Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said today, that the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group "Hamas" Yahya Sinuar was killed, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
"Mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7, was killed today by Israeli Defense Forces soldiers," Katz said in a statement.
Besides Haniya, the Israeli army has already eliminated several senior commanders of "Hamas" in the Gaza Strip, as well as leading figures of the Lebanese Shiite group led by its leader Hassan Nasrallah, dealing heavy blows to their supporting enemies.
If Sinwar's death is confirmed, it would escalate hostilities in the Middle East, where fears of a wider conflict have grown as Israel prepares to respond to an Iranian missile attack since October 1 this year.
The elimination of Sinuar would raise the morale of the Israeli army and of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally, Reuters also points out. According to the agency, the leader of "Hamas" has never repented of the bloody attack on Israel last fall, in which, according to Israeli figures, more than 1,200 people were killed and some 250 hostages were taken, even as the Israeli counter-offensive claimed tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties in Gaza .
"From Patched Sack to Leader" - with this title, the Reuters agency describes the rise of Yahya Sinuar to the top of "Hamas". Before the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict erupted, he sometimes talked about his early years in the enclave during the Israeli occupation. He once described how his mother sewed clothes from UN aid sacks. This is what Wissam Ibrahim, living in Gaza, who spoke with Sinwar at the time, told Reuters.
The leader of "Hamas" grew up in refugee camps in the family of Palestinians who fled the Israeli city of Ashkelon during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Becomes a member of "Hamas" shortly after the organization was founded in the 1980s.
In a semi-autobiographical novel written in prison, Sinuar describes the Israeli army's demolition of Palestinian houses with a bulldozer he calls "a monster that crushes the bones of its prey". In prison, he gained notoriety as a merciless bully, carrying out orders to punish Palestinians who were suspected of passing information to Israel.