By Jonathan Saul and James Mackenzie
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar was killed throughout a gun battle in southern Gaza on Wednesday by Israeli troops who had been initially unaware that they’d caught their nation’s primary enemy, Israeli officers mentioned.
Intelligence providers had been trying to find Sinwar for months and had been regularly limiting the realm the place he may function, the army mentioned on Thursday, after dental information, fingerprints and DNA testing supplied last affirmation of Sinwar’s dying.
Hamas has not made any remark itself, however sources inside the group have mentioned that the indications they’ve seen counsel Sinwar was certainly killed by Israeli troops.
“The dozens of operations carried out by the IDF and the ISA 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 mentioned in a press release.
However not like different militant leaders tracked down and killed by Israel, together with Hamas army commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, the operation which lastly killed Sinwar was not a deliberate and focused strike.
As a substitute, officers mentioned he was discovered by infantry troopers looking out an space within the Tal El Sultan space of southern Gaza on Wednesday, the place they believed senior members of Hamas had been situated.
The troops noticed three suspected militants transferring between buildings and opened fireplace, resulting in a gunfight throughout which Sinwar escaped right into a ruined constructing.
In response to accounts in Israeli media, tank shells and a missile had been additionally fired on the constructing.
On Thursday, the army launched footage from a mini drone that it mentioned confirmed Sinwar, badly wounded within the hand, sitting on a chair, his face lined in a shawl. The movie exhibits him trying to throw a stick on the drone, in a futile effort to knock it down.
At this stage, Israeli army spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari mentioned, Sinwar was solely recognized as a fighter, however troops entered and located him with a weapon, a flak jacket and 40,000 shekels ($10,731.63).
“He tried to escape and our forces eliminated him,” he advised reporters in a televised briefing.
Within the final months of his life, Sinwar, the principle architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel that set off the warfare in Gaza, seems to have stopped utilizing telephones and different communication gear that may have allowed Israel’s highly effective intelligence providers to trace him down.
Israeli officers mentioned they believed he was hiding in one of many huge community of tunnels that Hamas dug beneath Gaza over the previous 20 years, however as increasingly have been uncovered by Israeli troops, even the tunnels had been no assure of escaping seize.
The top of Israel’s army, Lieutenant Normal Herzi Halevi, mentioned Israel’s pursuit of Sinwar over the previous yr drove him “to act like a fugitive, causing him to change locations multiple times”.
Israeli officers, who knew Sinwar as a ruthless and dedicated enemy, had been lengthy involved that he had surrounded himself with a number of the 101 Israeli and overseas hostages nonetheless held in Gaza as a human defend to guard himself from Israeli assaults.
However no hostages had been discovered close by when he was lastly trapped on Wednesday, though Hagari mentioned samples of his DNA had been situated in a tunnel a number of hundred metres from the place six Israeli hostages had been executed by Hamas on the finish of August.
($1 = 3.7273 shekels)
