Gaza, Gaza Strip.- Israel said Thursday it had killed the head of Hamas’ military wing in the latest in a series of targeted actions against the leadership of the militant group, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy.
Mohammed Deif is believed to have been one of the masterminds behind the 7 October Hamas attack that sparked the Gaza war; Hamas has not confirmed his death.
On Wednesday, the group’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Tehran in an attack that Hamas and Iran blamed on Israel.
Below are some of the remaining Hamas leaders and commanders.
In March, Israel said it had killed Marwan Issa, Deif’s deputy, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.
Issa, nicknamed the “shadow man” by his fellow Palestinians for his ability to stay under the enemy’s radar, had risen to the third-ranking position within the Islamist militant group. He and Hamas’s two other top leaders formed a secret three-man military council that made strategic decisions.
Released from an Israeli prison in 2011 in a swap deal between Israel and Hamas, he is the group’s head in Gaza and another of the masterminds behind the Oct. 7 attack.
Sinwar is believed to still be directing military operations, possibly from bunkers in a vast network of tunnels beneath Gaza, while calling the shots in indirect negotiations with Israel over a truce and prisoner exchange deal.
The 68-year-old is considered the new supreme leader of Hamas, replacing Haniyeh, according to sources in Hamas, which he led from 2004 to 2017.
Meshaal became known around the world in 1997 when Israeli agents injected him with poison in the Jordanian capital, Amman, in a botched assassination mission.
He is Sinwar’s second-in-command and has recently led Hamas’ team in indirect ceasefire talks with Israel under Haniye’s supervision. Hayya was in the same residence when Haniye was hit by a missile in Tehran, but not in the same apartment at the time of the attack.
He has survived two Israeli attempts to assassinate him. In 2007, an Israeli strike hit his extended family home, killing several of his relatives, and in 2014 an attack on his home killed his eldest son.
Zahar was a surgeon by profession. Friends and enemies alike often called him “general” for his uncompromising views on Israel. Zahar has not made any public statements or appearances since October 7 and his fate remains unknown.
Aged 79, he survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 2003. He was the first foreign minister appointed by Hamas after the group seized power in Gaza in 2007 in a brief civil war with the secular Palestinian Authority, a year after it swept a parliamentary election.
Better known as Abu Anas Shabana, he is one of Hamas’s last and most senior armed commanders, leading his battalion in Rafah in the south.
Hamas sources say he played a major role in developing the network of tunnels in Rafah that have been used to attack Israeli troops along the border, including a cross-border attack in 2006 in which Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured.
Shabana took over the Rafah battalion after Israel killed three of the group’s top commanders during a 50-day war in 2014, during which the Islamist faction said it had kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.
Mushtaha is Sinwar’s confidant and his strongest ally within Hamas. Together with him, Mushtaha founded Hamas’s first security apparatus in the late 1980s, which was tasked with tracking down and killing Palestinians accused of spying for Israel.
He was released from an Israeli prison along with Sinwar in 2011 and has recently been tasked with coordinating between the group in Gaza and Egyptian security officials on a range of issues, including the operation of the Rafah border crossing. His fate remains unclear.
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