According to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was observed slumped in a chair covered in dust by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza.
Although Hamas has not commented on the matter, the group’s sources have stated that the evidence they have seen indicates that Sinwar was indeed killed by Israeli troops.
He was seen in the video hitting the drone with a stick as it hovered nearby.
According to Israeli officials, the Israeli troops that killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had captured their number one enemy following a gun battle on Wednesday, following an extensive manhunt that had lasted for more than a year.
After dental records, fingerprints, and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death, the military stated on Thursday that intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area in which he could operate.
However, unlike other Hamas leaders whom Israel has pursued and killed, such as Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, Sinwar’s death was not the result of a planned and targeted attack or the work of elite commandos.
Instead, officials claimed that infantry soldiers from the Bislach Brigade, a unit that typically prepares future unit commanders, were the ones who discovered him. On Wednesday, the soldiers were looking for senior Hamas members in a location in the Tal El Sultan area of southern Gaza.
Sinwar escaped into a destroyed building after the troops saw three suspected fighters moving between buildings and opened fire.
The building was also hit by tank shells and a missile, according to Israeli media accounts.
The military released footage on Thursday that, according to the military, showed Sinwar with a severe hand wound sitting on a chair with his face covered in a scarf. He is seen in the movie attempting to knock the drone down with a stick in vain.
Sinwar was only identified as a fighter at this point, according to Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. However, when troops entered, they discovered him with a weapon, a flak jacket, and 40,000 shekels ($10,731.63).
In a televised briefing, he stated to reporters, “He tried to escape, and our forces eliminated him.”
The Israeli military stated in a statement that “the dozens of operations carried out over the last year by the IDF and the ISA, 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.”
Sinwar, the primary planner of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the conflict in Gaza, appears to have stopped using telephones and other communication devices in his final months of life, which would have made it easier for Israel’s powerful intelligence services to locate him.
He was thought to be hiding in one of the many tunnels Hamas dug beneath Gaza over the past two decades, according to Israeli officials. However, as more and more tunnels have been discovered by Israeli troops, even the tunnels were no guarantee that he would escape capture.
According to Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, the head of the Israeli military, Sinwar was driven to “act like a fugitive, causing him to change locations multiple times” as a result of Israel’s pursuit of him for the past year.
Sinwar had been surrounded by some of the 101 Israeli and foreign hostages still held in Gaza as a human shield to protect himself from Israeli attacks, according to Israeli officials who knew him to be a ruthless and committed enemy.
