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Israel says it attempted to assassinate Mohammed Deif, the leader of Hamas’s military wing who has long been at the top of the country’s most wanted list.

Deif was one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Qassam Brigades, in the 1990s and has led the force for more than 20 years. Israel has identified him and Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar as the main perpetrators of the October 7 attack that killed at least 1,139 people in southern Israel and sparked the war on Gaza.

Deif is said to be paralyzed after surviving several Israeli assassination attempts. He has not been seen in public for years and there are only a handful of photos of him online. On the morning of October 7, Hamas released a rare voice recording of Deif announcing Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Like Sinwar, Deif was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the south of the Gaza Strip in the early 1960s and is said to have joined Hamas after its founding in the late 1980s. In 1989, at the height of the first Palestinian intifada, Deif was arrested by Israel but later released.

Deif became head of the Qassam Brigades in 2002 after Israel killed his predecessor. He is believed to have helped expand Hamas’s labyrinth of tunnels beneath Gaza.