Jerusalem: The Israeli military announced the death of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the October 7 attack, after a group of soldiers killed him in a surprise firefight in southern Gaza’s Rafah.
His death represents a massive blow to the Palestinian militant movement that has waged a war with Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip for more than a year now.
Here is what we know about the killing of Israel’s most wanted man.
According to the Israeli military, Sinwar met his end at the hands of a routine patrol on Wednesday.
It said a group of soldiers of the 828th Brigade (Bislach) was moving through the city of Rafah when it came across three Palestinian militants.
Israeli media and military officials said there was no prior intelligence pointing to Sinwar’s presence in the area.
“Sinwar hid in places that our forces have explored over a long period of time,” military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said during a briefing Thursday.
“The forces identified three terrorists who were going from home to home on the run,” Hagari said.
As the soldiers chased them, Sinwar split from the other two, public broadcaster Kan reported.
A tank fired at a building in which two of the militants hid, while Sinwar took cover in another house, it said.
“Sinwar ran away alone into one of the buildings and our forces scanned the area with a drone,” Hagari said.
Drone footage released by the military showed Sinwar covered in dust sitting in an armchair staring down a drone as the device entered the house devastated by strikes.
The grainy footage showed Sinwar alone with one hand severely injured and his head covered in a traditional scarf, throwing a stick at the approaching drone during his final moments.
“We identified him as a terrorist inside a building and we shot into the building and we entered to scan the area. We found him with a gun and 40 thousand shekels ($10,750),” said Hagari.
Unverified images circulating online showed Israeli soldiers circled around the mangled corpse of a man resembling Sinwar who appeared to have suffered a severe head wound.
The man was wearing a chunky watch and surrounded by rubble.
The military conducted immediate DNA testing along with dental examinations and other forensic enquiries that helped confirm Sinwar’s identity.
Later on Thursday, Sinwar’s body was brought to a laboratory in Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
The initial findings described Sinwar’s physical condition as “good even though he had spent a long time in tunnels,” Kan reported.
Sinwar had not been seen in public since the war erupted with the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The Israeli military and media regularly claimed he was hiding deep in the warren of tunnels under Gaza, while images released by the army showed CCTV footage of a man exiting from a tunnel it claimed was Sinwar.
There were also reports that Sinwar had surrounded himself with several hostages who were seized by militants during the October 7 onslaught.
But when Sinwar was finally cornered and killed, there were no captives by his side.
“In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area,” a military statement said on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the killing of Sinwar and said his death could be the “beginning of the end” to the conflict.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant remained defiant in the wake of the killing, saying Israel would “pursue every terrorist and eliminate them” and bring back the hostages still held in Gaza.
Families of hostages, however, expressed concern over the fate of their loved ones as they called for a deal to secure their release.
At a Tel Aviv rally just hours after Sinwar’s death was announced, El-Sisil, 60, who gave only her first name, told AFP the killing presented a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for “a hostage deal to end the war.”
Hamas, meanwhile, has not confirmed its leader’s death.
Experts say it the group may bid its time before acknowledging his death, while his body remains with the Israeli military.
His killing so soon after the death of his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, in July also begs the question of who might succeed him.
What we know about the killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar
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What we know about the killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar
- Sinwar met his end at the hands of a routine patrol on Wednesday
Israel sends more troops into north Gaza, deepens raid
- The escalation of Israel’s Jabalia operation came a day after it said it had killed Yahya Sinwar,
CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Friday it sent another army unit to support its forces operating in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, where residents said tanks blew up roads and houses as they thrust further into the territory.
Residents of Jabalia in northern Gaza said Israeli tanks had reached the heart of the camp, using heavy air and ground fire, after pushing through suburbs and residential districts.
They added that the Israeli army was destroying dozens of houses on a daily basis, sometimes from the air and the ground and by placing bombs in buildings then detonating them remotely.
The Israeli military said its forces, which have been operating in Jabalia for the past two weeks, killed dozens of militants in close-quarters combat on Thursday and carried out aerial strikes and dismantled military infrastructure.
The escalation of Israel’s Jabalia operation came a day after it said it had killed the country’s number one enemy, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s chief, whom it blamed for ordering the Oct 7 attack on Israel, the deadliest in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli military says its operation in Jabalia is intended to stop Hamas fighters from regrouping for more attacks.
Residents said Israeli forces had effectively isolated the far northern Gazan towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya from Gaza City, blocking movement except for those families heeding evacuation orders and leaving the three towns.
Appeal for immediate hospital supplies
On Friday, health officials appealed for fuel, medical supplies and food to be sent immediately to three northern Gaza hospitals overwhelmed by the number of patients and injuries.
At the Kamal Adwan Hospital, medics had to replace children in intensive care with more critical cases of adults badly wounded by Israeli air strikes on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Jabalia on Thursday, killing 28 people.
The children were moved to another division inside the facility, where they were being well taken care of, he said.
“All those cases are critical and they need medical intervention,” said Hussam Abu Safiya, Kamal Adwan’s director in a video sent to the media.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, said on X that the attack on the school was the third on an UNRWA facility this week, adding the agency had now lost a total of 231 team members in the past year of fighting.
