The Israeli security establishment’s growing assessment is that Tuesday’s strike aimed at killing Hamas’s leadership in Qatar failed, according to an unconfirmed Israeli television report on Thursday evening, which said Israel has conveyed as much to the US.

The most recent indications received by the defense establishment are that the majority of the targets of the operation were not killed, Channel 12 news reported, citing an unnamed Israeli source who said Jerusalem was still holding out hope that one or two may have been killed, but that this too was seeming more doubtful.

In addition to the US, cabinet ministers were informed on Thursday that the operation likely failed to meet its intended goal, the report added.

Security officials discussing the strike are checking whether insufficient explosives were used or whether the Hamas officials managed to move to a different part of the targeted building before the bombs fell.

The bold Israeli airstrike on Tuesday targeted a meeting of Hamas’s top leaders as they were said to be gathered in Doha to discuss a new US-sponsored hostage-ceasefire proposal aimed at ending the war in Gaza.

The gathering was believed to include all of the terror group’s top leadership outside Gaza, including the leader of Hamas’s Gaza units, Khalil al-Hayya; Zaher Jabarin, who leads Hamas in the West Bank; Muhammad Darwish, the head of Hamas’s Shura Council; Nizar Awadallah; and Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas abroad.

Hamas has insisted that none of its........

© The Times of Israel