Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar was killed in an intelligence-based ground raid in southern Gaza. Sinwar was the politburo chief of the Palestinian group, Hamas. The 828 Brigade of the Israel Ground Forces (IDF) was operating in the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah, where during scans they found the Hamas chief’s body. CNN reported that Israeli troops cut off his fingers to confirm his death.
The report says that Israeli troops entered the hideout and found a body resembling Yahya Sinwar’s. They cut his finger off for a DNA confirmation with a profile the troops had when Sinwar was in Israeli prison for two decades until his release in 2011 in a prisoner-swap deal.
CNN quoted Chen Kugel, chief pathologist at Israel National Center of Forensic Medicine, as saying, “After the laboratory made the profile, we compared it with the profile that Sinwar had in the term that he was serving here as a prisoner, so then we could finally identify him by his DNA.”
Kugel told CNN that the troops first tried to identify him with his teeth but that wasn’t “certified enough”.
Videos of Israeli troops searching the hideout surfaced on social media. In one of the videos, two Israeli soldiers are standing next to a body (claimed to be Yahya Sinwar’s) with the index finger of the left hand being chopped off. Meanwhile, CNN in its report said they analysed videos which showed his left hand with all five fingers, and then later with one finger missing.
The chief pathologist who autopsied the body of Yahya Sinwar told CNN that Sinwar was killed by a gunshot wound to the head.
He told CNN that the Hamas leader suffered other injuries, including from a tank shell, but he was confident a bullet to the head was what had killed the Hamas leader. A video assessed by NDTV on social media showed injuries to Yahya’s face and part of his skull blown off, corroborating with claims made by the chief pathologist in the CNN report
Israeli troops fired a tank round on the hideout before conducting a ground raid for damage assessment and search for any survivors.
Hamas Looking For A New Leader
Hamas is looking for a new political leader based outside Gaza. At the same time, his brother – Mohammad Sinwar – is expected to assume a bigger role in directing the war against Israel in the region.
Yahya Sinwar was the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel in which over 1,200 people were killed, resulting in a year-long Israeli operation in Gaza, killing over 40,000.
Israel vowed to uproot Hamas from Gaza and has so far eliminated most of its top leadership, including its previous chief Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in July.
Hamas has a history of quickly and efficiently replacing its fallen leaders, with its top decision-making body, the Shura Council, tasked with naming a new head.
While Hamas had a separate military and political wing, after Sinwar took over as the politburo chief following Haniyeh’s death, he fused the two wings.
After Sinwar’s death, Israel now hopes the hostages still stuck in Gaza would be returned. Sinwar’s deputy Khalil Al-Hayya, who is viewed as a potential successor, struck a defiant note, saying hostages would not be returned until Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza and the war ended.