DNA evidence being examined in possible Hamas leader Sinwar death

FILE PHOTO: Freed Hamas top security strategist Yahya Sinwar waves to people with senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniye during a rally celebrating the release of Palestinian prisoners in Gaza City October 18, 2011

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FILE PHOTO: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza City October 1, 2022. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

DNA evidence being examined in possible Hamas leader Sinwar death

By Kylie Maclellan, Kate Abnett, Stephen Farrell, Deborah Kyvrikosaios, Hani Richter, Zoe Law, Marc Jones, Rupam Jain

The Israeli military's full statement:

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization who was responsible for planning and executing the October 7th Massacre, has been eliminated

The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and ISA [Israel Security Agency] confirm that after a year-long pursuit, yesterday (Wednesday), October 16, 2024, IDF soldiers from the Southern Command eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip.

Yahya Sinwar planned and executed the October 7th Massacre, 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 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.

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.

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.

Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the details in the Israeli military statement.

The name Al-Majid is a familiar one in the history of Hamas, and has long links with Sinwar.

Before it created Hamas in December 1987, the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza set up an internal security wing called Al-Majd (an acronym for Munazamat al-Jihad wa al-Da’wa - the Organization of Holy War and Preaching). It was headed by Yahya Sinwar, then in his twenties, and Rawhi Mushtaha, who was killed by Israel earlier this year.

Asked about the reports on Sinwar, British Defence Secretary John Healey told reporters at a briefing at NATO headquarters in Brussels:

“I believe we're still waiting for the confirmation from the IDF on that. I think it's for the IDF to confirm."

"But I, for one, will not mourn the death of a terror leader like Sinwar, someone who was responsible for the terror attack on October the seventh, and I'm conscious, like the UK Government is, that that triggered not just the darkest, deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Second World War, but it’s triggered since more than a year of conflict and an intolerable level of civilian Palestinian casualties as well.”

Yahya Sinwar was an easy man to find, one October morning in Gaza thirteen years ago.

He was sitting in a bright green Hamas tent in Khan Younis in southern Gaza surrounded by people coming to pay their respects to a leader who had just emerged from a quarter century in Israel jails.

Born into a refugee family in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Sinwar was a member of the generation that grew up under the leadership of prominent Muslim Brotherhood Gaza figures Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Dr Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, and he was a contemporary of Ismail Haniyeh.

All three went on to be leaders of Hamas. All three were assassinated, Yassin and Rantissin in the early 2000s, Haniyeh earlier this year.

Early Hamas career

In the mid-1980s Sinwar was appointed head of head of Munazamat al-Jihad wa al-Da’wa (the Organization of Holy War and Preaching).

It was a security and punishment unit dedicated to eliminating Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel, and planning attacks on Israelis.

When the First Palestinian Intifada broke out in December 1987 Yassin immediately created Hamas to capitalize on the rising mood of anger of Palestinians against Israeli military occupation, and Sinwar was a key part of the early Hamas cadres.

But he was arrested within weeks of the Intifada breaking out, and sentenced to consecutive life sentences in Israel for planning the killings of Israeli soldiers and suspected Palestinian collaborators.

He went into prison a young man.

He came out a middle-aged one who had learned Hebrew and spent years studying Israelis up close, but had lost none of his ruthless drive and dedication to Hamas.

Release

Sinwar was released from Israeli prison in October 2011.

He was among more than 1,000 Palestinians freed in return for the release of one Israeli soldier, Gilad Schalit.

But Sinwar was not like the other prisoners. Unlike most he and a handful of others were whisked straight from the Rafah border crossing where they had re-entered Gaza to appear alongside Ismail Haniyeh and other Hamas luminaries on stage at a huge Hamas rally in Gaza City.

And the next morning there was a long line of Gazans outside the Hamas celebration tent near his home.

As he took handshakes and hugs from well-wishers Sinwar told us that he had ‘learned a lot’ about Israelis during his time in their custody.

"We turned the prison into sanctuaries of worship and to academies for study," he said, with his customary sense of certainty and self-assurance. "You can say I am a specialist in the Jewish people’s history, more than many of them."

Source: Reuters Video

Now, having resumed his place in Hamas’ hierarchy outside prison, Sinwar rose from his white plastic chair to greet scores of visitors.

He was constantly alert, never relaxed, routinely patting well-wishers on the back or shaking their hand, but constantly looking around, scanning the horizon beyond the tent.

His answers were also practised and formulaic, standard Hamas rhetoric about the movement and the cause. He only became energised when he discussed his own time in prison, seemingly intent on presenting two decades in jail as being of long-term benefit to himself and the Hamas movement.

"Many of us learned to read, to listen and to speak in the Hebrew language, especially those who were in for a long time. There is spare time in prison, you know, and we benefited. We spent it either in worshipping or studying."

Future

He seemed taken aback when asked if anything about the outside world had surprised him, but after careful consideration he conceded that having gone into jail in the earliest days of Hamas' creation, he had not been prepared for the sight of thousands of Hamas militants providing an honor guard lining the route of Gaza’s main highway from Rafah to Gaza City the day before. And, seemingly, was not entirely certain about what he was going to do next.

About his reported cancer treatment in an Israeli jail, nothing, just brusque assurances that he was in full health, laced with an apparent determination to assert that he had the same youth and vigour as when he went into prison.

