Jerusalem: The Israeli military announced the death of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the October 7 attack, after a group of soldiers killed him in a surprise firefight in southern Gaza’s Rafah.
His death represents a massive blow to the Palestinian militant movement that has waged a war with Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip for more than a year now.
Here is what we know about the killing of Israel’s most wanted man.
According to the Israeli military, Sinwar met his end at the hands of a routine patrol on Wednesday.
It said a group of soldiers of the 828th Brigade (Bislach) was moving through the city of Rafah when it came across three Palestinian militants.
Israeli media and military officials said there was no prior intelligence pointing to Sinwar’s presence in the area.
“Sinwar hid in places that our forces have explored over a long period of time,” military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said during a briefing Thursday.
“The forces identified three terrorists who were going from home to home on the run,” Hagari said.
As the soldiers chased them, Sinwar split from the other two, public broadcaster Kan reported.
A tank fired at a building in which two of the militants hid, while Sinwar took cover in another house, it said.
“Sinwar ran away alone into one of the buildings and our forces scanned the area with a drone,” Hagari said.
Drone footage released by the military showed Sinwar covered in dust sitting in an armchair staring down a drone as the device entered the house devastated by strikes.
The grainy footage showed Sinwar alone with one hand severely injured and his head covered in a traditional scarf, throwing a stick at the approaching drone during his final moments.
“We identified him as a terrorist inside a building and we shot into the building and we entered to scan the area. We found him with a gun and 40 thousand shekels ($10,750),” said Hagari.
Unverified images circulating online showed Israeli soldiers circled around the mangled corpse of a man resembling Sinwar who appeared to have suffered a severe head wound.
The man was wearing a chunky watch and surrounded by rubble.
The military conducted immediate DNA testing along with dental examinations and other forensic enquiries that helped confirm Sinwar’s identity.
Later on Thursday, Sinwar’s body was brought to a laboratory in Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
The initial findings described Sinwar’s physical condition as “good even though he had spent a long time in tunnels,” Kan reported.
Sinwar had not been seen in public since the war erupted with the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The Israeli military and media regularly claimed he was hiding deep in the warren of tunnels under Gaza, while images released by the army showed CCTV footage of a man exiting from a tunnel it claimed was Sinwar.
There were also reports that Sinwar had surrounded himself with several hostages who were seized by militants during the October 7 onslaught.
But when Sinwar was finally cornered and killed, there were no captives by his side.
“In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area,” a military statement said on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the killing of Sinwar and said his death could be the “beginning of the end” to the conflict.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant remained defiant in the wake of the killing, saying Israel would “pursue every terrorist and eliminate them” and bring back the hostages still held in Gaza.
Families of hostages, however, expressed concern over the fate of their loved ones as they called for a deal to secure their release.
At a Tel Aviv rally just hours after Sinwar’s death was announced, El-Sisil, 60, who gave only her first name, told AFP the killing presented a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for “a hostage deal to end the war.”
Hamas, meanwhile, has not confirmed its leader’s death.
Experts say it the group may bid its time before acknowledging his death, while his body remains with the Israeli military.
His killing so soon after the death of his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, in July also begs the question of who might succeed him.
What we know about the killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar
https://arab.news/y85gb
What we know about the killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar
- Sinwar met his end at the hands of a routine patrol on Wednesday
Lifting sanctions on Syria will prevent Daesh resurgence and strengthen the nation, experts say
- Conference in Washington discusses effects US policies are having on post-Assad Syria, and the continuing economic hardships in the country that could fuel terrorism
- Participants praise US President Donald Trump for taking the right steps to help the war-torn nation move towards recovery and stabilization
Syria faces serious challenges in the aftermath of the fall of the Assad regime a year ago, including rebuilding its economy, lifting refugees and civilians out of poverty, and preventing a resurgence of Daesh terrorism.
But experts in two panel discussions during a conference at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, attended by Arab News, agreed that US President Donald Trump had so far taken all the right steps to help the war-torn nation move toward recovery and stabilization.
One of the discussions explored the effects American policies are having on the rebuilding of Syria, including the lifting of sanctions and efforts to attract outside investments and stabilize the economy. Moderated by the institute’s vice president for policy, Kenneth Pollack, the participants included retired ambassadors Robert Ford and Barbara Leaf, and Charles Lister, a resident fellow at the institute.
The other discussion focused on the continuing economic hardships in Syria that could fuel terrorism, including a resurgence of Daesh. Moderator Elizabeth Hagedorn, of Washington-based Middle East news website Al-Monitor, was joined by Mohammed Alaa Ghanem of the Syrian American Council, Celine Kasem of Syria Now, and Jay Salkini from the US-Syria Business Council.
