Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is dead, the Israel Defense Forces reportedly informed the Israeli cabinet following a strike in Rafah that was not originally intended to take out the Oct. 7 mastermind.
Photos appeared to show a brainless Sinwar lying in rubble after a group of IDF reservists spotted three terrorists in a building and struck, according to Israeli reporter Nadav Eyal. DNA tests have since confirmed that one of those three men was Sinwar, Israel’s Channel 12 reported. N12 News, another Israeli network, wrote that the Jewish state’s cabinet members “have been updated: Yahya Sinwar has been eliminated.”
Sinwar has evaded Israeli forces for nearly a year since he orchestrated the Oct. 7 attack that slaughtered scores of innocents. His death would mark a massive victory for Israel less than two weeks after the country marked the one-year anniversary of the terror spree.
- IDF soldiers pose in front of a mural depicting Sinwar as a rat.
Since the war began, Israel has repeatedly eliminated Hamas’s senior leadership in targeted strikes, including a daring operation in Tehran earlier this year that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. Israel has also wiped out Hezbollah’s top commanders in Lebanon, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah and the heads of the terror group’s elite fighting forces.
Sinwar, 62, assumed Hamas’s top leadership post in July, after Haniyeh was killed by a remote explosive device while attending the inauguration of Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran.
Sinwar has helmed Hamas’s day-to-day operations in Gaza since 2017 and was the central architect of the brutal Oct. 7 terror spree that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and saw 251 people, including Americans, kidnapped by the jihadi group. More than 100 remain in captivity, and Sinwar was known to travel through the Gaza Strip with several in tow, hoping to deter an Israeli strike on his location.
Earlier this year, reports emerged that Sinwar had begun dressing like a woman while walking the streets of Gaza to avoid IDF detection.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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