AFPHamas has confirmed that its military chief, Mohammed Deif, has been killed.
Israel’s military said it had killed Deif in July last year, but Hamas had not confirmed this until now.
Israel says Deif was one of the figures responsible for planning the 7 October attacks in southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
Deif was widely seen as the second-ranking Hamas official in Gaza, behind Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in the territory, who was also killed by Israeli forces last year.
Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) last year issued an arrest warrant for Deif, alongside Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Deif was known to have helped engineer the construction of tunnels that have allowed Hamas fighters to enter Israel from Gaza. He was also credited with designing Hamas’s signature weapon, the Qassam rocket.
In its statement on Thursday, Hamas also announced the death of deputy military commander Marwan Issa.
The US announced Issa’s death in March last year.
Issa was the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing and was considered one of Israel’s most-wanted men. The European Union, which placed the Hamas leader on its terrorist blacklist, linked him directly to the 7 October attack.
Media sourcesThe latest war was triggered when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023.
Israel’s 15-month military offensive killed more than 47,300 Palestinians in the territory, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into effect on 19 January.
A total of 15 Israeli hostages have been freed since then.
So far, 400 Palestinian prisoners – ranging from those serving long sentences for bombings and other attacks to teenagers held without charge – have been released.
Most have returned to the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, while about 70 of the most serious offenders have been deported.