For more than a year, Israeli soldiers scoured the scorched earth of Gaza in search of the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, who was thought to be hiding in a vast tunnel network. Then, by chance, they found him.
Late on Wednesday in the southern city of Rafah, trainee Israeli troops from the 828th Battalion, a mixture of novice soldiers and reservists, spotted three suspicious figures moving from “home to home on the run”, the military said.
The soldiers fired on the group, apparently wounding one of them, who fled alone into a building. They sent in a small drone in pursuit, and through its camera saw a figure sitting among debris, his face covered by a scarf, who hurled a stick at it in