Israeli sources said to be increasingly dubious of Qatar strike’s success

Israeli officials quoted anonymously in several Hebrew-language news sites appear to cast increasing doubt on the success of a strike in Qatar targeting the leaders of the Hamas terror group’s politburo yesterday.

“Right now there’s no indication that the terrorists were killed,” an anonymous source is quoted telling Channel 12 news. “We continue to hope they were assassinated, but optimism is fading.”

Similar sentiments are reported by the Kan public broadcaster.

In Ynet, Ronen Bergman writes that two sources from the defense and intelligence community told him that, in his words, they are “pessimistic regarding the lethality of the strike on most of the targets, and perhaps all of them.” He adds that a battle damage assessment is ongoing.

He adds however, that another source noted that at least one part of the mission was accomplished: striking fear into the hearts of Hamas’s political leaders.

Hamas said in a statement Tuesday that its top leaders survived the strike but that five lower-level members were killed, including the son of Khalil al-Hayya — Hamas’s leader for Gaza and its top negotiator — as well as three bodyguards and the head of al-Hayya’s office.

Hamas, which has sometimes only confirmed the assassination of its leaders months later, has offered no proof that al-Hayya and other senior figures had survived.

AP contributed to this report.