A senior Hamas official was killed in an airstrike, Israel said

The Israeli military says it has confirmed that Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif was killed in an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip last month.

Deif was targeted in a strike at a compound in the Khan Younis area on 13 July. Hamas is yet to confirm his death.

Israel says Deif was one of the people who planned the attack on Israel on October 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

Wednesday, Hamas political leader Ismael Haniyeh was killed during his visit to Iran. Israel did not directly comment on his death.

In a statement on Thursday, the Israeli military said “following an intelligence assessment, it can be confirmed that Mohammed Deif was killed” in the July 13 strike.

Hamas-affiliated health authorities in Gaza said at the time that the air strike killed more than 90 people, but denied that Deif was among the dead.

Deif was widely seen as the second-ranking Hamas official in Gaza, after Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in the area.

Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, said Deif’s death was a “milestone” in the dismantling of Hamas.

“This operation shows that Hamas is disintegrating, and that Hamas terrorists will either surrender or be eliminated,” he added.

Mohammed Deif was appointed head of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Hamas movement, in 2002.

For decades he has been seen as one of Israel’s most wanted men – and survived a reported seven assassination attempts.

Israeli and Palestinian media reports say that Deif was born in the Gaza camp of Khan Yunis in 1965, when the area was occupied by Egypt.

As a teenager in the 1980s, he joined Hamas and quickly rose to prominence.

Israel accused him of planning and overseeing bombings that killed dozens of Israelis in 1996, and involvement in the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli soldiers in the mid-1990s.

Deif is also known to have helped engineer the tunnels that allowed Hamas fighters to enter Israel from Gaza.

In 2014, Israel attempted to kill Deif with an airstrike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza, which killed Deif’s wife, Widad, and their infant son, Ali. Israel thought he had killed Deif, too, but he wasn’t in the building at the time.

During the current conflict, Deif is believed to have directed the operations of Hamas militants inside Gaza’s underground tunnels.

Israel’s confirmation of Deif’s death comes at the end of a tumultuous week in Israel-Gaza, which has fueled fears of regional war.

on saturday, 12 Israeli children and young people were killed after a rocket landed on a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Lebanon-based Hezbollah, saying they would pay a “huge price”.

On Tuesday, Israel responded with an airstrike in Beirut that killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, along with four others, including two children.

Hours later, Hamas political leader Ismael Haniyeh was killed in a strike on his apartment building while visiting the Iranian capital, Tehran.