Mohammed Deif. Image AFP
The Israeli military announced on Thursday that its most wanted Hamas militant, the one who was believed to be the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Muhammad Deif, had been killed.
The confirmation of his death was not immediately available from Hamas while the Israeli military said its conclusion was based on intelligence, with no specific evidence stated.
Confirmation of Deif’s death comes a day after Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran.
Israel’s claim comes after weeks of speculation about the fate of Mr. Deif since an Israeli airstrike on July 13 in southern Gaza targeted the secretive Hamas commander. At the time, the Israeli military did not say for certain whether Mr. Deif had been killed, and Hamas has not commented.
“Following an intelligence assessment, it can be confirmed that Muhammad Deif was eliminated in the strike,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Mr. Deif, who survived several previous Israeli assassination attempts, has been the No. 2 Hamas leader in Gaza. He is the highest-ranking commander in the armed group that Israel says it has killed in Gaza since it began its military campaign thereafter the Oct. 7 attack.
Israel’s government made eliminating Hamas’s leadership a stated goal of the war, and his death would be counted as a victory in that effort. How Hamas’s operations could be affected remains to be seen: Israel has killed many senior commanders in the past, only to see the group swiftly replace them.
The announcement comes just a day after Ismail Haniyeh, the exiled leader of Hamas’s political bureau, was killed in an explosion in Tehran. Both Hamas and Iran have blamed Israel, which has declined to confirm or deny its involvement.
Deif was at the top of Israel’s most wanted list for decades, with Israel holding him responsible for the deaths of dozens of its citizens. Both the United States and the European Union had him on terror blacklists.
Mr. Deif was de facto second in command to the group’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
Born in 1965 to a poor Palestinian family, Mr. Deif grew up in the Khan Younis refugee camp and joined Hamas as a young man, around the time the group was founded in the late 1980s.
He quickly rose through the organization’s ranks, developed a reputation as a master bomb maker and orchestrated several attacks on Israel, including a series of deadly bus bombings that undermined the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the mid-1990s.
Analysts credit him with transforming Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, into a powerful and well-organized fighting force with tens of thousands in its ranks.
Mr Deif spent decades underground in the tunnel network that typically shields Hamas leaders, according to Israeli intelligence officials and had not been seen publicly in years. But officials recently said the Israeli military believed that he had developed health problems that forced him to spend more time above ground.
The strike that the Israeli military said killed him was authorized after prolonged surveillance of a house in southern Gaza where another top Hamas lieutenant, Rafa Salameh, was believed to be staying with his family, according to Israeli officials.
After learning that Mr. Deif appeared to be at the location, Israeli fighter jets struck with at least five precision-guided bombs, the officials said. Israel has said Mr. Salameh was also killed.
That evening, Mr. Netanyahu of Israel said an airstrike had targeted Mr. Deif but that there was not yet “absolute certainty” as to whether he had been killed.
“His hands are steeped in the blood of many Israelis,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “At the beginning of the campaign, I laid down a rule: The Hamas murderers are dead men, from the first to the last.”
以色列軍方稱哈馬斯高級指揮官穆罕默德·德伊夫被殺
以色列軍方週四宣布，其頭號通緝犯、被認為是 10 月 7 日以色列襲擊事件主謀的哈馬斯武裝分子穆罕默德·戴夫 (Muhammad Deif) 已被擊斃。
哈馬斯尚未立即證實他的死亡，而以色列軍方表示，其結論是基於情報，但沒有提供具體證據。
哈馬斯政治領袖伊斯梅爾·哈尼亞在伊朗首都德黑蘭被暗殺一天后，德伊夫的死亡得到確認。
自從以色列 7 月 13 日對加薩南部發動空襲，目標是這位神秘的哈馬斯指揮官以來，數週來人們一直在猜測代夫的命運，隨後以色列發表了這一聲明。 當時，以色列軍方並沒有明確表示德伊夫是否已被殺，哈馬斯也沒有發表評論。
以色列軍方在一份聲明中表示：“經過情報評估，可以確認穆罕默德·德伊夫在空襲中被消滅。”
德伊夫曾在以色列之前的幾次暗殺行動中倖存下來，目前是加薩哈馬斯的第二號領導人。 他是以色列稱自 10 月 7 日襲擊後開始在加薩進行軍事行動以來已在加薩打死的武裝組織中級別最高的指揮官。
以色列政府將消滅哈馬斯的領導階層作為戰爭的既定目標，他的死將被視為這項努力的勝利。 哈馬斯的行動可能會受到怎樣的影響還有待觀察：以色列過去殺害了許多高級指揮官，但該組織很快就取代了他們。
這項消息發布前一天，哈馬斯政治局流亡領導人伊斯梅爾·哈尼亞在德黑蘭爆炸中喪生。 哈馬斯和伊朗都指責以色列，但以色列拒絕證實或否認參與。
幾十年來，德伊夫一直位居以色列頭號通緝名單之首，以色列認為他對數十名以色列公民的死亡負有責任。 美國和歐盟都將他列入恐怖分子黑名單。
德伊夫事實上是該組織加薩領導人葉海亞·辛瓦爾 (Yahya Sinwar) 的第二號人物。
戴夫先生於 1965 年出生於一個貧窮的巴勒斯坦家庭，在汗尤尼斯難民營長大，年輕時加入哈馬斯，大約在 20 世紀 80 年代末哈馬斯成立期間。
他在該組織中迅速晉升，贏得了炸彈製造大師的聲譽，並策劃了多次針對以色列的襲擊，其中包括一系列致命的公共汽車爆炸事件，破壞了20 世紀90 年代中期的以色列-巴勒斯坦和平進程。
分析家認為，他將哈馬斯的軍事分支卡薩姆旅轉變為一支強大且組織嚴密的戰鬥部隊，擁有數萬人。
據以色列情報官員稱，德伊夫在通常保護哈馬斯領導人的隧道網絡中度過了數十年的地下生活，多年來一直沒有公開露面。
但官員最近表示，以色列軍方認為他出現了健康問題，迫使他在地面上花費更多時間。
據以色列官員稱，以色列軍方稱，在對加薩南部的一所房屋進行長期監視後，以色列軍方批准了這次襲擊，造成了他的死亡，據信哈馬斯另一名高級中尉拉法·薩拉梅(Rafa Salameh) 與家人住在那裡。
官員們稱，在得知德伊夫似乎在現場後，以色列戰鬥機發射了至少五枚精確導引炸彈進行攻擊。 以色列稱薩拉梅先生也被殺。
當天晚上，以色列內塔尼亞胡表示，德伊夫遭到了空襲，但目前還不能「絕對確定」他是否已被殺。
「他的雙手沾滿了許多以色列人的血，」內塔尼亞胡先生說。 “在競選開始時，我制定了一條規則：哈馬斯兇手從頭到尾都是死人。”
Source: NYT/CNN
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