Israel confirms they’ve killed Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar — and it was completely by chance
Hamas chief and Oct. 7 mastermind, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by chance in a routine ground operation in southern Gaza on Wednesday — after years of eluding Israeli forces, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed Thursday.
“Eliminated: Yahya Sinwar,” the military announced on X.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the death of his country’s most wanted militant as an “important milestone in the sunset of Hamas’s rule in Gaza,” the New York Times reported.
However, the prime minister stopped short of declaring total victory in the war against the terror group.
“Today, evil took a heavy blow — the mission ahead of us is still unfinished,” Netanyahu said.
Sinwar — the architect of the single deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust — was killed in Rafah in a routine raid that caught him by chance.
IDF troops were on a regular patrol, and not specifically searching for the terror chief, when they encountered several Hamas militants.
A tank unit was searching for Hamas tunnels and military sites in the southern Gazan city when they spotted moving in a building thought to be empty, former Israeli military officials briefed on the operation told the Wall Street Journal.
The tank, part of a junior team of soldiers completing a commanders course, launched a shell at the building, the officials said.
“All this event was a complete coincidence,” Amir Avivi, a former senior military commander in the Gaza division told the WSJ. “Only when they went in and saw him did they say it looked like Sinwar.”
The soldiers confirmed the body belonged to Israel’s No. 1 target by using a wooden stick to push back the man’s upper lip — revealing Sinwar’s signature front gap, which matched dental records the country had on the Hamas mastermind, The Times reported.
Although Israel wasn’t expecting Sinwar to be in that building, the IDF and American intelligence had pointed to Rafah as his likely hiding place among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled there earlier this year.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Sinwar was being tracked for months, with DNA evidence suggesting he was in the same tunnel where Hamas had killed six hostages in August, including American Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
Dramatic footage captured his last, desperate moments alive after the IDF sent a drone into the building to survey the damage.
An injured Sinwar, who had his face covered, can be seen sitting alone in the destroyed building — with the IDF soldiers unaware that they were seeing the very man they had been hunting for since he ordered the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
When Sinwar finally notices the drone hovering just a few feet from him, he struggles to fling a piece of wood at the device in a last-ditch effort to take it out.
The soldiers then ordered a second strike on the building, killing Sinwar and two other Hamas terrorists who were traveling with him.
After recovering the body and comparing it to the DNA samples the Israeli military had of Sinwar during his time as a prisoner, officials confirmed the man killed in the strike was the terror chief.
Graphic photos also show the lifeless Hamas chief wearing a bulletproof vest, surrounded by grenades, lying in the rubble of a building with a head wound.
“We found him with a flak jacket and a gun and 40,000 shekels [$10,700],” Hagari, the IDF spokesman, told The Times.
An expired passport reported to belong to a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration teacher was also found on his body, according to a reporter for Israel Public Radio.
The worker identified in the passport, which expired in 2017, left Gaza in April and is currently in Egypt, according to the journalist. It’s unclear if the ID is real and how Sinwar got his hands on it.
Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said at a news briefing Thursday that it is believed Sinwar was trying to escape to the north when he was killed — which could explain why he was above ground after years of evading Israeli forces using Hamas’ vast network of underground tunnels.
“I believe he was running, moved from an underground compound to houses trying to escape north to a more secure compound,” Hagari said.
The Jewish state’s Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz called Sinwar’s death a “victory for the entire free world.”
“Mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, who was responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7, was killed today by IDF soldiers,” Katz said in a written statement from his office.
“This is a great military and moral achievement for Israel and a victory for the entire free world against the axis of evil of radical Islam led by Iran.”
While intelligence officials believed that Sinwar would be surrounded by hostages to use as human shields, the IDF confirmed that no hostages were injured in the operation that took Sinwar out.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the Oct. 7 mastermind’s death.
Blinken said the US stands with Israel to hold Hamas’ leadership accountable for the Oct. 7 massacre, pointing out that Sinwar had stood in the way of the cease-fire negotiations.
“In the days ahead, the United States will redouble its efforts with partners to end this conflict, secure the release all hostages, and chart a new path forward that will enable the people of Gaza to rebuild their lives and realize their aspirations free from war and free from the brutal grip of Hamas,” he added.
“On multiple occasions over the past months, Sinwar rebuffed efforts by the United States and its partners to bring this war to a close through an agreement that would return the hostages to their families and alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people,” Blinken said.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hailed Sinwar’s death as a “good day for Israel” and a chance to bring peace to the region.
“I called Bibi Netanyahu to congratulate him on getting Sinwar,” Biden said as he arrived in Berlin on Thursday. “ It’s time for this war to end and bring these hostages home.”
Biden likened the operation to how the Obama administration ordered the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
“Today… proves once again that no terrorists anywhere in the world can escape justice, no matter how long it takes,” Biden said.
The president added that he will be sending Blinken to Israel in the coming days to discuss a “day after” plan for Gaza with Hamas no longer running the government.
Netanyahu and his cabinet members had sworn to hunt down and kill Sinwar after learning that he was the man behind the Oct. 7 massacre that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and saw another 251 kidnapped.
Just days after the terrorist attack, Sinwar was seen fleeing with his family inside Hamas’ underground tunnel system, with the terror chief managing to elude the IDF’s detection for more than a year.
Sinwar, who served as Hamas’ Gaza chief since 2017, rose to the top of the terror group when its former leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in July.
Once Sinwar took over, the cease-fire negotiations between Hamas and Israel froze as the new chief opposed any end to the war.
Sinwar, who previously described the death of Palestinians in Gaza as “necessary sacrifices,” has repeatedly gotten in the way of the hostage negotiations, urging the group to avoid compromise as he claimed it was poised to finally eliminate the Jewish state.
The extremist was seen as a “megalomaniac” even by his own peers, who privately referred to him as a hindrance to Hamas’ political chiefs who were trying to legitimize a Palestinian state, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Sinwar, however, had the backing of Hamas’ rank and file, who respected him for the 22 years he spent behind bars in Israel before his release in 2011.
The Hamas chief also commanded fear as the infamous “Butcher of Khan Younis,” who hunted down and murdered Palestinians suspected of working with Israel.
It remains to be seen who will replace Sinwar as Hamas’ de facto leader.
Among the favorites to succeed him are his brother, Mohammed, who is widely regarded as a mirror to his older brother’s ideals and credited for helping Hamas organize the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.
Shalit was eventually freed in 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 Hamas terrorists, including the elder Sinwar.
With Sinwar gone, the families of the remaining 97 hostages are calling for Israel to put forward a new cease-fire agreement now that their biggest hindrance is gone, the Times of Israel reports.
“We have settled the score with the arch-murderer Sinwar, but now, more than ever, the lives of my son Matan and the other hostages are in tangible danger,” mother Einav Zangauker wrote to Netanyahu.
“There will be no real closure, no total victory if we don’t save their lives and bring them all back,” she added.
Speaking with Netanyahu on Thursday from Air Force One, Biden agreed that now is the best time to revamp the hostage exchange deal, the Prime Minister’s office said in a statement.
With Post Wires
