The Israeli military said on Thursday it was investigating the possibility that it killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar after an operation in the Gaza Strip in which it targeted three militants.
“At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” it said in a statement.
It said there was no indication that Israeli hostages were present in the building where the three terrorists were killed.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
If confirmed, Sinwar’s death would be a major boost for the Israeli military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a string of high-profile assassinations of prominent leaders of its enemies in recent months.
Israel’s Army Radio said the incident occurred during a targeted ground operation in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, during which Israeli troops killed three militants and took away their bodies.
It said visual evidence showed it was likely that one of the men was Sinwar and DNA testing was being conducted. Israel has DNA samples from Sinwar’s time spent in an Israeli prison.
Yahya Sinwar, the chief architect of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war, has since topped Israel’s wanted list. But he remains elusive, possibly hiding in a bastion of tunnels that Hamas has built beneath Gaza over the past two decades.
Previously the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, he was named its overall leader after the assassination of former political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in August.
Israel also killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, in Beirut last month, as well as several top leadership of the group’s military wing.
Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage in Gaza. Israel’s campaign in response has killed more than 42,000 people, reduced much of Gaza to rubble and displaced much of its population.
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