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Israeli military says it is ‘checking possibility’ it killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as ‘pictures of his body’ emerge | world news

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Israeli military says it is ‘checking possibility’ it killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as ‘pictures of his body’ emerge | world news

The Israeli military says it is “checking the possibility” that it killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as images purporting to show his body emerged.

Warning: This story contains imagery that readers may find distressing

The 62-year-old man, who has led Hamas in Gaza since 2017, is believed to be the mastermind behind the October 7, 2023 attacks.

A senior Israeli official told Sky News it was “likely” Sinwar had been killed.

Follow the last one: Live updates from the Middle East

Photographs circulating online claimed to show Sinwar’s dead body in the hours before the Israeli military released its statement.

Images have not been independently verified.

Yahya Sinwar
Image:
A photograph purporting to show the body of Yahya Sinwar

Israel is waiting for DNA test results to come back before it can confirm whether the body is Sinwar’s, a senior Israeli official said.

They added that the results may take a couple of hours to arrive.

If his death is confirmed, it will mean Israel has eliminated its main target since it began attacks and ground invasions in Gaza in response to Hamas’s incursion last year.

“During IDF operations in Gaza, three terrorists were eliminated,” the Israeli military said in a statement today.

“The IDF and ISA are investigating the possibility that one of the terrorists was Yahya Sinwar. The identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed at this time.

“In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of hostages in the area. Forces operating in the area continue to operate with the required caution.”

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Hamas has yet to comment on the reports, but sources in the group, quoted by the Reuters news agency, said there were indications he had been killed.

US officials told Sky News’ US partner NBC News that the Israeli mission appeared to have been carried out on Wednesday, possibly in Rafah.

They added that the United States was not involved and did not provide intelligence, and senior Pentagon officials only found out after the operation was carried out.

Sinwar in 2021, during a demonstration against Israel in Gaza City. Image: Reuters
Image:
Sinwar in 2021, during a demonstration against Israel in Gaza City. Image: Reuters

Sinwar assumed full leadership of Hamas after the assassination of Ismail Haniyehwho was the group’s political leader, in Iran in July.

He is believed to have been hiding in the network of tunnels under Gaza since the militant group’s attack on Israel last year.

President of the USA Joe Biden has been briefed on Israel’s investigation into whether it killed the Hamas leader, and US officials were in close contact with Israeli officials throughout Thursday morning, according to a senior administration official.

Sinwar’s death could mark the collapse of any Hamas resistance in Gaza

If Sinwar’s death is confirmed, it would be a very, very significant moment in the war.

I think it will have important consequences. You have two aspects. First, there is still fighting on the ground between Israeli forces and what’s left of Hamas in Gaza on a daily basis.

Currently it is mainly focused on northern Gaza.

You would assume that if Sinwar is confirmed to have been killed, given that so many other senior commanders have been killed in recent months, what we could see is a collapse of any Hamas resistance in Gaza.

And then, in relation to the hostages captured by Hamas on October 7 last year, Sinwar had become Hamas’ point man for any hostage negotiations.

Any developments in the hostage negotiations had to go through him, by quite a long route, because, we assume, he spent so much time underground that he would have been very aware of the security surrounding any communication he had with the outside world. .

But the events, the discussions, the negotiations that have taken place in Cairo, in Doha or elsewhere should come back to Sinwar, and lately it was assumed that he was not ready to sign a ceasefire agreement and a hostage release agreement. with Israel

Many people blame Sinwar for why there are still 101 hostages in Gaza and there has been no hostage deal.

If it has been removed, it is difficult to say whether this will lead to some acceleration in the hostage negotiations. It’s very hard to say, because I don’t know who the negotiators would talk to now.

It comes as Israeli forces continued a major air and ground assault lasting more than a week on the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north. Gaza.

An Israeli strike hit a school housing displaced Palestinians on Thursday. killing at least 28 peopleincluding five children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The war in Gaza is more than a year old: Israel has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in response to the Hamas incursion on October 7 last year, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages when its militants entered Israel on October 7.

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