Hamas’ top leader Yayha Sinwar, the mastermind behind the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, was killed in a military operation in Gaza, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Thursday.
“Terrorist mastermind Yahya Sinwar, responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7th, was eliminated today by IDF soldiers,” Katz said in a statement to foreign ministers worldwide, NBC News reported.
“This is a great military and moral achievement for Israel and a victory for the entire free world against the axis of radical Islam led by Iran,” he said.
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The Israeli Defense Forces said it killed Sinwar along with two other militants in the southern Gaza Strip Wednesday.
Israeli troops encountered the three militants during a routine military operation and engaged them in gunfire, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
After the battle was over, they found a body resembling Sinwar’s and alerted higher-ups, the outlet reported.
The IDF initially said Thursday that it was performing DNA tests on the body.
“At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” said the IDF and Israeli air force in a joint statement. The body will be transported to Israel to undergo a DNA analysis to confirm its identity, a source told The Washington Post on condition of anonymity.
Hamas has not issued a statement.
In a press conference, Vice President Kamala Harris declared that “justice has been served” with a pointed message for terrorist factions, reported MSNBC.
“To any terrorist who kills Americans, threatens the American or threatens our troops or our interests ... know this, we will always bring you to justice,” said Harris. Israel has a “right to defend itself” and the threat Hamas poses “must be eliminated.”
With Sinwar gone, “This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza,” she added.
The Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 killed 1200 people, including 43 Americans. Around 250 people were taken hostage, including 12 Americans, are are still being held, reported Axios. Israel’s response to the attack has killed more than 42,000 people in Gaza.
As protests around the world have called for a ceasefire to end the war, Sinwar has previously come out against a postwar Palestinian reconciliation plan and has called such efforts to do so “shameful and outrageous.”
“As long as fighters are still standing and we have not lost the war, such contacts should be immediately terminated,” he said in December 2023, reported the Wall Street Journal. “We have the capabilities to continue fighting for months.”
Born in 1962 in Gaza, Sinwar was recruited to Hamas by its founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, soon after group’s founding in the 1980s.
He was imprisoned in 1988 for orchestrating the murder of two Israeli soldiers and four suspected Palestinian informants, according to Israeli records. During the more than two decades that he spent in prison in Israel, he learned fluent Hebrew and developed an understanding of Israeli culture.
Following his release in a 2011 prisoner swap, he married and had three children. He has rarely spoken about his family but once commented that “the first words my son spoke were ‘father,’ ‘mother’ and ‘drone,’” the New York Times reported.
Sinwar, long considered the architect of the terror group’s military operations, consolidated his power in August when he was tapped to lead its political operations after a top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an assassination plot.
