Two Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the strike, confirmed that the Israel Defense Forces targeted Deif and another commander, Rafa Salama on Saturday, and described them as “two of the masterminds of the October 7th Massacre.”
The IDF said in a statement that it carried out a strike “in an area where two senior Hamas terrorists and additional terrorists hid among civilians,” without including the names of the targets or whether they were hit. Deif has evaded multiple Israeli assassination attempts in the past, although some members of his family have been killed.
The operation had a high toll on Gazans in the area, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry. In addition to 71 killed, there were at least 289 injuries, “including serious cases that medical teams are still dealing with until this moment,” the ministry said. It said that the wounded had been taken to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.
Mawasi’s population swelled in May after Israel issued evacuation orders for parts of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, and told hundreds of thousands of people — many of whom had already been displaced from elsewhere in the territory — to seek safety in designated “humanitarian zones.”
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”
Separately on Friday, the Palestinian civil defense in Gaza said its teams recovered dozens of bodies after Israeli forces withdrew from the Tel al-Hawa and al-Sina’a areas of Gaza City earlier the same day.
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The group wrote on social media Friday evening local time that its teams and medical workers had removed the bodies of about 60 people, adding that other people were missing under the rubble.
Earlier this week, the civil defense said it had recovered 60 bodies from the rubble of the Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood, including women and children, after Israeli forces also withdrew from the area. Spokesman Mahmoud Bassal described the area as “unfit for life” following an operation that lasted for days.
Israeli forces originally withdrew from the northern city in January but earlier this week the military warned residents to evacuate.
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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.
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 and Steve Hendrix contributed to this report.
