Yahya Sinouar was more than a man to be killed, he was the ultimate Israeli target. He was killed by the Israeli army on Thursday October 17 in Gaza. The former head of Hamas in Gaza, who became head of the Islamist movement after the elimination of its political leader in exile, Ismaïl Haniyeh, during an operation in Tehran at the end of July, had been, with Mohammed Deif (the head of the armed branch of the movement), the designer, the organizer, the meticulous director of the attack of October 7, 2023.
This unprecedented tragedy suffered by the Israelis which left 1,200 dead – the largest massacre in the country’s history – and led to the taking of more than 250 hostages, became the starting point for a conflict of historic dimension, starting by the military operation in Gaza, which caused the death of more than 40,000 people including, according to the Israeli army, 17,000 Hamas fighters, and a higher number of civilians, notably women and children, while reducing the enclave to a field of ruins.
For months, Israeli generals have believed that Hamas is a defeated armed movement and that the war in its current form should be interrupted to only intervene during one-off operations in the enclave, almost all of whose inhabitants have been displaced, first and foremost to kill Yahya Sinouar.
Analyses ADN
The latter remains the symbolic man of October 7. A man, until Thursday, to find and kill. It is now done. He was ultimately killed during an Israeli army operation in the Gaza enclave which was clearly not intended to harm him. The army claimed to have attempted to kill “three terrorists” within the framework of movements devoted to other goals, and having only discovered after shooting, in the ruins of a building targeted during this intervention, the body of a man presenting a physical resemblance to the leader of the Hamas. It was then necessary to carry out DNA analyzes to be able to confirm the news of his death, late Thursday afternoon.
Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers The trajectory of Yahya Sinouar, from the Khan Younès refugee camp at the helm of the October 7 attack
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Hunted, Yahya Sinouar had been, and feverishly, for twelve months and ten days. In this long year, all the other major figures of Hamas who were in Gaza were eliminated one after the other, as was Ismaïl Haniyeh, the political leader of the Islamist movement, in exile. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, over the months, showed his visitors in his Kirya office in Tel Aviv the list of Hamas leaders with crosses on their faces as they were elimination. All that was missing was that of Yahya Sinouar. In absolute terms, this could therefore close a phase of the current war. It remains to find the Israeli hostages who remain in captivity in Gaza. Out of 101 people, half would already be dead. The life chances of others are diminishing day by day.
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