Israel says Sinwar was killed on Wednesday in southern Gaza. PM Netanyahu says score is ‘settled’. Israel says its forces have killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that Sinwar was killed on Wednesday in southern Gaza.
“After completing the process of identifying the body, it can be confirmed that Yahya Sinwar was eliminated,” the Israeli military said.
“The dozens of operations carried out by the [Israeli military] and ISA [Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service,] over the last year and in recent weeks in the area where he was eliminated restricted Yahya Sinwar’s operational movement as he was pursued by the forces and led to his elimination.”
Hamas has not commented on the Israeli claims. Israel has been conducting a war on Gaza since October last year, killing more than 42,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. That followed Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, in which 1,139 people were killed. The Israeli army and police carried out DNA checks to confirm Sinwar’s identity after it said its forces in Gaza had killed three people.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to take the plaudits for Sinwar’s killing but added that it did not mean the war on Gaza was over.
“Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow, but our task has still not been completed,” Netanyahu said in a recorded video statement. “To the dear hostage families, I say: This is an important moment in the war. We will continue full force until all your loved ones, our loved ones, are home.”
Nearly 250 people were taken captive from Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks. About half have been released, and about 70 are believed to still be held in Gaza. Chosen as Hamas’s leader in Gaza in 2017, he had previously been held in an Israeli prison for 22 years before being released as part of a prisoner swap in 2011.
Disciplined and determined, he was focused on fighting Israel.
Hind Hassan, a journalist who was one of the last people to interview Sinwar in 2021, said he told her Palestinians were expected to be “perfect victims, and that’s something that they cannot be”.
His claimed death comes months after the July assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, in Tehran. Israel is believed to have been behind the killing.
Sinwar had been chosen as Hamas’s overall leader after Haniyeh’s killing.
