The Israeli military said on Thursday that Sinwar has been killed on Wednesday in southern Gaza.
“After completing the process of identifying the body, it can be confirmed that Yahya Sinwar was eliminated,” the Israeli military added.
“The dozens of operations carried out by the IDF [Israeli military] and ISA [Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service] 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 army had been carrying out DNA checks to confirm Sinwar’s identity after it said that its forces in Gaza had killed three people.
“In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area,” the army added.
The details of the killing of Sinwar, however, run counter to Israel’s claims that Sinwar has spent the year-long war on Gaza hiding in Hamas’ elaborate tunnel system underground and that Sinwar was hiding among Israeli captives.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described Sinwar’s death as the “beginning of the end”, and said Israel will continue to work until the end of the war.
“We will not stop the war. We will go into Rafah,” he added.
Addressing the families of the hostages still held in Gaza, Netanyahu stated that Israel will continue with “all our strength” until they are brought home.
“I’m telling you in a clear cut manner: Hamas will no longer rule the Gaza Strip.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz also said that Sinwar had been killed, calling it a “great military and moral achievement for Israel”.
“Sinwar’s assassination creates the opportunity for the immediate release of the hostages and to bring about a change that will lead to a new reality in Gaza – without Hamas and without Iranian control,” Katz added.
Sinwar, 62, was one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attacks on Israel, and has been a prime target for Israel since then.
Chosen as Hamas’s leader in Gaza in 2017, he had previously been held in an Israeli prison for 22 years, before being released as part of a prisoner swap deal in 2011.
His claimed death comes months after the July assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, in Tehran. Israel is believed to have been behind the killing.
Sinwar had been chosen as Hamas’s overall leader following the killing of Haniyeh.
Israel also claimed to have killed Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif in August, although that has not been confirmed by the Palestinian group.
Israel has been conducting a war on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza since October of last year, killing more than 42,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. That followed a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed.
Nearly 250 people were taken captive from Israel during the October 7 attacks. About half have been released, and around 70 are believed to still be held in the besieged enclave.