“As we went into a transitional era, US diplomacy took a back step for a while as the Trump administration came into office,” Lister noted during the first panel discussion.
Everyone has been “super skeptical” of where the new government led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, a former commander with the Syrian opposition forces, would lead the country, he said, but Trump had stepped up through policies and support.
“Frankly, I think in January none of us expected that President Donald Trump would be shaking hands with Ahmad Al-Sharaa” a few months later, he added.
“Despite the obvious challenges, this new (Syrian) government has to be engaged.”
The US had maintained strong ties to the Syrian Democratic Forces, and with Al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, Lister said, in the decade leading up to the collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime on Dec. 8, 2024.
“Of course, we’ve had 10 years of a superb partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces, but they were a non-state actor not a sovereign government,” he continued.
“Now, we have a sovereign government that we could test, we can engage, and we can see where that goes. And in working through a sovereign government, there is no comparison that comes anywhere close to what we’ve seen on Syria.”
Lister praised Trump, saying: “I think a lot of that goes down to President Trump’s own kind of gut instinct of the way to do things.
“But there is a deeper, deeper government bench that has worked on this through Treasury and State and elsewhere. I think they all deserve credit for moving so rapidly and so boldly to give Syria a chance, as President Trump says.”
Ford said a key aspect of the process as Syria moves forward will be the removal of all sanctions imposed by the US against the Assad regime under the 2019 Caesar Act, an effort that is now underway in Congress.
He said Trump recognizes that the future of Syria and the wider Middle East lies in the hands of the Arab people, and has pursued policies based on “shared interests” including a “national security
strategy” to help the war-torn country shift away from extremism and violence toward a productive economy and safer environment for its people.
The Trump administration recognizes this reality, Ford added, and will “work on a practical level towards shared interests.”
However, he cautioned that “Syria is not out of the woods, by any stretch of the imagination” in terms of ensuring there is no resurgence of violence driven by desperate people burdened by the harsh economic realities in the country.
“If they can work with the Syrian government, and with more and more important regional actors as the United States retrenches — like Israel, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt; it’s a long list — it will become more important,” Ford said.
“There is still a way for the Americans to work with all of them, even if we don’t have big boots on the ground, or if we’re not providing billions of dollars.”
Nonetheless, “America’s voice will still be heard,” he added, thanks to the interest Trump is taking in Syria.
Adopted by Congress six years ago, toward the end of Trump’s first term as president, the Caesar Act imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Syria, including measures that targeted Assad and his family in an attempt to ensure his regime would be held accountable for war crimes committed under its reign. The act was named after a photographer who leaked images of torture taking place in Assad’s prisons.
Lister noted that the removal of the US sanctions has been progressing at “record-breaking speeds.”
In pre-taped opening remarks to the conference, which took place at the institute’s offices in Washington, Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of the US Central Command, said the Trump administration’s priority in Syria is the “aggressive and relentless pursuit” of Daesh, while working on the integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces with the new Syrian government through American military coordination.
“Just to give an example, in the month of October, US forces advised, assisted and enabled Syrian partners during more than 20 operations against (Daesh), diminishing the terrorists’ attacks and export of violence around the world,” he said. “We’re also degrading their ability to regenerate.”
Cooper added that the issue of displacement camps in northeastern Syria must also be addressed. He said he has visited Al-Hawl camp four times since his first meeting with Al-Sharaa, “which reinforced my view of the need to accelerate repatriations.”
He continued: “The impact on displaced persons devastated by years of war and repression has been immense. As I mentioned in a late-September speech at the UN, continuing to repatriate displaced persons and detainees in Syria is both a humanitarian imperative and a strategic necessity.”
The US is working with Syrian forces to “supercharge” this effort, Cooper said, noting that the populations of Al-Hawl and Al-Roj camps have fallen from 70,000 to about 26,000.
The second panel discussion painted a very bleak picture of the economic challenges the Syrian people face, with the average income only $200-$300 a month, a level that the experts warned could push desperate people to violence just to survive.
The US-Syria Business Council’s Salkini said many major companies and factories that once operated in Syria had relocated to neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Iraq and Turkiye.
“We’re looking at about 50 percent-plus unemployment,” he said. “Let me give you statistics on the wages: A factory worker today, his salary is $100-$300 a month. A farmer makes $75-$200 a month in salary. A manager (or) a private in the military makes $250 a month.
“So you can imagine how these people are living on these low wages, and still have to buy their iPhone, their internet, pay for electricity.”
Many displaced people are unable to return to their former homes, the panelists said, because they were destroyed during the war and there is no accessible construction industry to rebuild them.
The capital, Damascus, faces many challenges they added, and the situation is even worse in the country.
