Members of Israel’s security cabinet have been informed that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is very likely dead, two officials with knowledge of the matter have told Reuters.
Anonymous officials have also reportedly told Israel’s Channel 12 that Sinwar has been “eliminated”.
Yahya Sinwar is Israel’s number one target in Gaza and was accused of having been responsible for organising and directing the 7 October attacks last year, when thousands of armed men broke through the Gaza fence, killing 1200 people and abducting more than 250 hostages back to Gaza.
Graphic images posted online show a figure resembling Sinwar lying in the rubble of a building in the aftermath of intense military activity with clearly fatal injuries.
It’s thought that tests – both physical and biometric – will be carried by the Israelis out to ascertain if it is indeed Yahya Sinwar.
If he has been killed, it would be a significant military success for Israel. Sinwar, 61, was released from an Israeli jail in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap and became a hard-line and hugely influential figure in Hamas who favoured armed confrontation with Israel over diplomatic initiatives.
It was assumed that Sinwar had been spending much of the war located in tunnels under Gaza, surrounded by a human shield of Israeli hostages, especially after he became Hamas’s overall leader following the assassination of Ismael Hanieyh.
But according to reports from the IDF, no hostages were found near the location – which may be significant.
His death would not bring about an immediate end to Israel’s war in Gaza but with continued Israeli military operations against Hamas across the Palestinian territory, in which hundreds of civilians have also been killed, it might bring the end of the war a little closer.
An Israeli security official also says DNA testing is underway to confirm whether the person killed was the Hamas leader, AFP reports.
Israel will have the Sinwar’s DNA and other biometric data on file from his time in prison there.
Israeli army radio reports the incident occurred during a targeted ground operating in the southern Gazan city of Rafah during which Israeli troops killed three militants, according to Reuters.
The military broadcast also says visual evidence suggests Sinwar was one of those killed, and that DNA tests are being conducted.
Yahya Sinwar was named the overall chief of Hamas in August after the killing of his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
He previously served as the group’s leader inside the Gaza strip, a position he took on in 2017.
Sinwar currently tops Israel’s most-wanted list. The country’s security agencies believe he masterminded the planning and execution of the unprecedented 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel, which killed over 1,200 people and 251 taken back into Gaza as hostages.
He was born in Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza in 1962.
In the late 1980s, Sinwar founded the Hamas security service known as Majd, which among other things targeted alleged Palestinian collaborators with Israel.
He has spent much of his life in Israeli jail – and after his third arrest in 1988 he was sentenced to four life terms in prison.
Sinwar was among 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners released by Israel in the 2011 exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive for over five years in Gaza by Hamas.
Credit: BBC
REUTERS
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