Here are the profiles of the three Hamas leaders targeted by the ICC prosecutor:

Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader

Currently 60 years old, he was elected head of Hamas's political bureau in 2017 to succeed Khaled Meshaal, but he became known in 2006 when he became Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority after his movement's surprise victory in the legislative elections.

However, the cohabitation with Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas, was short-lived. Hamas forcibly removed the rival organization from the Gaza Strip in 2007, two years after Israel's unilateral withdrawal from this territory that it occupied.

Haniyeh, who lives in voluntary exile between Qatar and Turkey, has long sought to reconcile armed resistance and political struggle within the movement, considered "terrorist" by the United States, the European Union and Israel.

Known for his calm and measured speech, Haniyeh maintains good relations with the leaders of various Palestinian movements, including rivals.

He was detained several times in Israeli prisons and was expelled for six months to southern Lebanon.

In images released by Hamas media shortly after the start of the October 7 attack, Haniyeh appears in his office in Doha discussing in a jubilant tone with other Hamas leaders, and watches a report from an Arab television showing Hamas commandos seizing jeeps from the Israeli army.

After more than seven months of war that left the Gaza Strip in ruins, Haniyeh insisted several times that the release of the hostages was dependent on a definitive end to the fighting.

Mohammed Deif, the "chief of staff"

Head of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, he was appointed to announce on a recording broadcast by the movement on the morning of October 7, the start of the operation "Flood of Al-Aqsa".

In this recording, illustrated by a photo of Mohammed Deif in the shadows, so that he is not identified, he announces that "the positions and fortifications of the enemy were targeted by 5,000 rocket launchers and howitzers during the first 20 minutes" of the attack.

The attack caused 1,170 deaths, including about 450 police and military personnel, according to an AFP news agency report based on official Israeli data. Hamas took 252 hostages.

Presented by Hamas as "chief of staff of the resistance", he has been a target for Israel for several years. He has escaped at least six known assassination attempts.

The most recent occurred in 2014, when an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip killed his wife and one of his sons.

For about 30 years, this man, born in 1965 in the Khan Younes refugee camp (south of the Gaza Strip) has been linked to the toughest blows inflicted on Israel: kidnapping of soldiers, suicide bombings, rocket fire.

Appointed in 2002 to lead the armed wing of Hamas, after the death of his predecessor Salah Shehade, killed in an Israeli raid, Mohammed Deif has a long history of militancy and clandestine activity that began in the 1980s.

In 2000, at the start of the Second Intifada in the Palestinian territories against the Israeli occupation, he escaped, or was released, from a prison of the Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat, which was also a blow to Israel, which temporarily lost track of him.

Shortly after his appointment to command the Al-Qassam Brigades, he was targeted by an assassination attempt by Israel and was reportedly seriously injured, with unconfirmed reports of paraplegia.

Among his enemies he is known as the "seven-lives cat" while the Palestinians define him as a legendary figure, for his courage and audacity in the fight against Israel, and for the mystery that surrounds him.

In 2015 the United States authorities included him on the list of "international terrorists".

Yahya Sinwar, the strongman of Gaza

Elected in February 2017 to lead Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, from the military wing of the movement, is among the supporters of a "hard line".

At 61, he spent 23 years in Israeli prisons before being released in 2011 in a prisoner exchange.

In 1987, when the First Intifada broke out in a refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip, Khan Younis native joined Hamas, which had just been founded.

He was then involved in the creation of Majd, Hamas's internal security service.

Former elite commander in the Al-Qassam Brigades, wanted by Israel and also included by the Americans on their list of "international terrorists", Yahya Sinwar moves in the utmost secrecy and has not appeared in public since October 7.

In February, the Israeli army released a video in which it assured that the Hamas leader had been detected in a tunnel, with a woman and three children.

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