By Jeremy Diamond, Dana Karni, Pauline Lockwood and Sophie Tanno, CNN
The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed by Israel to be chief architect of the militant group’s deadly October 7, 2023, terror attack that set off the war in Gaza, had been killed in battle.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that Sinwar was killed on Wednesday after a “year-long pursuit.”
“In recent weeks, IDF and ISA forces, under the command of the Southern Command, have been operating in the southern Gaza Strip, following IDF and ISA intelligence that indicated the suspected locations of senior members of Hamas,” the Israeli military statement read.
“IDF soldiers of the 828th Brigade (Bislach) operating in the area identified and eliminated three terrorists. After completing the process of identifying the body, it can be confirmed that Yahya Sinwar was eliminated.”
Two Israeli sources familiar with the matter told CNN earlier that Israeli forces encountered Sinwar during a routine military operation.
The sources said that Israeli infantry troops encountered three militants near a building in Gaza and engaged them. After the battle ended, troops found a body resembling Sinwar and alerted senior commanders.
Israel had also confirmed to US officials that Sinwar was dead according to initial DNA testing, another person familiar with the matter said.
Dental records helped Israel identify Sinwar, a US official and former official familiar with the matter said, in addition to other biometrics. The dental confirmation was able to be conducted relatively quickly, the official said. The Israeli government has Sinwar’s biometrics because he spent more than two decades in Israeli imprisonment for murder.
According to Israeli Army Radio, which is state funded and operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Israeli military detected “suspicious movement” on the upper floor of a building, so fired at it with a tank. Later, the radio station said, a drone scanned the area of the attack, and soldiers recognized the face of Sinwar in the rubble.
The IDF had previously detected “unusual activity” in the area, the radio station reported, so decided last week to “increase scans and not to leave.”
Hamas has yet to make any comment on its leader.
Sinwar was long Israel’s most wanted man in the strip, but he remained elusive.
Sinwar was the top target of Israel’s operation in Gaza, launched in the wake of the October 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage. Israel has killed several senior Hamas figures in its air and ground campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 42,000 people and triggered a humanitarian crisis, according to authorities in the strip.
Pictures purported to show the dead body of Sinwar are circulating widely on social media. In them, a man strongly resembling Sinwar can be seen lying dead in the rubble of a destroyed building with serious injuries to the skull.
CNN has run the images through authenticator software, which shows no signs of image manipulation. It is not possible to discern a location or timeframe of his death from the still photographs. CNN has not yet been able to confirm the identity of the man seen in the photographs.
Sinwar led Hamas since August, following the assassination of previous leader Ismail Haniyeh.
He had not been seen in public since the Hamas attacks and is thought to have been hiding in the vast network of tunnels worming their way under Gaza.
Israel has publicly accused Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on October 7 – though experts say he is likely one of several. Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Al-Qassam brigades who Israel claimed to have killed in a strike in July, and his deputy, Marwan Issa, have also been named as key figures behind October 7.
A longtime figure in the Islamist Palestinian group, Sinwar was responsible for building up Hamas’ military wing before forging important new ties with regional Arab powers as the group’s civilian and political leader.
He was elected to Hamas’ main decision-making body, the Politburo, in 2017 as the political leader of Hamas in Gaza branch.
Sinwar has been designated a global terrorist by the US Department of State since 2015, and has been recently sanctioned by the United Kingdom and France.
US officials have speculated that his death could be one of the best chances of bringing the Israel-Hamas war to an end. With a ceasefire and hostages deal to pause the war stubbornly stuck for months, senior Biden administration officials had hung onto hope that Sinwar might one day be taken out – and that that could open up doors that simply would not be otherwise.
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