“Commander Mohammed Deif is well and directly overseeing” military operations against Israeli forces, the unnamed Hamas official told AFP news agency on Sunday.
On Saturday, the Israeli military attacked a designated humanitarian safe zone at the al-Mawasi camp in southern Gaza, killing at least 90 Palestinians and wounding 300 others. The attack was the deadliest in Gaza for weeks.
Israel said the target of the attack in al-Mawasi was Deif, but prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was not certain if the Hamas commander had been killed.
Hamas rejected the premise of the assault as “false”, saying “defenseless civilians” were killed in the airstrike.
Deif is among the founders of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, in the 1990s and has led the force for more than 20 years.
Israel has identified him and Hamas’s Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar, as the chief architects of the large-scale and surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the regime on October 7.
Deif hasn’t been seen in public in years, and only a handful of photos of him exist online.
The high-profile Hamas military commander became the head of the Qassam Brigades in 2002 after Israel killed his predecessor, Salah Shahada.
He is believed to have helped expand Hamas’s labyrinth of tunnels that run beneath Gaza.
SD/PressTV
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