Israel confirms they’ve killed Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar
Daily News Article — Posted on October 18, 2024
(by Ronny Reyes, NY Post) – Hamas chief and Oct. 7 mastermind, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza on Wednesday after more than a year of eluding Israeli forces, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed Thursday.
“Eliminated: Yahya Sinwar,” the military announced on X.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [announced] the death of his country’s most wanted militant as an “important milestone in the sunset of Hamas’s rule in Gaza,” the New York Times reported.
However, the prime minister stopped short of declaring total victory in the war against the terror group.
“Today, evil took a heavy blow — the mission ahead of us is still unfinished,” Netanyahu said.
Sinwar — the architect of the single deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust — was killed in Rafah in a routine raid that caught him by chance.
IDF troops were on a regular patrol, and not specifically searching for the terror chief, when they encountered several Hamas militants.
An Israeli tank launched a shell at a building, causing it to collapse.
Reports had begun circulating earlier in the day that a terrorist matching Sinwar’s description was killed in a military operation in Rafah on Wednesday.
Photos then began circulating showing a man wearing a bulletproof vest, surrounded by grenades, lying in the rubble of a building with a head wound.
The Jewish state’s Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz called Sinwar’s death a “victory for the entire free world.”
“Mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, who was responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7, was killed today by IDF soldiers,” Katz said in a written statement from his office.
“This is a great military and moral achievement for Israel and a victory for the entire free world against the axis of evil of radical Islam led by Iran.”
While intelligence officials believed that Sinwar would be surrounded by hostages to use as human shields, the IDF confirmed that no hostages were injured in the strike that took Sinwar out.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet members had sworn to hunt down and kill Sinwar after learning that he was the man behind the Oct. 7 massacre that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and saw another 251 kidnapped.
Just days after the terrorist attack, Sinwar was seen fleeing with his family inside Hamas’ underground tunnel system, with the terror chief managing to elude the IDF’s detection for more than a year.
Sinwar, who served as Hamas’ Gaza chief since 2017, rose to the top of the terror group when its former leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in July.
Once Sinwar took over, the cease-fire negotiations between Hamas and Israel froze as the new chief opposed any end to the war.
Sinwar, who previously described the death of Palestinians in Gaza as “necessary sacrifices,” has repeatedly gotten in the way of the hostage negotiations, urging the group to avoid compromise as he claimed it was poised to finally eliminate the Jewish state.
The extremist was seen as a “megalomaniac” even by his own peers, who privately referred to him as a hindrance to Hamas’ political chiefs who were trying to legitimize a Palestinian state, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Sinwar, however, had the backing of Hamas’ rank and file, who respected him for the 22 years he spent behind bars in Israel before his release in 2011 [in a hostage exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage for over 5 years after Palestinian militants tunneled into Israel and attacked a military base, murdering one and kidnapping Shalit. Israel released 1,027 Hamas and Palestinian prisoners by Israel in exchange for Shalit. Many of the Palestinian prisoners were serving life sentences for deadly attacks on Israelis. Sinwar was among the prisoners released, and he called on Hamas to kidnap more Israeli soldiers in order to free the remaining Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.]
The Hamas chief Sinwar also commanded fear as the infamous “Butcher of Khan Younis,” who hunted down and murdered Palestinians suspected of working with Israel.
It remains to be seen who will replace Sinwar as Hamas’ de facto leader.
With Sinwar gone, the families of the remaining 97 hostages are calling for Israel to put forward a new cease-fire agreement now that their biggest hindrance is gone, the Times of Israel reports.
[Prime Minister Netanyahu later said in a statement:“We have settled the score with the arch-murderer Sinwar, but now, more than ever, the lives of my son Matan and the other hostages are in tangible danger,” mother Einav Zangauker wrote to Netanyahu.
“There will be no real closure, no total victory if we don’t save their lives and bring them all back,” she added.
“To the people of Gaza, I have a simple message. This war can end tomorrow. It can end if Hamas lays down its arms and returns our hostages. Israel will guarantee the safety of all those who return our hostages.”
Published at nypost .com with Post Wires on October 16, 2024. Reprinted here for educational purposes only. May not be reproduced on other websites without permission.