Al Jazeera airs unseen footage of Hamas' senior military leaders before Oct. 7 massacre

Qatari news outlet Al Jazeera published previously unseen footage on Friday showing senior Hamas leaders, including former Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar and former military commander Mohammed Deif , meeting inside an underground tunnel in the Gaza Strip before the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, with all the leaders featured in the footage subsequently killed by Israel.

The footage appeared in Al Jazeera’s documentary “The Hidden Is More Immense,” shortly after Hamas released the clips on its Telegram channel. The videos show several of the terror group’s senior military commanders gathered underground, highlighting how Hamas’s leadership operated from tunnels to evade Israeli strikes.

The footage appears to date to before May 2021, as it includes Bassem Issa, the former commander of Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade, who was killed during the 11-day conflict that Israel called Operation Guardian of the Walls.

The footage also includes Yahya Sinwar, then Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, congratulating Deif by phone in May 2021 following the ceasefire that ended the fighting. Al Jazeera, which is banned from operating in Israel, has faced criticism over its close ties to Hamas and its publication of material produced by the terror group.

#عاجل | الجزيرة تحصل على تسجيل حصري لاتصال بين السنوار والضيف لحظة إعلان وقف إطلاق النار عام 2021 https://t.co/b7SYiPx0Ul

— قناة الجزيرة (@AJArabic) October 30, 2026

Sinwar was widely considered one of the masterminds behind the Oct. 7 attack. Israeli forces pursued the Hamas leader in Gaza for nearly a year before killing him in a firefight in Rafah in October 2024.

Deif, who led Hamas’s military wing, survived multiple Israeli assassination attempts before being killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2024. His deputy, Marwan Issa, had been killed several months earlier in an Israeli strike on an underground compound where he was hiding.

Another video shows Sinwar, Deif and Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh inspecting a rocket manufacturing site in Gaza.

Unlike Hamas’s military commanders in Gaza, Haniyeh and other senior political leaders lived abroad, including in Qatar, which maintains close ties with Hamas. Israel killed Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024 while he was staying at a heavily guarded compound. Haniyeh had traveled to Iran to attend the inauguration of the country’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

After Yahya Sinwar’s death, Hamas appointed his younger brother Mohammed Sinwar to lead its forces in Gaza. Israel killed Mohammed Sinwar in June 2025 in a strike on an underground compound where he was meeting with other Hamas commanders.

Following the deaths of both Sinwar brothers, Hamas appointed Izz al-Din al-Haddad as its top military leader in Gaza. Israel killed al-Haddad in an airstrike in Gaza City in May 2026. Less than two weeks later, Israel killed his successor, Mohammed Odeh, in another strike in Gaza City.

The footage features several other senior Hamas commanders, including Raad Saad, Muhammad Shabana, Hakem al-Issa, Raed Thabet and Ghazi Abu Tama’a, all of whom were named in the original footage report.

متابعة | توثيق حصري عرضته قناة الجزيرة يُظهر القائد العام لكتائب القسام محمد الضيف مع قيادات عسكرية بارزة بينهم أبو عبيدة ورافع سلامة ومحمد عودة أثناء التخطيط لهجوم السابع من أكتوبر. https://t.co/uws2kawdOW

— فلسطين أون لايـن (@F24online) October 30, 2026

Israel has killed virtually all of the senior Hamas leaders identified as planners and key participants in the Oct. 7 massacre.

The Israeli military has also said it killed approximately 4,000 of the 6,000 terrorists who invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and participated in the attacks, which killed around 1,200 people, most of them civilians.