Jerusalem: The Israeli military on Thursday said that it was checking the possibility that it has killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar following an operation in the Gaza Strip that it said had targeted three militants. “At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” it said in a statement.
It said there were no signs that Israeli hostages had been present in the building where the three militants were killed. There was no immediate comment from Hamas. Al-Majd, a Hamas-linked website that usually publishes about security issues, urged Palestinians to wait for information about Sinwar from the group itself and not Israeli media outlets, which it said aimed to break their spirit.
If confirmed, the death of Sinwar would represent a major boost to 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 had 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 their bodies.
It said visual evidence suggested it was likely that one of the men was Sinwar and DNA tests were being conducted. Israel has samples of Sinwar’s DNA from his period in an Israeli jail.
Sinwar, the chief architect of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war, had been at the top of Israel’s wanted list ever since. But he has so far eluded detection, possibly hiding in the warren of tunnels Hamas had built under Gaza over the past two decades.
Israel also killed Hasan Nasrallah, leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, in Beirut last month as well as much of the top leadership of the group’s military wing.
Meanwhile, two hospitals in Gaza said that an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians killed at least 14 people on Thursday, while the Israeli military reported it had hit militants.
Ten bodies were brought to Kamal Adwan hospital and four to Al-Awda hospital, the two medical facilities reported.
The people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Abu Hussein school, which has become a shelter, in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, where Israel’s military says it is engaged in a sweeping assault targeting Hamas militants.
“A horrific massacre, most of the injured and wounded are lying on the ground at Kamal Adwan Hospital, and their condition is critical,” said Fares Afana, a senior official at the ambulance and emergency service in north Gaza.