It would be another six years before he took control of Hamas in Gaza, and 11 years before the carnage of October 2023, for which he was one of the main architects.

About the future he would only say, guardedly:

"It’s early. I was away for about a quarter of a century and came out with the world around me changed. I need to relax and take my breath and know the situation around me. And after that, I will decide."

Dubbed "The Face of Evil" by Israel, Sinwar operates in secrecy, moving constantly and using trusted messengers for non-digital communication, according to three Hamas officials and one regional official. He has not been seen in public since Oct. 7, 2023.

Over months of failed ceasefire talks, led by Qatar and Egypt, that focused on swapping prisoners for hostages, Sinwar was the sole decision-maker, three Hamas sources said. Negotiators would wait for days for responses filtered through a secretive chain of messengers.

Sinwar's high tolerance for suffering, both for himself and for the Palestinian people, in the name of a cause, was apparent when he helped negotiate the 2011 exchange of 1,027 prisoners, himself included, for one kidnapped Israeli soldier held in Gaza. The kidnapping by Hamas had led to an Israeli assault on the coastal enclave and thousands of Palestinian deaths.

Half a dozen people who know Sinwar told Reuters his resolve was shaped by an impoverished childhood in Gaza's refugee camps and a brutal 22 years in Israeli custody, including a period in Ashkelon, the town his parents called home before fleeing after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The question of hostages and prisoner swaps is deeply personal for Sinwar, said all the sources, who requested anonymity to speak freely about sensitive matters. He has vowed to free all Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Sinwar became a member of Hamas soon after its founding in the 1980s, adopting the group's radical Islamist ideology, which seeks to establish an Islamic state in historic Palestine and opposes Israel's existence.

Read our deep dive on Sinwar in full here.

The death of Yahya Sinwar, if confirmed, would be the most significant since last month's killing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel said it had killed Nasrallah in an airstrike in Beirut's southern suburbs. Nasrallah's death dealt a huge blow to the Hezbollah group.

Over the last century, Gaza passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli military rule. It is now a fenced-in enclave inhabited by around 2.3 million Palestinians. Most of them are refugees.

Here are some of the major milestones in its recent history:

1948 - End of British rule

As British colonial rule came to an end in Palestine in the late 1940s, violence intensified between Jews and Arabs, culminating in war between the newly created State of Israel and its Arab neighbours in May 1948.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians took refuge in Gaza after fleeing or being driven from their homes.

1950s & 1960s - Egyptian military rule

Egypt held the Gaza Strip for two decades under a military governor, allowing Palestinians to work and study in Egypt.

The United Nations set up a refugee agency, UNRWA.

1967 - War and Israeli military occupation

Israel captured the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war.

1987 - First Palestinian uprising. Hamas formed

Twenty years after the 1967 war, Palestinians launched their first intifada, or uprising. It began in December 1987 after a traffic accident in which an Israeli truck crashed into a vehicle carrying Palestinian workers in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp, killing four.

Seizing the angry mood, the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood created an armed Palestinian branch, Hamas.

1993 - The Oslo Accords, and Palestinian semi-autonomy

Israel and the Palestinians signed an historic peace accord in 1993 that led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Under the interim deal, Palestinians were first given limited control in Gaza, and Jericho in the West Bank.

The Oslo process gave the Palestinian Authority some autonomy, and envisaged statehood after five years. But that never happened.

2000 - Second Palestinian intifada

In 2000, Israeli-Palestinian relations sank to a new low with the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. It ushered in a period of suicide bombings and shooting attacks by Palestinians, and Israeli airstrikes, demolitions, no-go zones and curfews.

2005 - Israel evacuates its Gaza settlements

In August 2005, Israel evacuated all its troops and settlers from Gaza, which was by then completely fenced off from the outside world by Israel.

2006 - Isolation under Hamas

In 2006, Hamas scored a surprise victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections and seized full control of Gaza, overthrowing forces loyal to Arafat's successor, President Mahmoud Abbas.

Much of the international community cut aid to the Palestinians in Hamas-controlled areas because they regarded Hamas as a terrorist organization.

October 2023 - Surprise attack

On Oct.7, Hamas gunmen made a surprise cross-border assault on Israel by air, land and sea. They overwhelmed Israel's border forces and rampaged through towns, kibbutzim and military bases, killing around 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages back to Gaza.

Israel took revenge, first hammering Gaza with its heaviest-ever air and artillery strikes and later launching a ground invasion.

There was a brief truce in November during which aid supplies entered Gaza and Hamas released some hostages, but hostilities resumed.

Gaza health officials say more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed.

For more, you can read a brief history of Gaza's centuries of war here.

If Sinwar's death is confirmed, it will dial up tensions in the Middle East where fears of a wider Middle East conflict have grown as Israel plans its response to the Oct. 1 missile attack carried out by Iran after Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-allied militants.

The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned Israel earlier on Thursday against attacking the Islamic Republic.

"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. He added that Iran can penetrate Israel's defences.

There has been speculation that Israel could strike Iran's nuclear facilities, as it has long threatened to do and other options include attacks on its vital oil sites.

Israel has killed several commanders of Hamas in Gaza as well as senior figures of Hezbollah in Lebanon, dealing heavy blows to its arch-foes. Hamas has not commented on the fate of Sinwar.

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, on a Middle East tour, met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, with Sisi reiterating Egypt's call to avoid an expansion of the conflict, the Egyptian presidency said.