- Tests of mangled remains produced inconclusive results, but after months without word from military chief, terror group now acknowledges he did not survive, Asharq al-Awsat reports
Finally acknowledging terror leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri popularly known as Muhammad Deif was killed in a July airstrike in Gaza, Hamas has interrogated two people on suspicion that they led Israel to him, Asharq al-Awsat reported Saturday.
Hamas sources cited by the London-based, Saudi-owned newspaper said Hamas’s leadership had taken time to confirm the matter as communication with the shadowy terror chief had been limited prior to the July 13 strike. But it concluded that Deif was dead after not hearing from him for some time.
Parts of a disfigured body found at the site days after the strike had been tested and found to likely belong to Deif, but their state had made it impossible to reach a definitive result, the report said. Due to the disfigurement, Deif’s “family and associates” had remained unconvinced that it was his body, according to Asharq al-Awsat.
The head of Hamas’s military wing Muhammad Deif in an undated photo. (Israel Defense Forces)
Israel had targeted Deif and Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade chief Rafa’a Salameh in the airstrike on a Hamas compound that killed dozens in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis. The IDF confirmed Salameh’s death a day later, and Deif’s on August 1. Hamas has so far officially denied the killing of Deif, who led the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the terror group’s military wing.
Asharq al-Awsat said one of the men arrested over Deif’s killing was one of Deif’s couriers, as was previously reported by Al Arabiya, which said the terror group suspected he had tipped off Israeli security forces. The paper said that the results of the investigation have not been disclosed.
Deif, who was 58, had commanded the Brigades for over two decades, and had long been one of the terror figures most wanted by Israel.
Palestinians inspect the damage at a site hit by an Israeli operation targeting Hamas’s shadowy military commander Mohammad Deif in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
It was Israel’s eighth attempt to eliminate Deif, who was key to Hamas’s transformation from a small terror group into a paramilitary force. Deif managed to evade and survive multiple attempts on his life between 2001 and 2021, though he was seriously injured in two of them, and his ability to frustrate Israel’s formidable security apparatuses for so long had made him something of a mythical figure for Palestinians as well as Israelis.
Deif, along with Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, was an architect of Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of terrorists broke through the border and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while taking 251 people hostage to Gaza. He had topped Israel’s most-wanted list since 1995 for his involvement in the planning and execution of a large number of terror attacks, including many bus bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s.
@The Times of Israel