Gaza, Jan 31 (IANS) The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, has announced that its military chief, Mohammed Deif, was killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.
In a statement on Thursday, Abu Obeida, spokesperson for the brigades, also confirmed that Marwan Issa, Al-Qassam’s deputy chief of staff, had been killed, Xinhua news agency reported.
“The enemy has assassinated two of our great leaders, but their legacy and resistance will continue,” Obeida said.
He added that the assassination of Hamas military leaders will not stop the Palestinian resistance against Israel.
No additional details were provided.
On August 1, 2024, Israel’s military claimed that it had killed Deif in an airstrike in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
Israel has accused Deif of being one of the masterminds of the Hamas attack on southern Israeli towns on October 7, 2023.
Israel’s military said it had killed Deif in July last year, but Hamas had not confirmed this until now.
Israel has said that Deif was one of the figures responsible for planning the October 7 attacks in southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
Deif was widely seen as the second-ranking Hamas official in Gaza, behind Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in the territory, who was also killed by Israeli forces last year.
In May 2024, the International Criminal Court said it was seeking arrest warrants for Deif and other senior Hamas figures, saying they had “reasonable grounds” to believe they bore responsibility for the October 7 attacks, which saw around 1,200 Israelis killed.
Deif was known to have helped engineer the construction of tunnels that have allowed Hamas fighters to enter Israel from Gaza. He was also credited with designing Hamas’s signature weapon, the Qassam rocket.
The US announced Al-Qassam’s deputy chief of staff, Marwan Issa’s death in March last year.
Issa was the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing and was considered one of Israel’s most-wanted men.
The European Union, which placed the Hamas leader on its terrorist blacklist, linked him directly to the October 7 attack.
The latest war was triggered when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Israel’s 15-month military offensive killed more than 47,460 Palestinians in the territory, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.
A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into effect on January 19.
A total of 15 Israeli hostages have been freed since then.
So far, 400 Palestinian prisoners — ranging from those serving long sentences for bombings and other attacks to teenagers held without charge — have been released.
Most have returned to the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, while about 70 of the most serious offenders have been deported.
–IANS
int/khz
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