Updated October 17, 2024 at 13:17 PM ET
Israel says it killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Israel's most wanted man in Gaza, who it believes was the mastermind behind the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In a statement Thursday from the Israeli military, it said it and Israel's Shin Bin domestic intelligence agency confirmed that Israeli soldiers "eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip."
The statement said Sinwar was killed on Wednesday "after hiding for the past year behind the civilian population of Gaza, both above and below ground in Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip."
Some analysts suspect he surrounded himself with hostages taken back to Gaza in last year's Hamas attack on Israel, to protect himself from assassination attempts.
The Israeli military said earlier there were no signs of Israeli hostages in the area of the building where three militants were killed in Gaza and that troops were operating in the area with “caution.”
An official familiar with the matter speaking anonymously to divulge more details said the militants were killed Wednesday in an Israeli firefight in southern Gaza.
Sinwar was the leader of Hamas in Gaza when the Palestinian militant group led a surprise attack on Israel just over a year ago, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials. About 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.
He was appointed the leader of the entire group after Israel killed his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, in an explosion in Tehran in July. The Israeli military also said it had killed the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, in an airstrike in July. The Israeli military had earlier killed Hamas’ deputy political chief Salah Arouri in a bombing in Beirut in January.
Following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 42,400 Palestinians and injured more than 99,000, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
Born on Oct. 29, 1962, according to Hamas, Sinwar helped found the group's internal security apparatus in the late 1980s. He earned a nickname among Palestinians: the "butcher of Khan Younis," where he grew up in the southern Gaza Strip.
Sinwar was seen as a hard-liner within Hamas, less likely to reach a ceasefire deal with Israel than other more pragmatic leaders. He was believed to have been directing operations from the group’s extensive tunnel network underneath the Gaza Strip, communicating with the outside world by means of handwritten notes delivered by couriers to avoid Israeli air strikes that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave.
Copyright 2024 NPR
