Israel’s Foreign Minister confirms that Hamas top leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in Gaza

“The assassination of Sinwar will create the possibility to immediately release the hostages,” Israel Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

Israel’s Foreign Minister confirmed on Thursday (October 17, 2024) that Israeli troops in Gaza have killed Hamas’ top leader Yahya Sinwar, a chief architect of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.

Mr. Sinwar has topped Israel’s most wanted list since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war just over a year ago, and his killing strikes a powerful blow to the militant group. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas of his death.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz called Mr. Sinwar’s killing a “military and moral achievement for the Israeli Army”.

“The assassination of Sinwar will create the possibility to immediately release the hostages and to bring a change that will lead to a new reality in Gaza — without Hamas and without Iranian control,” he said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, the Israeli military said it was looking into whether the Hamas top leader was killed in a military operation in Gaza.

The military said in a statement that three militants were killed during operations in Gaza, without specifying where or elaborating further. It said the identities of the three were so far not confirmed, but it was “checking the possibility” that one of the three was Mr. Sinwar.

Israel has vowed to kill him since the beginning of its retaliatory campaign in Gaza. Throughout the war, Mr. Sinwar has been in hiding.

For years Hamas’ top figure in Hamas, Mr. Sinwar was chosen as its top leader following the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh in July in an apparent Israeli strike in the Iranian capital Tehran. Israel has also claimed to have killed the head of Hamas’ military wing Mohammed Deif in an airstrike, but the group has said he survived.

The report came as Israeli forces continued a more than week-old major air and ground assault in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, where the Abu Hussein school was hit on Thursday (October 17, 2024).

Fares Abu Hamza, head of Gaza Health Ministry’s local emergency unit, confirmed the toll from the strike and said dozens of people were wounded. He said the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was struggling to treat the casualties.

“Many women and children are in critical condition,” he said.

The Israeli military said it targeted a command center run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad inside the school. It provided a list of around a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was called in. It was not immediately possible to verify the names.

In a separate development, a building in central Beirut that houses offices of the Al Jazeera news network and the Norwegian Embassy was evacuated after a warning.

Mazen Ibrahim, Al Jazeera’s Lebanon bureau chief, said the building’s administration received three calls telling everyone to leave the building, which he said also houses the embassies of Norway and Azerbaijan, as well as dozens of offices. He said it was unclear who called in the warning.

Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ragnhild Simenstad said the building was evacuated after a “bomb threat,” without elaborating.

Published - October 17, 2024 07:14 pm IST