Netanyahu: Death of Hamas military chief ‘not absolutely certain’

Israel is not yet sure whether Mohammed Deif, the military chief of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, was actually killed in an airstrike.

“There is still no absolute certainty,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a press conference in Tel Aviv.

The army had previously announced that it was still investigating whether Deif and Rafa Salama, the commander of the Khan Younis Brigade, had been killed in the airstrike west of Khan Younis.

Hours earlier, the Israeli military bombed a fenced-off object in the humanitarian zone between Khan Younis and al-Mawasi, which Israel claimed served as a base for Hamas terrorists.

According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, 90 people were killed in the attack and a further 300 were injured.

The army had extremely reliable intelligence information that Deif and Salama were in the base at the time of the attack, a senior military representative said in an online briefing for journalists.

The information from all sides could not initially be independently verified.