Israel killed Hamas leader Yahwa Sinwar, Oct. 7 attack mastermind, Netanyahu says : NPR

Israel says it killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed to be the mastermind behind the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack in the country.

In a statement Thursday, the Israeli military said it and the Shin Bin domestic intelligence agency confirmed that on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers “eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip.”

Hamas has not commented publicly on the announcement.

The news marks a major development — the death of Israel’s most wanted man — a year into the war in Gaza after Israel vowed to crush Hamas following its attack on Israel.

“Today evil has suffered a heavy blow, but the task before us is not yet complete,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recorded address. He said Israel “will continue with all our strength” to try to release hostages taken by Hamas last year.

Israel says 101 hostages are still held in Gaza, 35 of whom are dead.

President Biden said U.S. intelligence has helped the Israeli military pursue Hamas leaders, and Sinwar’s death was “a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.” Biden said he would speak with Netanyahu soon to discuss next steps toward freeing hostages held by Hamas and ending the war in Gaza.

The Israeli military said Sinwar had been hiding the past year above and below ground in Hamas tunnels in Gaza. Some analysts suspect he surrounded himself with Israeli hostages to protect himself from assassination attempts.

The military said earlier there were no signs of Israeli hostages around the building in Gaza where three militants were killed and that troops were operating in the area with “caution.”

Sinwar was the leader of Hamas in Gaza when the Palestinian militant group led a surprise attack on Israel just over a year ago, killing some 1,200 people and taking at least 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Netanyahu called it “the most terrible massacre in the history of our nation since the Holocaust.”

In response to the attack, Israel’s military launched an air and ground campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 42,400 Palestinians and injured more than 99,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The United Nations says 90% of the enclave’s population is displaced by the conflict, and a U.N.-backed food security assessment said more than 1.8 million people in the enclave live in “extremely critical” levels of hunger.

Sinwar was appointed the leader of the entire group after Israel killed his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, in an explosion in Tehran in July. The Israeli military also said it had killed the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, in an airstrike in July. The Israeli military had earlier killed Hamas’ deputy political chief Salah Arouri in a bombing in Beirut in January.

Born on Oct. 29, 1962, according to Hamas, Sinwar helped found the group’s internal security apparatus in the late 1980s. He earned a nickname among Palestinians: the “butcher of Khan Younis,” where he grew up in the southern Gaza Strip.

Sinwar was seen as a hard-liner within Hamas, less likely to reach a cease-fire deal with Israel than other more pragmatic leaders. He was believed to have been directing operations largely from the group’s extensive tunnel network underneath the Gaza Strip, communicating with the outside world by means of handwritten notes delivered by couriers to avoid Israeli airstrikes that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave.

“Hamas will no longer rule Gaza,” Netanyahu said in his address. “This is the beginning of the day after Hamas, and this is an opportunity for you, the residents of Gaza, to finally break free from its tyranny. To the Hamas terrorists I say: Your leaders are fleeing and they will be eliminated.”