’s military wing,” he said, noting that Mr. Deif has been at the helm of a force that includes elite fighters and naval commandoes. “He has developed a force that almost has statehood capacities.”

Hiba Yazbek and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

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