The Israeli Armed Forces announced that they are checking whether they managed to kill Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar during the attack on a building in the Gaza Strip this Thursday (17).
“At this point, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” the military said in a statement, saying there were no Israeli hostages in the building where three terrorists were located when they were killed. A website associated with Hamas asked that Palestinians only find out about the case from the group.
Sinwar, 62, is Israel’s most wanted person in the war since it took control of the Palestinian group. He succeeded Ismail Haniyeh, killed in an action attributed to the Jewish State in Tehran, the capital of Iran, on July 31.
Known by the nickname “Butcher of Khan Yunis”, a double reference to his cruelty and the city of Gaza where he was born, Sinwar is considered the main architect of the October 7, 2023 attack, when Hamas killed 1,170 people and kidnapped 251 in Israel .
The biggest terrorist action in Israeli history triggered the war that is reshaping the balance of the Middle East, with the obliteration of Gaza and, now, the structures of Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas also supported by Iran.
According to Sheet heard from the Israeli military, for a few weeks there has been expectation about the fate of Sinwar, who fell off the radar of the security services. The belief was that he was hiding in one of the Hamas tunnel systems under Gaza, surrounded by some of the 64 hostages Tel Aviv believes are still alive.
This argues against the hypothesis that he fell in a building without human shields, but the fact that the forces publicized the investigation suggests that there was strong evidence that he was there. Still, these same soldiers say that one of the dead was very similar to Sinwar, and now DNA tests will be carried out — the leader spent 22 years in prison in Israel, so there are samples for comparison.
If he is dead, Sinwar will join the historic leader of the Lebanese extremist group, Hassan Nasrallah, who was hit in an attack on September 27, and dozens of senior figures from both groups.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant published a reference to the incident on X, posting a photo of Nasrallah and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, also killed by Israel, with a space between them and a biblical quote: ” You will hunt your enemies and they will fall before you by your sword. Our enemies cannot hide.
In parallel, Israel is preparing retaliation against an Iranian missile attack it suffered at the beginning of the month, risking an even greater escalation. The other two fronts of the war are in the West Bank, against Palestinian groups, and in the Red Sea, involving Yemen’s Houthi rebels — also funded by Tehran.
The eventual death of the leader will make life very difficult for Hamas, which has already lost almost its entire leadership, and may renew negotiations to end the conflict. Sinwar was seen as uncompromising, compared to Haniyeh.
In an interview with Sheet Last month, Micha Koubi, the man who interrogated the now-leader when he was arrested by Israel in 1989, said Sinwar would never accept a deal. “He will never give in”, he stated in the conversation, where he described the terrorist’s personality traits. For Koubi, he had “the eyes of a killer”.
