Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted he doesn’t know if an Israeli bombing of a tent camp the Israeli military declared a “safe zone” killed Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s senior military commander.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the strike on the al-Mawasi camp killed at least 90 Palestinians, more than half of them being women and children. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had told Palestinian civilians evacuating from Rafah and Khan Younis to take shelter in the camp, which has come under multiple Israeli attacks.
Shaima Farwaneh, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl who witnessed the massacre, described the scene to Mondoweiss. “A leg hit me, and I saw dismembered bodies a few meters away,” she said. “I saw a young child screaming. He lost his lower limbs and was crawling on his hands and screaming. The bombs didn’t stop, and suddenly the boy disappeared. I saw how he vanished before me while we ran and lowered our eyes to the ground, unable to do anything but run.”
The IDF claimed it targeted Deif and Rafa’a Salameh, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade. Hamas has denied the claim, saying it was just an excuse to justify the massacre.
On Saturday night, Netanyahu said he wasn’t “absolutely certain” if Deif and Salameh were killed but said the bombing of the camp was good for Israel either way.
“Just the attempt to assassinate Hamas commanders delivers a message to the world, a message that Hamas’s days are numbered,” Netanyahu said. “And this is what I will be doing next week at the US Congress. I will deliver Israel’s message to the United States and the entire world.”
On Sunday, the IDF also said it wasn’t sure if Deif was killed. “It is still too early to summarize the results of the attack, which Hamas is trying to hide,” said IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi.
Deif is believed to be the architect of the October 7 attack on southern Israel. According to Reuters, he has survived seven previous Israeli assassination attempts, including a 2014 Israeli strike that killed his wife, his seven-month-old son, and his three-year-old daughter.
Because of the assassination attempts, it has long been believed that Deif had been living in the vast tunnel network under Gaza. The majority of the tunnels are still intact, according to US intelligence, giving Deif and Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar plenty of room to remain underground.