MONITORING (SW) – Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, has been killed by Israeli forces, ending a year-long hunt for the mastermind of the 7 October attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, confirmed reports on Thursday, October 17, in a message sent to counterparts around the world.
His death is a major boost to the Israeli military and the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations of enemy leaders in recent months, reported Guardian.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported that an infantry battalion, operating with a tank unit, had identified a group of men running into a building. The forces opened fire using tank shells, and the bodies were buried under the rubble.
Sinwar considered himself an expert on Israel’s military and politics. He spoke perfect Hebrew, learned during more than 20 years in Israeli prisons, and was the driving force behind Hamas’s strategy of the past few years: to lull Israel into thinking the group had been deterred from fighting, before launching the surprise attack in which 1,200 people were killed and another 250 taken hostage.
Sinwar, 61, was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza and grew up in poverty before studying at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he received a bachelor’s degree in Arabic Studies.
Sinwar joined Hamas at an early age, soon after the group’s founding, spending much of his youth in and out of Israeli prisons. He rose through the ranks as an infamous enforcer, in charge of finding and killing suspected Palestinian collaborators with Israel and was instrumental in building the group’s military capabilities.
In 1989, he was sentenced to four life sentences for the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he suspected of collaboration. He served 22 years, becoming a respected prison leader. He was treated for brain cancer in 2008.
Sinwar was released in the 2011 prisoner exchange in which an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was returned for 1,000 Palestinians. He married on his return to Gaza and had three children.