Abu Safiya said 300 medical staff, who had been working for 14 days, were becoming too exhausted, especially at the failure of the hospital to provide them with adequate food as all supplies were depleting.
Doctors at the Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals have refused to leave their patients despite evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military at the start of its Jabalia push.
Northern Gaza, which had been home to well over half the territory’s 2.3 million people, was bombed to rubble in the first phase of Israel’s assault on the territory a year ago.
Israel began its military campaign after the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas-led fighters, who killed 1,200 people and captured 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive so far, according to Gaza’s health authorities.
Hamas official says group cannot be eliminated, does not confirm Sinwar’s death
A senior Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group cannot be eliminated with the killing of its leaders, but stopped short of confirming the death of its chief, Yahya Sinwar.
“Hamas is a liberation movement led by people looking for freedom and dignity, and this cannot be eliminated,” Basem Naim, senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP.
In a statement, he listed several Hamas leaders killed in the past, and said their deaths had boosted the group’s popularity.
“It seems that Israel believes that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and the struggle of the Palestinian people,” Naim said.
“Hamas each time became stronger and more popular, and these leaders became an icon for future generations to continue the journey toward a free Palestine.”
UNIFIL vows to stay in Lebanon despite several ‘deliberate’ Israeli attacks
- UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti: ‘We need to stay, they asked us to move’
GENEVA: A United Nations’ UNIFIL peacekeeping mission spokesperson on Friday said that the 10,000-strong mission would remain in Lebanon despite several direct attacks by Israeli forces in recent days which he described as deliberate.
“We need to stay, they asked us to move,” said UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti by video link from Beirut. “The devastation and destruction of many villages along the Blue Line, and even beyond, is shocking,” he said, referring to a UN-mapped line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Asked about the downing of a drone near its ship off the Lebanese coast on Thursday, he said: “The drone was coming from the south but circling around the ship and getting very, very close, a few meters away from the ship.”
Israeli military kill two attackers crossing from Jordan’s Dead Sea area
- Two of them were killed after they opened fire on Israeli forces
DUBAI: The Israeli military said on Friday it had identified what it called “a number of suspects” in Jordan’s border area trying to cross into Israel south of the Dead Sea region and had killed two of them after they opened fire on Israeli forces.
“Two terrorists who crossed a few meters over the border into Israel and opened fire toward the forces were eliminated by two IDF (Israel Defense Forces) reservists in the Home Front Command,” the military said in an updated statement.
“During exchanges of fire with the terrorists, an IDF soldier and an IDF reservist were lightly and moderately injured and were evacuated to a hospital to receive medical treatment.”
The military added that Israeli security forces continued to conduct searches “due to the suspicion of the presence of an additional terrorist in the area.”
A military source with the General Command of the Jordanian Armed Forces said in a statement posted on its website that there was “no truth” in reports that Jordanian soldiers had crossed the western border of Jordan into Israel.
The Jordanian military stressed the necessity of receiving information from official sources and not circulating rumors, the source added.
The latest incident follows a separate attack on Sept. 8 when a gunman from Jordan killed three Israeli civilians at the Allenby Bridge border crossing in the occupied West Bank before security forces shot him dead.
Anti-Israeli sentiment runs high in Jordan, and the Allenby Bridge attack was the first of its kind along the border with Jordan since Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas carried out an assault on southern Israel, sparking the war in Gaza that has escalated throughout the region.
Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994 and have close security ties.
Dozens of trucks cross daily from Jordan, with goods from Jordan and the Gulf that supply both the West Bank and Israeli markets.
Lebanon issues rare rebuke to Iran over ‘interference’
- Speaker of Iran’s parliament said Tehran was ready to negotiate with France on implementing a UN resolution concerning southern Lebanon
- Prime Minister Najib Mikati: ‘We are surprised by this position, which constitutes a blatant interference in Lebanese affairs’
BEIRU: Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister on Friday made a rare rebuke to Iran and said Tehran’s envoy should be summoned over reported comments by a senior Iranian official that it would be ready to help “negotiate” to implement a UN resolution on Lebanon.
Lebanese PM Najib Mikati said in a statement the comments amounted to “a blatant interference in Lebanese affairs.”
Criticism of Iran by top Lebanese officials is unusual, particularly given Tehran’s sponsorship of the powerful Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which is currently locked in battles against Israeli troops along Lebanon’s southern border.
In an interview published in France’s Le Figaro on Thursday, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf was quoted as saying his country would be ready to “negotiate” with France to implement United Nations Resolution 1701.
That resolution, which ended the last round of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, calls for southern Lebanon to be free of any troops or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state.
Mikati said on Friday that he was “surprised” by Ghalibaf’s comments and said they were an attempt to “establish a rejected guardianship over Lebanon.”
He said such a negotiation was the prerogative of the Lebanese state and asked Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib to summon Iran’s Chargé d’Affaires in Beirut.
There was no immediate comment from Ghalibaf or from Iran’s embassy in Beirut.
An unnamed Iranian source close to Ghalibaf denied the interpretation of the speaker’s comments, telling pro-Iran broadcaster Al-Mayadeen that any collaboration with Europe would aim to reach a ceasefire that is backed by Lebanon’s government and “resistance,” in a reference to Hezbollah.
