Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has been killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza.
In a statement, Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz said Sinwar had been identified among three Hamas militants killed on Thursday, local time.
He said it was “a significant military and moral achievement”.
Israeli officials had conducted dental and DNA tests to check whether a body retrieved from a building in Gaza was that of Sinwar, the minister said.
Sinwar was one of the architects of the October 7 attacks on Israel. He took over as head of Hamas following the assassination of former leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran in July.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sinwar’s death offered the chance of peace in the Middle East but warned that the war in Gaza was not over and Israel would continue until its hostages were returned.
“Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow but our task has still not been completed,” Netanyahu said in a recorded video statement.
“To the dear hostage families, I say: this is an important moment in the war. We will continue full force until all your loved ones, our loved ones, are home.”
In a statement the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sinwar “promoted his murderous ideology both before and during the war, and was responsible for the murder and abduction of many Israelis”.
“Yahya Sinwar was eliminated after hiding for the past year behind the civilian population of Gaza, both above and below ground in Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip.
“The dozens of operations carried out by the IDF and the ISA (Israel Security Agency) 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.”
Hamas has not yet confirmed Sinwar’s death but it has always denied hiding amongst the civilian population in Gaza.
Hamas sources have told Reuters news agency that Sinwar had likely been killed during an Israeli operation in the area of Tal El Sultan, in southern Gaza.
Earlier, Israel’s Army Radio said there had been a targeted ground operation in the city of Rafah during which Israeli troops killed three militants and took their bodies.
Sinwar’s death represents a major boost to the Israeli military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a string of high-profile assassinations of prominent leaders of Israel’s enemies in recent months.
Israeli media reported that the operation was a routine raid that caught Sinwar by chance.
The military said there were no signs that Israeli hostages had been present in the building.
“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,” Mr Katz said.
Iran warns Israel against retaliation for missile attack
The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned Israel against attacking the Islamic Republic in retaliation for a missile barrage, as the Israeli military stepped up its offensive in Lebanon against Tehran-backed Hezbollah.
Fears of a wider Middle East conflict have grown as Israel plans its response to the October 1 missile attack carried out by Iran after Israeli air strikes on Iranian-allied militants.
“We tell you [Israel] that if you commit any aggression against any point we will painfully attack the same point of yours,” Hossein Salami said in a televised speech, adding that Iran could penetrate Israel’s defences.
There has been speculation that Israel could strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, as it has long threatened to do. Other options include attacks on its vital oil sites.
Israel has shown no signs of slowing its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. (Reuters: Mohamed Abd El Ghany)
Russia is warning Israel against any strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, state news agency TASS quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Thursday.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi, on a Middle East tour, met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, with Mr Sisi reiterating Egypt’s call to avoid an expansion of the conflict, the Egyptian presidency said.
However, Israel shows no signs of easing its military campaigns against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and it has vowed to punish Iran for its attack.
In the north of Gaza on Thursday, Israeli strikes killed 19 Palestinians including children at a school in the Jabalia camp that was sheltering displaced people, Gaza health ministry official Medhat Abbas told Reuters.
Israel’s military said dozens of militants were at the site and it conducted a precise strike on a meeting point for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group inside the compound.
Hamas denied it used the school.
Residents of Gaza, which has been reduced to rubble, are also suffering from a humanitarian crisis.
Gazans at risk of famine
About 1.84 million people across the Occupied Palestinian Territory are suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity. (Reuters: Mahmoud Issa)
The entire enclave remains at risk of famine and is experiencing emergency levels of hunger, with intense Israeli military operations adding to concerns and hampering humanitarian access, a global monitor said on Thursday.
About 1.84 million people across the Palestinian territory are suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, including nearly 133,000 people experiencing the most severe, or “catastrophic”, levels, according to an analysis from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Israel struck Syria’s port city of Latakia early on Thursday, Syrian state media reported, and the United States said it carried out strikes on Wednesday in areas of Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthis.
Qatar, which has mediated in numerous failed ceasefire talks, said there had been no engagement with any parties for the last three to four weeks on the Gaza war.
On its northern front in Lebanon, Israel has said it will not stop fighting a now weakened Hezbollah before it can safely return its citizens to their homes near the Lebanese border and said any ceasefire negotiations will be held “under fire”.
The air strikes have put Lebanese on edge.
Abdelnaser, a man displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold that Israel has repeatedly bombed, was on the waterfront early on Thursday morning.
He recalled Lebanon’s long list of tragedies over the years and seemed resigned to more uncertainty in a country that was once called the Switzerland of the Middle East before the 1975-1990 civil war.
“War has become normal for us. We know that every 10 years Lebanon gets built, and every 10 years it gets destroyed again,” he said.
Hezbollah member of parliament Hassan Fadlallah said the armed group would keep fighting, but he reiterated its leaders were carefully coordinating with Lebanon’s speaker of parliament in efforts to reach a ceasefire.
Israeli soldiers have not managed to control any villages in south Lebanon, he added.
Israel says its ground operation has so far killed dozens of Hezbollah fighters and that its troops have seized thousands of weapons and destroyed the group’s bunkers and tunnel below southern Lebanon’s villages.
These were being used as staging grounds to launch an attack resembling Hamas’s devastating cross-border terror attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war on October 7, 2023, Israel said.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that over the past 24 hours it had killed 45 Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.
Israeli operations in Lebanon have killed at least 2,350 people over the last year, according to the health ministry, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced.
The death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in the same period, according to Israel.
ABC/Reuters
