Israel says it may have killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar

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Israel said on Thursday it may have killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the deadly October 7 attack last year.

The Israel Defense Forces said it was examining the possibility that Sinwar was one of three militants it killed “during IDF operations in Gaza”.

“At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” the Israeli military said in a statement, noting that there were no signs of hostages in the building where the militants were killed.

If confirmed, Sinwar’s death would be a pivotal moment in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza, delivering a devastating blow to Hamas and a symbolic victory to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel has already killed many of Hamas’s military leaders over the past year in assassinations across the region. But Sinwar, who was believed to be hiding in Hamas’s vast tunnel network under Gaza, had been a more elusive target.

The circumstances and location of the Israeli military operation remain unclear.

The IDF is conducting a major ground offensive in Gaza’s north, primarily around the Jabalia refugee camp. But it has also said that it has recently killed militants in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and begun operations in the outskirts of the central refugee camps of Nuseirat and al-Bureij.

Sinwar took over leadership of Hamas this summer, after his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh was killed by an alleged Israeli explosion in Tehran in July.

Originally from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, Sinwar had helped build Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, from its inception in the 1980s.

He then spent nearly two decades in Israeli prison but was released in 2011 as part of a swap deal for a seized Israeli soldier.

Once back in Gaza, he rose swiftly through the organisation’s ranks. He became the key interlocutor between the group’s political and military wings and ultimately assumed leadership over the entire Hamas-controlled territory.

The 62-year-old, also known as Abu Ibrahim, is widely considered to have masterminded Hamas’s devastating cross-border assault on southern Israel last October along with Qassam Brigades chief Mohammed Deif.

Deif, along with much of the top Hamas military leadership in Gaza, was killed over the past year in Israeli air strikes.

Israeli officials had vowed that they would get to Sinwar too, describing him as a “dead man walking”.

On Thursday afternoon, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant cryptically tweeted pictures of Deif and Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah who was killed in a massive Israeli strike in Beirut late last month.

A black square was left open between them, with Gallant quoting a biblical verse: “And you will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword.”