The strike on Saturday killed more than 70 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the war’s casualties are women and children.
Israel has killed several high-ranking Hamas officials since the group attacked Israeli communities near the Gaza border in October, killing around 1,200 people. Some Hamas leaders live in Gaza, while others are scattered across the Middle East, in Lebanon, Qatar and Turkey.
Earlier this year, an Israeli drone strike in Beirut killed Saleh Arouri, deputy Hamas leader and one of the founders of the armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. In March, an Israeli strike in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp killed deputy military commander, Marwan Issa.
Here are some of the group’s most important figures.
Yehiya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, is known by Israelis as the “butcher of Khan Younis,” his hometown in southern Gaza. He previously did counterintelligence work for Hamas, targeting spies and informants within the group.
He is believed to be one of the few Hamas leaders who planned the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and is thought to be hiding in or around Khan Younis in tunnels, said Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow and director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.
The scale of Oct. 7 can be attributed to Sinwar’s methodical approach to creating the plan and communicating about in a “very analog way,” Lord said. Sinwar, he said, kept discussions off devices that could be tapped by Israeli intelligence and kept the circle of those who knew about the attack “very small.”
Sinwar spent two decades in an Israeli prison for orchestrating the kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers. He speaks fluent Hebrew and is considered to have a deep understanding of Israel.
He was released from prison in 2011 as part of a large prisoner swap that involved the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Mohammed Deif, a shadowy figure who rarely speaks or appears publicly, has led the Qassam Brigades for more than two decades. Israel targeted him in an operation July 13 in the Mawasi area of southern Gaza, killing 71 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
There was no immediate confirmation of his death.
Much about Deif is unknown. He was born in Khan Younis in 1965 and became a founding member of the Qassam Brigades in 1991, rising through the ranks to eventually lead the organization after its chief commander was killed in 2002.
Deif has survived multiple attempts on his life over the years and was injured in at least one of the strikes. Israel has said he was one of the “masterminds” of the Oct. 7 attacks, without providing details about his role.
“He’s a legend,” a member of a Hamas security detail, Ahmed, told The Washington Post of Deif in 2014. Imad Falouji, a former senior Hamas leader, also told The Post then that Deif kept a low profile, moving around with “different passports and different identities.”
In a statement following the July 13 strike, the Qassam Brigades alluded to the operation but did not explicitly confirm his death.
“There is no voice louder than the voice of Deif… There is no weapon like Deif’s weapon,” the statement, posted on Telegram, said. “May God reward you for this entire nation… may God continue his shadow and the fear that he strikes.”
Marwan Issa, deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing and the right-hand man to Deif, was killed in an Israeli strike in central Gaza in March, the White House confirmed.
“Hamas’s number three, Marwan Issa, was killed in an Israeli operation,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that month. “The rest of the top leaders are in hiding, likely deep in the Hamas tunnel network. And justice will come for them, too. We are helping to ensure that.”
Issa was believed to have run many of Hamas’s day-to-day operations, said Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. With Deif spending much of his life incognito, Issa helped run logistical operations for the al-Qassem Brigades. Israel considered Issa a very significant threat, Byman said.
Mohammed Sinwar is the right-hand man to his brother, Yehiya Sinwar. Although he has long been rumored to have been killed, the IDF has indicated recently that he is alive. It said in early November that it had raided Mohammed’s office, where it said it found “military doctrine documents.” In December, the IDF also released what it said was video of Mohammed in a car inside a Gaza tunnel.
If Israel assassinates the Sinwar brothers and Deif, it could “find a way to declare victory” and end the war in Gaza, Lord said.
Separately from those who run Hamas’s military and government in Gaza, many of the group’s political leaders are based outside the enclave.
The head of Hamas’s political operations is Ismail Haniyeh, who conducts much of his work from the Qatari capital of Doha. His role, according to Lord, is to be the face of Hamas, spread the group’s political rhetoric and try to raise money to fund its operations.
With the political and military leaders of Hamas kept separate — geographically and organizationally — it is unclear to what extent political leaders such as Haniyeh knew about the Oct. 7 attack. Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007, following an election to determine who would preside over the enclave after Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005. No elections have been held since 2006. Haniyeh was chosen by members of the group to be president of its political bureau in 2017.
Once the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal is now in charge of the group’s diaspora office, cultivating support for Hamas abroad, including among Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. After the Oct. 7 attack and the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, Meshal called for protests in Muslim nations, saying in a recorded statement, “This is a moment of truth and the borders are close to you; you all know your responsibility.”
Meshal survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 1997. The attempted killing, in the Jordanian capital, Amman, threw Jordan’s relations with Israel into disarray. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also prime minister in 1997, ordered the poisoning, U.S. and Israeli officials said at the time. Meshal survived after officials from the United States and Jordan demanded that Israel give him the antidote.
He has said the assassination attempt was a pivotal moment in his life, calling it his second birth.
Saleh Arouri, who was second-in-command of Hamas’s political wing, was killed in a Beirut suburb on Jan. 2. Hezbollah, the Iranian-aligned militant and political group in Lebanon that has engaged in skirmishes with Israel, said Arouri was killed by a drone armed with three rockets. Hezbollah said Israel was to blame for the attack, but Israel has not claimed responsibility for the killing.
Arouri had been imprisoned in Israel on multiple occasions and was a founder of the al-Qassam Brigades. Israel accused him in 2014 of planning the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers, triggering an Israeli response in Gaza that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians.
Arouri’s death in Beirut sent a signal to Hamas leaders outside Gaza that they were not immune to the risk of assassination.
Victoria Bisset, Sarah Dadouch, Steve Hendrix, Claire Parker, Adam Taylor and Sudarsan Raghavan contributed to this report.
