Israeli forces in Gaza killed senior Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the main architect of last year’s attack on Israel that sparked the current conflict, the Israeli military said on Thursday. It seems that the forces had encountered him in one of the battles, only to discover that the body under the rubble was the man whom Israel had been chasing for more than a year.
Sinwar has been at the top of Israel’s most wanted list since the current conflict with Hamas began just over a year ago, and his killing deals a heavy blow to the militant group. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas about his death.
The army confirmed Sinwar’s death after conducting DNA and other tests on a body it said was among three activists killed on Wednesday during operations in Gaza. Foreign Minister Israel Katz described Sinwar’s killing as a “military and moral achievement for the Israeli army,” saying that it would “create the possibility of the hostages being released immediately.”
Sinwar was one of the main planners of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel vowed to kill him from the beginning of its retaliation campaign in Gaza. He has been the supreme commander of Hamas inside the Gaza Strip for many years, and is closely linked to its military wing while working to significantly build its capabilities.
An Israeli security official said it appeared that the man identified as Sinwar was killed in battle, rather than in a planned targeted air strike.
Pictures circulated on the Internet showed the body of a man resembling Sinwar, with a deep wound in his head, wearing a military jacket, and half buried under the rubble of a destroyed building. The security official confirmed that the photos were taken by Israeli security officials at the scene of the incident. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.
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Israeli news website N12 said Sinwar was apparently killed by accident in a battle on Wednesday. She added that the forces tracked down a group of gunmen inside a building, then attacked the gunmen with tank fire, which led to the building collapsing. When the forces found the dead militants, they noticed that one of them looked like a Sinwar.
Israel imprisoned Sinwar from the late 1980s until 2011, during which time he underwent treatment for brain cancer – leaving the Israeli authorities with extensive medical records.
President Joe Biden has been briefed on Israel’s investigation into whether it killed Sinwar, and US officials were in close contact with Israeli officials throughout Thursday morning, according to a senior administration official.
Sinwar was chosen as leader of Hamas last July after his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in an apparent Israeli raid in the Iranian capital, Tehran. Israel also claimed to have killed the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed al-Deif, in an airstrike, but the movement said he survived.
The report on his death came at a time when Israeli forces continued their major air and ground attack for more than a week on the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. On Thursday, an Israeli strike hit a school housing displaced Palestinians, killing at least 28 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
Fares Abu Hamza, head of the emergency unit at the Ministry of Health in northern Gaza, said that among the dead were a woman and four children, correcting a previous report of five children. He added that dozens of people were injured.
The Israeli army said it targeted a command center run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad inside the school. It provided a list of about a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was carried out. It was not immediately possible to verify the names.
Israel has repeatedly bombed tent camps and schools housing displaced people in Gaza. The Israeli army says it carries out precise strikes on militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza to eliminate Hamas after the militants stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapping about 250 others. About 100 prisoners remain inside Gaza, and about a third of them are believed to be dead.
The Israeli attack led to the death of more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but says that women and children constitute slightly more than half of the dead.
Northern Gaza was the first target of Israel’s ground invasion in nearly a year, and has suffered the most destruction during the current conflict, with entire neighborhoods in Gaza City and other towns reduced to rubble. Most residents fled after Israel issued evacuation orders in the early days of its military campaign, but around 400,000 people are believed to have remained despite the harsh conditions.
Earlier this month, Israel again ordered a mass evacuation of the north, and did not allow any food aid into the area for nearly two weeks. This has led many Palestinians to fear that it has adopted a strategy of surrender or starvation proposed by previous Israeli generals.
Israel allowed two aid shipments into the north earlier this week after the United States warned it might reduce its military aid if its ally did not do more to address the humanitarian crisis.
Since the beginning of the conflict, Israeli forces have launched repeated operations in Jabalia, a densely populated urban camp dating back to the 1948 war that followed the establishment of Israel. The army says the militants have repeatedly regrouped there after major operations.
Magdy reported from Cairo and Jeffrey from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Karim Chehayeb in Beirut contributed.
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