JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday that Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar was “moving from hideout to hideout” and no longer leading the group’s military actions.
“He has now become a terrorist on the run from being the leader of Hamas” in the Palestinian territory, Gallant told a televised briefing, without elaborating on Sinwar’s presumed current location.
Israel accuses Sinwar of masterminding the October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war, nearing its fifth month.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of more than 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
In Israel’s retaliatory offensive, at least 27,472 people, most of them women, children and adolescents, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.
In recent weeks the Israeli military has pounded Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city and Sinwar’s hometown.
According to Gallant, “Sinwar does not lead the campaign, does not command the forces. He is concerned about his personal survival.”
Sinwar joined Hamas when Sheikh Ahmad Yassin founded the group in 1987, around the start of the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, against Israeli occupation.
The ascetic militant, known for his secrecy, has not been seen since October 7.
Since then, Israeli military spokesman Richard Hecht called Sinwar the “face of evil” and declared him a “dead man walking.”
But Israeli forces in Gaza have failed to locate any of Hamas’s top leaders.
Troops found “important material” at locations where Sinwar had recently stayed, Gallant said, adding that the army will continue to pursue militants across Gaza.
The military “will reach places where we have not yet fought... right up to the last Hamas bastion, which is Rafah,” Gallant said.
The southern city of Rafah borders Egypt and now hosts more than half of Gaza’s population, displaced by the fighting.
