CNN
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At least 71 Palestinians were reportedly killed in an Israeli attack on a refugee camp in the south of the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli sources, the attack targeted the Hamas military chief, who is considered the mastermind of the October 7 attacks.
Footage from Al-Mawasi, which has been designated a safe zone for Palestinians fleeing fighting elsewhere, shows bodies in the street and destroyed tents. “I cannot describe to you the scale of the tragedy,” one resident told CNN.
The target of the attack was Mohammed Deif, the leader of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, an Israeli security official told CNN.
The Israeli military said it was currently investigating whether Deif was killed in the attack. Deif was targeted along with the head of the Khan Younis Brigade, Rafe Salama.
The attack left scenes of devastation in the area. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported at least 71 dead and nearly 300 injured. Locals and rescue teams tried to rescue several trapped people.
Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Palestinians gather near the damage caused by an Israeli attack on a tent camp in the Al-Mawasi area on Saturday.
The local hospitals in Kuwait and Nasser are struggling to cope with the high number of dead and injured civilians, the ministry said.
“I was sitting in the bathroom, and before I heard the explosions of the attack, the bathroom blew away,” a young boy named Hammoud told a CNN employee on the scene. “Then the whole area filled with smoke, and then the shells started falling.”
Hammoud’s younger brother was killed in the attack, while his sister is currently being treated in hospital for her injuries, his family told CNN.
Another resident, Aida Hamdi, told CNN: “Suddenly we heard rockets hitting. I was baking bread, took my daughter and we ran outside.”
“I threw away all the dough, it was mixed with sand. We heard three impacts, people around me were being tortured, women, men and children.”
Hamas denied Israeli claims that it targeted Deif and Salama and called the killings a “horrific massacre.”
“The occupying power’s claims that it is targeting Palestinian politicians are false, and this is not the first time that the occupying power has claimed that it is targeting Palestinian politicians only to expose its lies later,” it said in a statement.
At least one U.S.-made munition was used in the airstrike. In a video shared on social media, CNN identified the tail fin of a Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), a GPS-guided kit made by Boeing that can be added to so-called “dumb bombs” to guide them to a specific target. Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, confirmed the identification of the JDAM tail fin to CNN at the scene.
A similar analysis by CNN found that US-made munitions were used in an attack on a school complex near Khan Younis and in other Israeli attacks on Gaza.
A shadowy figure
Israel’s security and intelligence services had only received information in the last few days about a possible opportunity to attack Hamas’ top military commander. But a clear window of opportunity for the attack on Deif only emerged in the last 24 hours, an Israeli official said.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and senior Shin Bet officials held several talks overnight to assess the feasibility of an attack before giving the green light, the official said.
A focus of the talks was the evaluation of Israeli intelligence indicating that there were no hostages in the area, the official added, and the impact of such a significant attack on ongoing negotiations on a ceasefire and hostage agreement.
Little is known about Deif. Believed to have been born in the 1960s, Deif is a bomb maker who was responsible for a wave of suicide bombings in 1996 that killed 65 people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as other atrocities designed to derail the peace process.
Mohammed Salem/Reuters
Palestinians after the attack in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
His full name is Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, but he became known as El Deif (the guest) because for decades he slept in a different house every night to avoid being tracked down and killed by Israel.
Deif has been the target of Israeli assassinations before. His wife, seven-month-old son and three-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli attack in 2014.
In May, the International Criminal Court said it was requesting arrest warrants for Deif and other senior Hamas figures because there were “sufficient grounds” to believe they were responsible for the October 7 attacks that killed around 1,200 Israelis.
The Israeli campaign in the Gaza Strip, aimed at destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages still held there, has since claimed the lives of more than 38,000 people.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
