Israel killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar in an armour-infantry attack in Rafah, southern Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces, detailing the damage assessment, said Israel’s 828th Brigade conducted “intelligence-based targeted raids and operations”, where they found assault rifles and snipers in the hideout and Sinwar’s body.
The IDF also shared video of a tank firing at a Hamas leader’s hideout in Rafah. Drone footage shows a building circled in red being targeted. The IDF claims that this is the building in which Yahya Sinwar barricaded himself.
The tank fires one round, destroying the structure, which was already in ruins. The troops then proceeded to assess the damage and found AK assault rifles, an SVD Dragunov sniper rifle, magazines and ammunition.
Photo Credit: IDF
In another video, ground troops are seen working in the area where Yahya Sinwar was killed. After the “success” of the operation, MG Yaron Finkelman, commanding officer of the Israel Army’s Southern Command, addressed the troops and said, “Perseverance, patience and analysis of the terrain… and the initiation of contact and you fired on them… This is a very important matter.”
Israeli soldiers found a body believed to be that of Yahya Sinwar, CNN reports. They cut off his finger to confirm DNA, which soldiers had a profile of when Sinwar was in an Israeli prison for two decades until his release in 2011 in a prisoner-exchange deal.
Videos of Israeli soldiers searching the hideout surfaced on social media. One of the videos reviewed by NDTV shows two Israeli soldiers standing next to a body (claimed to be that of Yahya Sinwar) with the index finger of his left hand cut off. Meanwhile, CNN in its report said that they have analyzed the videos in which all five fingers of his left hand are visible and then later one finger is missing.
He told CNN that the Hamas leader was hit by other injuries, including a tank shell, but that he believed a gunshot to the head was what killed him.
The IDF claims that a tank round fired at the building killed the Hamas leader. Video reviewed by NDTV shows the body’s skull cracked and facial injuries, corroborating claims made by the chief pathologist in the CNN report.
Yahya Sinwar was the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,200 people, resulting in the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including children, in a year-long Israeli operation in Gaza.
Israel has vowed to root out Hamas from Gaza and has so far removed most of its top leadership, including its previous chief Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in July.
After Sinwar’s death, Israel now hopes that the hostages still trapped in Gaza will return. Sinwar’s deputy Khalil al-Hayya, who is seen as a possible successor, made a defiant comment saying that the hostages would not be returned until Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza and the war ended. go.
