Israel attacks Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif; 71 dead in Mawasi

Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the Israel Defense Forces had targeted “Mohammad Deif and Rafa Salama, the commander of Hamas’ Khan Yunis Brigade,” describing them as “two of the masterminds of the October 7 massacre.”

The Israeli military did not immediately release details of Saturday’s attack or whether it hit its target. Deif has evaded several Israeli assassination attempts in the past, although some members of his family were killed.

According to the enclave’s health ministry, the operation claimed many victims among the residents of the Gaza Strip. In addition to 71 deaths, there were at least 289 injured, “including serious cases that the medical teams are still treating today,” the ministry said. The injured were taken to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

Mawasi’s population swelled in May after Israel issued evacuation orders for parts of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, and urged hundreds of thousands of people – many of whom had already been displaced from other parts of the territory – to seek safety in designated “humanitarian zones.”

Separately, the Palestinian Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip said on Friday that its teams had recovered dozens of bodies after Israeli forces withdrew from the Tel al-Hawa and al-Sina’a areas of Gaza city earlier that day.

The group wrote on social media on Friday evening local time that its teams and medical staff had recovered the bodies of about 60 people, adding that more people were missing under the rubble.

Earlier this week, the Civil Defense Agency said it had recovered 60 bodies, including women and children, from the rubble of the Gaza neighborhood of Shejaiya after Israeli forces also withdrew from the area. Spokesman Mahmoud Bassal described the area as “uninhabitable” after a days-long operation.

Israeli forces originally withdrew from the northern city in January, but earlier this week the military ordered residents to evacuate.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disputed any plans to withdraw from a 13-kilometer-long corridor separating Gaza from Egypt. A message posted on social media on Friday said Netanyahu insisted that Israel would remain in the Philadelphia Corridor. Earlier, Reuters news agency reported that Israel was studying the possibility of deploying an electronic surveillance system along the Gaza-Egypt border that would allow its troops to withdraw.

The Israeli military said on Friday that a soldier had been killed in the north of the country. where Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have exchanged cross-border gunfire for months. The military did not say how the 33-year-old was killed, but the Haaretz newspaper reported that the soldier died Thursday as a result of a drone strike.

Since the war began, at least 38,443 people have been killed and 88,481 injured in Gaza. The Gaza Health Ministry said it made no distinction between civilians and fighters, but said the majority of the dead were women and children. Israel estimates that around 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack on October 7, including more than 300 soldiers. Since the start of military operations in Gaza, 326 soldiers have been killed, it said.

Alon Rom and Steve Hendrix contributed to this report.