On August 1 last year, the Israeli military announced it had killed Deif in an air strike in Gaza the month before.
The military said fighter jets had struck Khan Yunis on July 13 and “following an intelligence assessment, it can be confirmed that Mohammed Deif was eliminated in the strike”.
He was killed along with one of his top commanders, Rafa Salama, the military said.
“Deif initiated, planned, and executed the October 7th massacre,” the military added.
Deif became head of Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in 2002.
He was among Israel’s most wanted men for nearly three decades and on a US list of “international terrorists” since 2015.
Deif, whose real name is Mohammed Diab al-Masri, was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in 1965.