Israel targets Hamas military leader; 71 killed in Mawasi strike, officials say

It was unclear whether Deif was killed in the strike, which aid agencies and Gaza’s civil defense force said took place in an area Israel had designated as a “humanitarian zone” for civilians.

“If Hamas senior leaders think they’ll build a compound and hide in a compound in an area where we called for them [civilians] to move to, we will hunt them down,” the military official said in a briefing with reporters. The strike also targeted Rafa Salama, a Hamas commander in Khan Younis, the military said.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that at least 71 people were killed and hundreds more injured in the bombardment, with hospitals, clinics and emergency personnel struggling to treat the wounded. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are staying in Mawasi — many of them in tents — after Israel issued evacuation orders for parts of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, in May, and told civilians to seek shelter there.

“Paramedics are still trying to rescue people from under the sand,” Raed al-Nems, spokesman for the Palestine Red Crescent Society, said.

Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the strike, described Deif and Salama as “two of the masterminds” of the Oct. 7 attack. They did not provide details on the roles the commanders played.

The military official declined to say what munitions were used in the attack.

Deif, who was designated as a terrorist by the State Department in 2015,has survived multiple assassination attempts, although some of his family members have been killed in the operations.

In a statement, Hamas denied reports that Israel targeted its leadership, saying that “these false allegations are merely to cover up the scale of the horrific massacre,” and describing the attack as “a dangerous escalation.”

The Qassam Brigades alluded to the strike on Deif in a statement on Telegram, but did not explicitly confirm the leader’s death.

“There is no voice louder than the voice of Deif… There is no weapon like Deif’s weapon,” the post said. “May God reward you for this entire nation… may God continue his shadow and the fear that he strikes.”

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied any plans to withdraw from an eight-mile corridor separating Gaza from Egypt. A message posted on social media Friday said that Netanyahu insists that Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor, after Reuters news agency reported that Israel was exploring the possibility of using an electronic surveillance system along the border between Gaza and Egypt that would allow its troops to withdraw.

Rescue teams in Gaza City recovered dozens of bodies after Israeli forces ended an offensive and withdrew from the Tel al-Hawa and al-Sina’a areas on Friday, the Palestinian defense force said. Israel launched an operation in the city earlier this week and dropped leaflets urging all civilians in the area to evacuate south.

The Israeli military said Friday that a soldier was killed in the north of the country, where Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have exchanged cross-border fire for months. The military did not say how the 33-year-old was killed, but Haaretz newspaper reported that the soldier died after being wounded in a drone attack on Thursday.

At least 38,443 people have been killed and 88,481 injured in Gaza since the war started, the Gaza Health Ministry said. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 326 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations in Gaza.

Alon Rom, Helier Cheung and Steve Hendrix contributed to this report.