Israel has claimed to have killed Hamas leader Yahia Sinwar in an attack in Gaza. international

Israel claims to have killed Hamas leader Yahia Sinwar, who was the most wanted man in Israel and was believed to be the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attacks in Gaza, his death was officially confirmed by Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Thursday. It happened in the afternoon during a tank attack on a building where the army had located Hamas members in Rafah, at the southern end of the strip. The Israeli government has announced that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make a public statement at 8:30 pm local time (7:30 pm in mainland Spain).

The official army radio said that after killing three of them and recovering the bodies, they checked whether it was him. The media adds that they conducted DNA testing with available samples, as Sinwar had spent more than two decades in Israeli prisons. Only a month and a half ago, Sinwar replaced Ismail Haniya, who was assassinated in Tehran on July 31, the head of the so-called Islamic Resistance Movement, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades.

Israel is simultaneously launching an intensified offensive in the far north of the strip. At least 19 people, including women and minors, have been killed in a bombing at a school providing shelter to war evacuees in the Yabaliya refugee camp, according to local health sources. The army, as on previous occasions, claims to have attacked a Hamas command center where “dozens of terrorists” were located.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has secured a valuable piece of the pie to shore up his controversial military operation in the Strip, where hundreds of hostages are being held. Capturing the Hamas chief dead or alive was one of their priorities.

Families of the detainees rushed to applaud the death of the Palestinian leader, according to a statement from the forum where they are grouped. “We call on the Israeli government, world leaders and mediating countries to take advantage of the military achievement and turn it into a diplomatic achievement and demand an immediate agreement for the release of the 101 hostages: for the rehabilitation of the survivors and those whose The killing should be done in a proper manner.” Bury.”, adds the text.

Before official confirmation, the army and secret services had announced in a statement that they were investigating whether one of the three bodies found was that of Sinwar. “Three terrorists were killed during the army operation in Gaza Strip. The Israel Defense Forces and secret services are confirming the possibility that one of the terrorists was Yahia Sinwar. “At this time, the identities of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” the statement said. “There were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area of ​​the building where the terrorists were killed. Forces operating in the area continue to operate with necessary precautions,” he said.

This reference to the captives is not trivial, as the dispute continues to harass the government and the military, while Netanyahu imposes his war-like view of the conflict on the families of abducted people, who insist that he is willing to disband the militias. Prioritize their release before focusing on. Throughout the year of conflict, an unknown number of hostages have died in attacks by their own troops, some of whom have died due to serious errors by the deployed forces. Until now, before his death, one of the speculations about why it took so long to kill the Hamas leader, despite massive efforts, is that he was surrounded by a group of captives to reduce his chances. Could become a victim of bombing. If the circumstances of the operation in Rafah are confirmed, this was not the case.

“No tunnel is too deep.”

“No tunnel is too deep, Sinwar. “Ask Nasrallah”, warned leaflets issued in Arabic last week towards the head of Hamas in the Strip, assuring that the same fate awaits him as Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. Who was assassinated during a bombing on 28 September. On Beirut. In recent weeks, some details of how Sinwar was trying to evade surveillance and monitoring by the Jewish state were leaked. He avoided electronic devices and communicated with handwritten notes which he sometimes sent to his recipients through particularly trusted close people.

One of the letters, which would also serve to organize the terms of negotiations with Israel for a possible ceasefire, was delivered to Nasrallah shortly before he died, Hezbollah revealed on social networks last month. In it the Palestinians expressed their gratitude for the support given to the axis they are part of, led by Tehran, during the war. A similar note appeared on the profile of Houthi guerrillas in Yemen when the Hamas leader congratulated them after they managed to deliver one of their missiles into Israeli territory.

In just over two months, Israel has destroyed the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah twice. On July 31, he assassinated Ismail Haniya, the top leader of the Palestinian movement, in Tehran as he attended the inauguration ceremony of new Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian. Nasrallah, the head of a Shiite militia party, was later killed by Israeli forces in a bombardment of the Dahiye neighborhood in Beirut, the group’s stronghold. Shortly afterwards, in an airstrike in the same suburb, the man who was almost certainly to succeed him, Hashem Saffieddin, fell.

Along with the Pillars, on Israel’s list of most wanted enemies, other top Hezbollah and Hamas officials have been killed in the 12 months of fighting. One of the most notorious killings was that of Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s armed wing (Ezzedine al Qassam Brigades) in southern Gaza on July 13, although the Jewish state did not confirm his death – Hamas says he is still alive. – Till 1st August. Israel had on several occasions tried to hit Deif, which was considered an essential pillar, in preparation for the October 7 attacks along Sinwar.

Sinwar was almost always protected by hundreds of kilometers of tunnels built by Hamas over decades and which are also used to hold hostages. He has been widely searched around his city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the region, where more than 42,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in the past year. But he ultimately died on the ground, in a building in Rafah, at the southern end of the Strip and next to the Gaza border with Egypt, a city occupied by occupation troops since last May. The head of Hamas was accused of being primarily responsible for the massacre of approximately 1,200 people in Israel and the abduction of another 250 people, which triggered the current war on October 7, 2023.