Adnan al-Ghoul
Adnan Al-Ghoul (c.
1962 -
October 21,
2004) (
Arabic: عدنان الغول ) was the assistant of
Mohammed Deif, the leader of the
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of
Hamas. He was killed along with
Imad Abbas in an airstrike while riding in his car in
Gaza on
October 21,
2004.
Identified by the
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as Hamas' top bombmaker, he joined the organisation soon after its creation in 1988. He then served as an assistant to Ezeedeen-al-qassam's top engineer,
Yahya Ayyash. Al-Ghoul took over Ayyash's role in 1996 after his mentor's assassination. Early in the
Al-Aqsa intifada, Al-Ghoul developed the
Qassam rocket. Al-Ghoul also masterminded the development of weapons made from raw material and equipment smuggled into the Gaza Strip using tunnels in
Rafah, on the border with
Egypt. Among those weapons, anti-tank rockets such as the
Al-Bana, the
Batar and later the
Yasin were often used by Hamas in its attacks against settlements or Israeli soldiers in Gaza, as well as for defense purposes during IDF's incursions.
Al-Ghoul was a shadowy figure who lived in hiding and never spoke to the media. Pictures of the 46 year-old father of four, were released by Hamas only after his death. On September 26, 2003 he reportedly attended a meeting with
Mohammed Deif,
Ismail Haniya, one of Hamas' political leaders, and the organisation's spiritual leader, Sheik
Ahmed Yasin, when Israeli forces bombed the house where they gathered. Al-Ghoul's eldest son Bilal was killed in a 2001 airstrike in Gaza, and his second son Mohammed was killed the following year along with a cousin during a botched raid in the family home in
Maghazi, south of
Gaza City.
Although the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, for security reason, witheld at the time the identities of the engineers that were involved with Al-Ghoul in overseeing the production of weapons for the group, it was disclosed in March 2006 that Abdel Mo'ti Abu Daf was, along with imad Abbas, Al-Ghoul's top assistant. Daf died on February 26, 2006, after a grenade accidentally detonated during a training.
