Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced this Thursday the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinouar, killed during a military operation in the Gaza Strip.
“The mass murderer” is no more. Appointed on August 6 following the assassination in Tehran of former Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh, Hamas announced, Yahya Sinouar was in turn killed by the IDF, we learned from the Israeli Minister of Defense. Foreign Affairs, Israel Katz this Thursday.
“The mass murderer Yahya Sinouar, responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7, was eliminated by the soldiers (of the Israeli forces),” declared Ismaïl Katz in a statement to the press.
The Israeli army and authorities accused Yahya Sinouar of being one of the masterminds of the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 in Israel, which made him one of the men most wanted by the Israeli authorities. , who considered him the Palestinian version of Bin Laden.
“the butcher of Khan Younes”
Yahya Sinouar was born in 1962 in the south of the Gaza Strip. He quickly became noted for his radical ideas regarding the application of religion. “He said he was planning a major massacre of Jews, in accordance with the Hamas charter. He therefore considers what he did a success. We should have eliminated him a long time ago,” conceded the former Shin Bet officer.
His first role within Hamas was to eliminate its political opponents. At 25, he heads the Jihad and Preaching Organization, the Hamas intelligence unit which punishes “collaborators”, these Palestinians punished for intelligence with the Israeli enemy.
It was for this reason that he was arrested in 1989 by the Israelis after killing four Palestinians accused of being collaborators with the Jewish state. He had spent twenty-three years behind bars in Israel where he established himself as a powerful political leader, before organizing his own release. In 2011, 1,000 Palestinian prisoners were exchanged, including Yahya Sinouar, for a Franco-Israeli soldier, Ghilad Salit.
Israeli media and people who met him describe a cruel man. “In Gaza, they nicknamed him ‘the butcher of Khan Yunis.’ He was an intelligent, lively and charismatic man. But he had no feelings. He spoke with coldness, indifference. Nothing touched him,” Michael Kobi, who conducted interrogations of Yahya Sinouar, explained to franceinfo.
This is evidenced by an extract from these interrogations published by the media, in which he describes having kidnapped a “traitor” before killing him: “We took him to the cemetery of Khan Younes (…), I put him in a grave and I strangled him with a keffiyeh (…). I was sure he knew he deserved to die.”
Former elite commander in the al-Qassam Brigades
Before being appointed head of Hamas, Yahya Sinouar had to act as a link between the political office and the armed wing of the terrorist organization. Its objective: lifting the blockade on Gaza, peace on the holy sites and an end to Israel’s annexation in the West Bank.
He was actively sought by Israel and placed on the US list of “international terrorists”. The IDF had indicated that Gaza City was at the heart of its operations, being where most of Hamas’ leaders were based.
Yahya Sinouar also shrouded his movements in the greatest secrecy. His house was reportedly bombed by Israeli air forces a few hours after the start of the Hamas offensive against Israel, according to Palestinian media. A former elite commander in the al-Qassam Brigades, he was accused of using Gazans as human shields.
