Israel claims to have killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar

Israel announced Thursday that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had been killed in a military operation in the Gaza Strip, dealing a decisive blow to the Palestinian Islamist movement it has been fighting for more than a year.

Yahya Sinouar, a radical activist and shadowy figure, is considered one of the masterminds of the unprecedented attack carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil, which sparked war in the Palestinian territory and set the powder keg alight in the region.

Aged 61 and leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza since 2017, he was appointed political leader of Hamas in early August after the death of Ismail Haniyeh, killed in Tehran on July 31 in an attack blamed on Israel, which has not commented.

The army and domestic intelligence services “confirm that after a year-long manhunt, yesterday (Wednesday), October 16, 2024, soldiers of the Israeli army eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the terrorist organization Hamas, during an operation in the southern Gaza Strip,” the army said in a statement.

Hamas did not immediately confirm his death.

Yahya Sinwar was “responsible for heinous acts of terrorism,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said, calling for the “return” of the hostages still held in Gaza.

“The elimination of Sinwar is an opportunity for the immediate release of the hostages (taken to Gaza on October 7, Editor's note) and opens the way to profound change in Gaza,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz.

“During the army's operations (…) three terrorists were eliminated,” the army said earlier in a statement, with an Israeli security source specifying that DNA tests were being carried out on a body to confirm whether it was Sinwar.

Shortly after the October 7, 2023 attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Every member of Hamas is a dead man.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant wrote on X on Thursday: “We will reach every terrorist and eliminate them.”

– “Cruel assassin” –

The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza.

Smoke cloud after a bombing in a village in southern Lebanon, October 17, 2024 © AFP – –

Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 97 are still being held captive in Gaza, 34 of whom have been declared dead by the army.

The leader of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, hailed the death of Yahya Sinwar as a “source of hope.”

Berlin, which called the Hamas leader a “cruel murderer”, called on the movement to release all hostages.

These statements come in an explosive context in the Middle East, where Israel has been pounding Hezbollah positions in Lebanon since September 23, which had opened a cross-border front on October 8, 2023 in support of Hamas.

On September 30, the Israeli army launched ground operations in southern Lebanon to combat the Lebanese Islamist movement.

At midday on Thursday, strikes targeted several regions in the south and east of Lebanon, Hezbollah strongholds along with the southern suburbs of Beirut.

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Earlier, an Israeli strike targeted a Hezbollah “weapons warehouse” in Latakia in Syria, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, injuring two people, according to Syrian media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

An ambulance walks past the debris of a building destroyed after an Israeli airstrike in a village in southern Lebanon, October 14, 2024 © AFP – Abbas FAKIH

The United States, an ally of Israel, announced for its part that it had struck five underground munitions depots of the Houthis, who control large swathes of Yemen and carry out attacks against Israel and ships allegedly linked to them, in support of Hamas.

– “Stop the regional escalation” –

After weakening Hamas in Gaza, Israel has shifted the bulk of its military operations to the Lebanese front.

In nearly a month, at least 1,373 people have been killed in the country, according to an AFP count based on official data, with the UN recording nearly 700,000 displaced.

Iran, an ally of the Syrian regime, the Houthi rebels, Hezbollah and Hamas, threatened on Thursday to attack Israel “painfully” if it hit targets “in Iran or in the region”, in response to the missile attack carried out by Tehran on Israeli territory on October 1, to which Israel has vowed to respond.

This attack had been presented by Iran as retaliation for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, and that of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, killed in an Israeli strike on September 27 near Beirut.

Iran's anti-aircraft defense system © AFP – Paz PIZARRO, Sylvie HUSSON

Hezbollah said on Thursday it had fired rockets at Israeli troops near the Syrian Golan Heights annexed by Israel, and destroyed two Israeli tanks in southern Lebanon.

Israel says it wants to neutralize Hezbollah on the border to allow the return to northern Israel of some 60,000 people displaced by its incessant firing over the past year.

– Fourteen dead in Gaza –

In the Gaza Strip, at least 14 people were killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike on the Abu Hussein school housing displaced in the Jabalia camp in the north, according to two hospitals in the area, with the Israeli army indicating that it had targeted Palestinian fighters.

Jabalia has been surrounded and pounded since October 6 by the Israeli army, which claims that Hamas is trying to rebuild its forces there. The fate of hundreds of thousands of Gazans trapped in the fighting is at the center of international concern.

Displaced Palestinians queue to receive food rations, donated by a charity, in the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, October 17, 2024 © AFP – Omar AL-QATTAA

The head of The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, pointed out a “real risk” of famine in the besieged and devastated Palestinian territory, accusing “certain members of the Israeli government” of using it as “a weapon of war”.

At least 42,438 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians, in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government's Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by the UN.

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