Settled: How Hamas’ Sinwar got consumes in his own war
Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency reports
In keeping to the vows of the country’s Prime Minister, Netanyahu, that architects of the October7, 2023 terrorist invasion of southern Israel would not have any hiding place on earth, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has killed the political head and commander of the Hamas terrorist group, Yahya Sinwar.
Sinwar was the acknowledged mastermind of the terrorist attack in which Hamas’ terrorists that killed over 1200 Israeli men, women and children and dragged nearly 300 others from their homes into hostage in Gaza just within hours.
Israeli forces launched immediate counter attack that targets leaders of Hamas in Gaza that has left some parts of the city in ruins, claims over 40,000 Palestines and killed most of Hamas’ top leaders.
Israeli official channels stated that Yahya Sinwar was discovered to be dead after a casual routine encounter between Israeli soldiers and some Hamas militants.
Troops appeared to have run across him in a battle, only to discover afterwards that a body in the rubble was the man Israel has hunted for more than a year.
Sinwar has topped Israel’s most wanted list since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war just over a year ago, and his killing strikes a powerful blow to the militant group. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas of his death.
The military confirmed Sinwar’s death after conducting DNA and other tests on a body that it said was among three militants killed Wednesday during operations in Gaza. Foreign Minister Katz called Sinwar’s killing a “military and moral achievement for the Israeli army,” saying it would “create the possibility to immediately release the hostages.”
Sinwar was one of the chief architects of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel has vowed to kill him since the beginning of its retaliatory campaign in Gaza. He has been Hamas’ top leader inside the Gaza Strip for years, closely connected to its military wing while dramatically building up its capabilities.
Sinwar
An Israeli security official said it appeared that the man who turned out to be Sinwar was killed in a battle, not in a planned targeted airstrike.
Photos circulating online showed the body of a man resembling Sinwar with a gaping head wound, dressed in a military-style vest, half buried in the rubble of a destroyed building. The security official confirmed the photos were taken by Israeli security officials at the scene. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
The Israeli news site N12 said Sinwar appears to have been killed by chance in a battle on Wednesday. It said that troops tracked a group of militants into a building, then attacked the militants with tank fire, causing the building to collapse. As troops unearthed the dead militants, they noticed that one appeared to resemble Sinwar.
Sinwar was imprisoned by Israel from the late 1980s until 2011, and during that time he underwent treatment for brain cancer – leaving Israeli authorities with extensive medical records.
President Joe Biden has been briefed on Israel’s investigation into whether it killed Sinwar, and U.S. officials have been in close contact with Israeli officials throughout Thursday morning, according to a senior administration official.
Sinwar was chosen as Hamas’s top leader in July after his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in an apparent Israeli strike in the Iranian capital Tehran. Israel has also claimed to have killed the head of Hamas’ military wing Mohammed Deif in an airstrike, but the group has said he survived.
The report of his death came as Israeli forces continued a more than week-old major air and ground assault in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. On Thursday, an Israeli strike hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing at least 28 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Fares Abu Hamza, head of the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency unit in the north, said the dead included a woman and four children, correcting an earlier report of five children. He said dozens of people were wounded.
The Israeli military said it targeted a command center run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad inside the school. It provided a list of around a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was called in. It was not immediately possible to verify the names.
Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza. The Israeli military 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 into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Some 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up a little more than half of the fatalities.
Northern Gaza was the first target of Israel’s ground invasion nearly a year ago and has suffered the heaviest destruction of the war, with entire neighborhoods in Gaza City and other towns reduced to rubble. Most of the population fled after Israel issued evacuation orders in the opening days of the war, but about 400,000 are believed to have remained despite the harsh conditions.
Earlier this month, Israel once again ordered the full-scale evacuation of the north, and allowed no food aid to enter the area for around two weeks. That led many Palestinians to fear that it had adopted a surrender-or-starve strategy suggested by former Israeli generals.
Israel allowed two shipments of aid to enter 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 start of the conflict, Israeli forces have launched repeated operations into Jabaliya, a densely populated urban refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. The military says militants have repeatedly regrouped there after major operations.
