An analysis conducted by CNN of video clips and photos published by the Israeli army regarding the killing of Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, showed that he was inside a building in a residential area in Rafah near an Israeli site.
CNN was able to determine the geographical location by comparing satellite images with videos and photos from the surrounding area that were published by the army.
“The house was about 1,000 feet (300 meters) from what appears to be a forward operating base and a site housing Israeli army vehicles,” she said. Satellite images from Planet Labs taken this month show a number of military vehicles, and even a bulldozer, parked. Between newly built earthen berms in the same places over several days and weeks.”
On Thursday, Israel announced that it had killed Sinwar, whom it accuses of being the architect of the October 7, 2023 attack, while its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed that this “important” step represents “the beginning of the end” of the war.
Al-Sanwar (61 years old), nicknamed “Abu Ibrahim,” was like the “living dead man” and a major target for Israel since the attack launched by the movement on Israeli sites and areas, which sparked a war in Gaza that has spread to Lebanon and is feared to turn into a regional conflict.
The Israeli army said in a statement, “At the end of a year-long hunt, yesterday (Wednesday) forces in the southern Gaza Strip eliminated Sinwar.”
According to the statement, the army and the Shin Bet security service launched “dozens of operations over recent months that led to reducing Yahya Al-Sinwar’s operating area, which finally resulted in his elimination.”
Hamas has not yet commented on Sinwar’s fate.
Israeli officials praised the killing of Sinwar, stressing that this provided an opportunity to work on returning the hostages held in the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu, who had vowed to “eliminate” Hamas after the attack, considered Sinwar’s killing an “important milestone” in the movement’s decline, but “the war is not over yet.”
“Today, evil has received a severe blow,” he said, stressing that “its liquidation is an important step in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas.”
Army Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevy, considered that Israel had “settled the score” with Sinwar, who spent more than two decades detained in its prisons.
Sinwar took over the leadership of the movement after his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an assassination in Tehran on July 31 attributed to Israel, which did not officially comment on it.
Many Hamas leaders have been killed since the outbreak of war. Sinwar was wanted by Israel, as was Muhammad al-Deif, the leader of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the movement’s military wing.
The Israeli army announced on August 1 that Al-Deif was killed in an air strike in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 13. Hamas did not confirm this.
The Israeli army and authorities accuse Sinwar of being one of the main planners of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which caused the death of 1,206 people, the majority of them civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on official Israeli figures that include hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza.
Of the 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 97 are still being held in Gaza, including 34 that the army says have died.
Israel responded with a devastating bombing campaign and ground operations in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 42,438 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the latest data from the Hamas Ministry of Health, which the United Nations considers reliable.
Sinwar has not appeared in public since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip a year ago.
Many leaders of the Palestinian movement, most notably its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, were previously killed by Israeli strikes or in operations attributed to it.
His death is likely to have a major impact on the movement, which has lost a number of its prominent officials over the past months.
The Israeli military historian, Guy Aviad, an expert on Hamas affairs, said that the killing of Sinwar was “an important event (..) but it is not the end of the war” whether in Gaza or Lebanon.
He added to Agence France-Presse, “Hamas is still ruling the Gaza Strip,” adding, “Even though we eliminated Sinwar, right now, there is a great danger to the hostages because we believe that the one who controls their fate is his younger brother, Muhammad Sinwar.”
