New Delhi: Israel’s military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who is accused of being a key architect of his organisation’s October 7, 2023 attack in Israel that killed around 1,200 and precipitated the Israel-Hamas war, it announced on Thursday (October 17).
In a statement the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that it and the Israel Security Agency confirmed that IDF soldiers killed Sinwar in an operation in the southern Gaza strip on Wednesday.
“IDF soldiers of the 828th Brigade … operating in the area identified and eliminated three terrorists. After completing the process of identifying the body, it can be confirmed that Yahya Sinwar was eliminated,” the statement read.
According to Reuters, there was no immediate comment from Hamas, the Palestinian political and military organisation that governs the Gaza strip.
Hamas in its October 7, 2023 attack that Sinwar is accused of masterminding also took over 250 people hostage.
Israel subsequently launched an offensive into Gaza, where according to the coastal strip’s health ministry Israeli attacks have killed over 42,000 Palestinians.
Sixty-one-year-old Sinwar became the political leader of Hamas after the August assassination of his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital, Tehran, and which is believed to have been carried out by Israel.
Sinwar was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. He joined Hamas in 1987 shortly after it was founded.
He spent decades in Israeli prisons for killing two Israeli soldiers and several Palestinians suspected of collaboration.
In 2011 Sinwar was released as part of a prisoner exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Palestinian militants had abducted Shalit in 2006.
With inputs from DW.