The Israeli has has killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, seen as the mastermind of the 7 October terror attack inside Israel.
Sinwar had evaded the Israeli military’s attempts to hunt him since its retaliatory war against Hamas inside Gaza began last year, he is said to have been killed in a chance encounter with Israeli troops, rather than a targeted strike.
Long considered a planner of Hamas’s military strategy in Gaza, all while hiding in the tunnels that criss-cross under the territory, Sinwar consolidated his power when he was made the top leader of Hamas in the summer. He was elevated to that post after the assassination of the group’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh in a suspected Israeli strike in Tehran in July.
Sinwar was born in a refugee camp in Khan Younis in 1962. His family had fled its home, along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians during the wars that created the state of Israel. It is this history that is said to have played a major role in his decision to join Hamas in the 1980s.
Sinwar had been recruited by Hamas’s founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
He was first arrested in 1982, preceding a string of arrests throughout the 80s. After his release from prison in 1985, Sinwar co-founded the Munazzamat al Jihad w’al-Dawa (Majd) along with Rawhi Mushtaha, an organisation aiming to weed out Palestinians who were collaborating with the Israeli government.
By 1987, this had become the “police” of Hamas, according to the Palestinian Information Centre. Sinwar, with a reputation for brutality and ruthlessness, earned the title of the “Butcher of Khan Younis”.
In the late 1980s, Sinwar was arrested by Israel and admitted to killing 12 suspected collaborators, and sentenced to four life terms for offences which included killing two Israeli soldiers. He reportedly made multiple attempts to escape, including one where he tried to dig a hole in his cell floor in the hopes he could tunnel out.
He spent more than two decades in prison in Israel, where he learned Hebrew and developed an understanding of Israeli society. During his time in prison, Sinwar told an Italian journalist that prison is a crucible. “Prison builds you,” he said. He added that it gave him time to think about the price he was willing to pay for what he believed in.
He was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2008, surviving after treatment by Israeli doctors, before his eventual release from prison in 2011 after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a deal, with 1,026 prisoners released in return for an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid.
Sinwar is believed to have said: “For the prisoner, capturing an Israeli soldier is the best news in the universe, because he knows that a glimmer of hope has been opened for him.” After his release he married and had children.
Sinwar quickly rose up the Hamas leadership ranks after his return to Gaza. He was believed to be behind the killing of Hamas commander Mahmoud Ishtewi in 2016 amid an internal power struggle.
After becoming the head of Hamas in Gaza in 2017, Sinwar worked with Ismail Haniyeh to align the militant group with Iran while boosting its military capabilities. He won a second term in 2021, before coming Hamas’ top leader after Haniyeh’s death.
In November, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said Sinwar was isolated in his bunker, adding that he was “cut off from his surroundings, his chain of command is weakening”.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said of his nation’s most wanted man: “Mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, who was responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7, was killed today by [Israeli soldiers soldiers”. The killing represents a major boost to the Israeli military and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after a string of high-profile assassinations of prominent leaders of its enemies in recent months.
Sinwar, is thought to have engineered the attack alongside with Mohammed Deif. Deif was killed in an airstrike on Gaza in July, the same month Hamas’ political leader, Ismael Haniyeh was assassinated in a strike in Iran. The 7 October attack killed around 1,200 Israelis, while another 251 people were taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory war inside Gaza from land and air has killed 42,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in Gaza.
Israel’s Kan Radio reported that Sinwar had been killed “by chance”. The station also said the bodies were found with money and fake IDs.
Channel 12 reported that the incident in question took place in the southern city of Rafah, with troops spotting several fighters entering a building ordering a tank strike against it, which collapsed the structure. Graphic photos and video from the scene, broadcast on Israeli media, showed what appeared to be Sinwar’s body, with a head wound, dressed in a military-style vest, half buried in the rubble of a destroyed building.
The last known footage of Sinwar shows a stooped man walking through a tunnel beneath Gaza accompanied by his wife and children. The video was retrieved by Israeli soldiers during a raid on Gaza earlier this year but is thought to date to the days immediately after the 7 October attack.
