Members of Israel’s security cabinet have been informed that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the devastating October 7th, 2023 attack that triggered the Gaza war, is very likely dead, two officials with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday.
Two of Israel’s broadcasters, KAN and N12 News also cited Israeli officials as saying Sinwar was dead. The Israeli military said Sinwar may have been hit in an operation in the Gaza Strip that it said had targeted three militants.
Israel has killed several commanders of Hamas in Gaza as well as senior figures of Hizbullah in Lebanon, including its veteran leader Hassan Nasrallah, dealing heavy blows to its arch-foes.
Hamas has not commented on the fate of Sinwar, who was recently elevated to paramount leader of the Palestinian militant group after running its operations in Gaza.
If his death is confirmed it will dial up hostilities in the Middle East where fears of a wider conflict have grown as Israel plans its response to the October 1st missile attack carried out by Iran after Israeli air strikes on Iranian-allied militants.
It would also represent a major boost to the Israeli military and prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Sinwar, the chief architect of the October 7th attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mainly civilians, according to Israeli tallies, has been on Israel’s wanted list ever since. The attacks marked the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded by launching a massive offensive on Hamas-run Gaza, killing more than 42,400 people and displacing most of the enclave’s population of 2.3 million people, according to Gaza health authorities.
Sinwar, who made his name by punishing Palestinian collaborators with Israel, has so far eluded detection, possibly hiding in the warren of tunnels Hamas has built under Gaza over the past two decades.
Previously leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, he was named as its overall leader following the assassination of former political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.
Israel’s Army Radio said the incident had occurred during a targeted ground operation in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip during which Israeli troops killed three militants and took their bodies.
It said visual evidence suggested it was likely that one of the men was Sinwar and DNA tests were being conducted. Israel has samples of Sinwar’s DNA from his period in an Israeli jail.
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The Israeli military said there were no signs that hostages had been present in the building where the three militants were killed.
If Sinwar’s death is confirmed it will dial up tensions in the Middle East where fears of a wider Middle East conflict have grown as Israel plans its response to the October 1st missile attack carried out by Iran after Israeli air strikes on Iranian-allied militants.
The Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday that more than 42,438 Palestinians have been killed and 99,246 injured in Israel’s military offensive in the enclave since October 7th, 2023.
At least 28 Palestinians including children were killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike on a shelter in the northern Gaza Strip, a Gaza health ministry official said, while Israel said the attack targeted tens of militants at the site.
Dozens were also injured in the strike, said the official, Medhat Abbas, adding: “There is no water to extinguish the fire. There is nothing. This is a massacre.”
“Civilians and children are being killed, burned under fire,” said Mr Abbas.
The Israeli military said in a statement the strike targeted militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, who operated from within the Abu Hussein School in Jabilia that had been serving as a shelter for displaced people.
It said dozens of militants were present inside the compound when the strike took place, and provided the names of at least 12 of them, which Reuters could not immediately verify.
Earlier on Thursday, Palestinian health officials said at least 11 Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli strikes in Gaza City, while several others were killed in central and southern Gaza areas.
The entire enclave remains at risk of famine and is experiencing emergency levels of hunger, with intense Israeli military operations adding to concerns and hampering humanitarian access, a global monitor said on Thursday.
About 1.84 million people across the Palestinian territory are suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, including nearly 133,000 people experiencing the most severe, or “catastrophic”, levels, according to an analysis from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
Israel struck Syria’s port city of Latakia early on Thursday, Syrian state media reported, and the United States said it carried out strikes on Wednesday in areas of Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthis.
Qatar, which has mediated in numerous failed ceasefire talks, said there had been no engagement with any parties for the last three to four weeks on the Gaza war.
On its northern front in Lebanon, Israel has said it will not stop fighting a now weakened Hizbullah before it can safely return its citizens to their homes near the Lebanese border and said any ceasefire negotiations will be held “under fire”.
The air strikes have put Lebanese on edge.
Hizbullah member of parliament Hassan Fadlallah said the armed group would keep fighting, but he reiterated its leaders are carefully co-ordinating with Lebanon’s speaker of parliament in efforts to reach a ceasefire. Israeli soldiers have not managed to control any villages in south Lebanon, he added.
Israel says its ground operation has so far killed dozens of Hizbullah fighters and that its troops have seized thousands of weapons and destroyed the group’s bunkers and tunnel below southern Lebanon’s villages.
These were being used as staging grounds to launch an attack resembling Hamas’s devastating cross-border raid on Israel which sparked the Gaza war, Israel added.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that over the past 24 hours it had killed 45 Hizbullah fighters in southern Lebanon.
Israeli operations in Lebanon have killed at least 2,350 people over the last year, according to the health ministry, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced. The death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in the same period, according to Israel.
Elsewhere, the commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards warned Israel on Thursday against attacking the Islamic Republic in retaliation for a missile barrage as the Israeli military stepped up its offensive in Lebanon against Tehran-backed Hizbullah.
“We tell you [Israel] that if you commit any aggression against any point we will painfully attack the same point of yours,” Hossein Salami said in a televised speech, adding that Iran can penetrate Israel’s defences.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday about Israel’s operations in Lebanon and Gaza, aiming to avert a regional war.
There has been speculation that Israel could strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, as it has long threatened to do and other options include attacks on its vital oil sites.
Russia is warning Israel against any strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, state news agency TASS quoted deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Thursday.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi, on a Middle East tour, met Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, with Mr Sisi reiterating Egypt’s call to avoid an expansion of the conflict, the Egyptian presidency said.
However Israel shows no signs of easing its military campaigns against Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and it has vowed to punish Iran for its attack. – Reuters