Israel Concludes it Killed Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar in Military Operation

Last updated on October 18th, 2024 at 09:10 am

The Israeli military has concluded its forces killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, during operations in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 16.

The Israeli military announced its conclusions in an Oct. 17 press statement, following a DNA confirmation process.

Hamas has since confirmed Sinwar’s death.

The Israeli announcement comes as Israeli forces have been fighting in the Gaza Strip for more than a year, in an effort to eliminate Hamas as a political and militant presence within the territory. The Israeli military operations began after Hamas gunmen stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, carrying out a coordinate attack and taking around 250 people back to the Gaza Strip as captives.

“We have come to terms with Sinwar, this is an important moment in the war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement following the Israeli military’s announcement.

Netanyahu said Israeli forces would “continue with all our might” until they can recover the remaining hostages in Gaza. He called on remaining Hamas fighters to surrender and be spared.

“Whoever lays down his arms and returns our abductees, we will allow him to leave and live,” he said.

President Joe Biden also joined in celebrating the news of Sinwar’s death.

“This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world,” Biden said Thursday. “As the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Sinwar was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, and citizens from over 30 countries.”

Sinwar, 61, has been the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2017. Israeli officials believe he played a key role in the Oct. 7 attacks.

Sinwar also served as the chairman of the Hamas political bureau since August, after his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an explosion while visiting Iran. Israel did not claim responsibility for Haniyeh’s death, but both Hamas and the Iranian government concluded they were behind the blast.

Even before the Israeli military announced his death, unconfirmed photos began to circulate online of a man bearing Sinwar’s resemblance, buried under a pile of rubble.

“Yahya Sinwar was eliminated after hiding for the past year behind the civilian population of Gaza, both above and below ground in Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip. The dozens of operations carried out by the [Israel Defense Forces] and the [Israel Securities Authority] over the last year, and in recent weeks in the area where he was eliminated, restricted Yahya Sinwar’s operational movement as he was pursued by the forces and led to his elimination,” the Israeli military said Thursday.

Sinwar was born on Oct. 29, 1962, in the Gaza town of Khan Yunis, to parents who fled from Ashkelon in the 1948, after the Israeli’s declared their statehood. He grew up in the Gaza Strip and was among the first to join Hamas as it formed in 1987.

Israeli authorities arrested Sinwar in 1988, on charges of murdering two Israeli soldiers and others Gazans suspected of collaborating with the Israeli government. Sinwar received four consecutive life sentences for the killings but won his release in a 2011 prisoner exchange in which the Israeli government released more than 1,000 Palestinian detainees in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas captured in 2006.

Hamas and the Israeli government have come to blows multiple times since Sinwar’s release in 2011. The longstanding Israel-Palestine conflict boiled over into armed conflict during the summer of 2014 and again during an 11-day period in May of 2021. Hamas also supported a series of demonstrations along the Gaza-Israel barrier between 2018 and 2019, during which around 200 demonstrators were killed and thousands more were wounded during confrontations with Israeli forces.