Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has been eliminated in an Israeli strike in Gaza, two local media - i24 and Kann News report, citing their sources in the Israeli army. Earlier, the army said it was beginning an examination of one of the bodies found after the attack in the Gaza Strip, believed to be that of Yahya Sinwar.
Security officials quoted by Israeli media said that because Sinwar was in an Israeli prison, Israel had the Hamas leader's DNA, so it was relatively easy to tell if he was the one killed in the Gaza strike. The channel "Al Arabia” also reported that preliminary DNA testing indicated it was Sinuar.
Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant published a cryptic post on X (until recently Twitter) that observers believed implied that Sinuar had indeed been eliminated. Gallant quotes the biblical text from Leviticus: "You will pursue your enemies and they will fall by the sword before you”. "Our enemies cannot hide. We will find them and eliminate them”, the Israeli Defense Minister also wrote in the publication.
Who is Yahya Sinuar?
He succeeded Ismail Haniyeh as head of Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and others, when Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in August this year. Sinwar is believed to be the mastermind behind the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, when about 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed, many of them civilians.
Sinwar is part of the generation that created Hamas. He was born in 1962 in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza. His family originated from the coastal city of Ashkelon, which is now part of Israel. Sinuar spent over two decades in Israeli custody, where he learned Hebrew. He was released in 2011, when Israel exchanged 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for 1 soldier held by Hamas, recalls the "New York Times".
When Hamas was formed during the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s, known as the First Intifada, Sinwar was involved in the creation of the organization's military wing, the "Al Qassam" brigades. In the early years of the Islamist movement, he was responsible for prosecuting potential collaborators with Israel within its own ranks. His actions are so brutal that he earns the nickname "the butcher of Khan Younis" recalls ARD.