Israeli PM ‘not certain’ Hamas commanders were killed

Israel has cast doubt on the deaths of October 7 masterminds Mohammed Deif and Rafa Salama after a targeted strike. Follow updates.

Israel said there was “no certainty” it killed Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif in a strike on southern Gaza, where officials reported at least 90 killed in a displacement camp.

The Israeli military said it had targeted Deif and Rafa Salama, a brigade commander, calling them “two of the masterminds of the October 7 massacre” which sparked the war, now in its 10th month.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference in Tel Aviv. Picture: AFP

The pair’s fate remained unclear, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying there was “no certainty” that either man was killed in the strike.

The deaths in Al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated “safe zone” where aid groups said hundreds of thousands of people were sheltering, drew condemnation from governments across the region.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said such “crimes... cannot be accepted under any justification whatsoever”.

In a joint IDF and ISA activity based on precise intelligence, the IDF's Southern Command and the IAF carried out a strike in an area where two senior Hamas terrorists and additional terrorists hid among civilians. The location of the strike was an open area surrounded by trees,… pic.twitter.com/1MEJYHHwm7

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) July 13, 2024

The health ministry in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip said there were at least “90 martyrs”, with at least half women and children, and 300 people wounded in Al-Mawasi. AFP could not independently confirm the toll.

The Israeli military said of its attack targeting Deif that “the area that was struck is an open area, surrounded by trees, several buildings and sheds. It was not a tent complex, but an operational compound”.

Smoke from Israeli bombardment billows in Kfarkila in southern Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions as fighting continues between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP

A Hamas statement rejected Israel’s claim it had targeted Deif, saying it was intended “to cover up the magnitude of the horrific massacre”.

Further north, heavy fighting has raged for weeks in and around Gaza City. On Saturday the civil defence agency said at least 20 people were killed in a strike on Al-Shati refugee camp.

In Al-Mawasi, AFPTV footage showed sirens wailing and smoke rising in the distance as men used blankets to collect victims. Some were clearly beyond help and lay dead on the road.

“What did we do?” a woman screamed in the street. “What did we do? We were just sitting near the beach.”

Deif has been on 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.

Leader of the Hamas movement, Mohammed Deif. Picture: AFP

The army said operations were continuing in Gaza City as well as “targeted, intelligence-based” missions in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip.

It said “numerous” tunnels had been destroyed in the Rafah area, and “multiple” Hamas militants killed.

It comes as the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said a strike on a displacement camp in the south of the Palestinian territory killed at least 20 people on Saturday.

More than 90 others were injured in the strike on Al-Mawasi camp, the ministry said, condemning a “brutal massacre.”

Smoke from Israeli bombardment billowing across the border in Kfarkila in southern Lebanon. Picture: AFP

The Israeli military pursued attacks in central Gaza with artillery fire and drone strikes heard, while Palestinian medics said one bombing killed a father and his three daughters.

Palestine Red Crescent medics said the strike on a home in Deir al-Balah city killed Rital al-Raey, five, Mai, eight, Leila, nine and their 40-year-old father Mohammed al-Raey.

Their bodies were taken to the city’s Al-Aqsa hospital, the medical workers said.

An AFP correspondent also reported drone strikes at Tal al-Hawa in the southwest of Gaza’s main city.

A Palestinian woman carries an injured child to the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis after the airstrike. Picture: AFP

The Civil Defence agency in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday that Israeli forces had withdrawn from Tal al-Hawa and other districts, after days of fighting. It said at least 60 bodies had been found in Tal al-Hawa and a neighbouring area after the withdrawal.

The October 7 Hamas attack resulted in 1,195 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead. Israel’s military reprisal has killed at least 38,345 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from Gaza’s health ministry.