Hamas: Who are the group’s most prominent leaders?
Mohammed Deif leads the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Hamas movement.
He is a shadowy figure known to Palestinians as The Mastermind, and to Israelis as The Cat with Nine Lives.
Israeli authorities imprisoned him in 1989, after which he formed the al-Qassam Brigades with the aim of capturing Israeli soldiers.
After his release, he helped engineer the construction of tunnels that have allowed Hamas fighters to get inside Israel from Gaza,
Deif is one of Israel’s most-wanted men, accused of planning and supervising bus bombings which killed tens of Israelis in 1996, and of involvement in the capture and killing of three Israeli soldiers in the mid-1990s.
Israel imprisoned him in 2000, but he escaped at the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada.
Since then, he has left behind little trace. There are three known pictures of him: one is dated, he is masked in the second, and the third is of his shadow.
The most serious assassination attempts on his life were in 2002: Deif survived but lost one of his eyes. Israel says he also lost a foot and a hand, and that he has difficulty speaking.
Israeli security forces again failed to assassinate Deif during a 2014 assault on the Gaza Strip, but killed his wife and two of his children.
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