(Israel Security Agency/IDF Spokesperson)

Mohammed Abu Shamaleh was the senior Hamas commander in the southern Gaza Strip and oversaw and commanded the terror campaign in the southern Gaza Strip. Born in 1974, he joined Hamas in the early 1990's along with Muhammad Deif and Raed Al-Attar.

Most notably, Abu Shameleh and Al-Attar orchestrated the 2006 attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing in which two IDF soldiers were killed and IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was captured.

Abu Shameleh was most recently involved in the July 17 infiltration of 13 Hamas operatives  through an offensive tunnel into southern Israel, near Sufa. He was also involved in killing an Israeli soldier in 1994 in Rafah and for several tunnel attacks in 2004 in which six soldiers were killed and ten wounded. In May 2008, he directed an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing, using booby-trapped jeeps and wounding 13 soldiers.

Raed Al-Attar, the Hamas commander in Rafah, was one of the architects of the construction of cross-border assault tunnels into Israeli territory, both in the Rafah area and throughout the Gaza Strip. Attar was responsible for overseeing all terror activity in the Rafah region; orchestrating complex attacks, constructing offensive terror tunnels which infiltrated into Israeli territory and designing terror attacks via the Sinai Peninsula. His role in the Hamas terror apparatus was to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip and oversee the terrorist capabilities recruiting and arming in the Rafah region.

Attar was also responsible for the murder and abduction of Lt. Hadar Goldin during Operation Protective Edge, and the Rafah brigade under his command was involved in other incidents during the campaign in which IDF soldiers were wounded.

In 1994, Attar was involved in a shooting which killed an Israeli soldier on the Egyptian border. In 2002, he planned a deadly attack on an Israeli post near Kerem Shalom in which four IDF soldiers of the Bedouin desert patrol unit were killed.