Yahya Sinouar, radical activist and man in the shadows, is considered one of the masterminds of the attack of unprecedented scale carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil, which sparked the war in the Palestinian territory and ignited the powder in the region. Aged 61 and leader since 2017 of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza, he was named political leader of Hamas in early August after the death of Ismaïl Haniyeh, killed in Tehran on July 31 in an attack blamed on Israel, which did not not commented. “Mass murderer Yahya Sinouar, responsible for the massacres and atrocities on October 7, was eliminated by soldiers (Israeli forces)“, Mr. Katz said in a press release. “During army operations in the Gaza Strip, three terrorists were eliminated“, the army had indicated earlier in a press release, an Israeli security source having specified that DNA analyzes were being carried out on a body to confirm whether it was indeed Sinouar.
Shortly after the attack on October 7, 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “Every member of Hamas is a dead man“. Before Mr. Katz’s announcement, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant wrote on X: “We will reach every terrorist and we will eliminate them“. The leader of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson hailed the death of Yahya Sinouar as a “source of hope“. Hamas has not confirmed. These statements come in an explosive context in the Middle East, where Israel has been shelling the positions of Hezbollah in Lebanon since September 23, which had opened a cross-border front on October 8, 2023 in support of Hamas.
On September 30, the Israeli army launched ground operations in southern Lebanon to combat the Lebanese Islamist movement. At midday Thursday, strikes targeted several regions in the south and east of Lebanon, Hezbollah strongholds including the southern suburbs of Beirut. Earlier, an Israeli strike had targeted “a weapons warehouse” of Hezbollah in Latakia in Syria, stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, leaving two injured, according to Syrian media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The United States, allies of Israel, on their side announced it had struck five underground munitions depots of the Houthis, who control large swathes of Yemen and carry out attacks on Israel and ships allegedly linked to them, in support of Hamas.
“Stop regional escalation”
After weakening Hamas in Gaza, Israel shifted the bulk of its military operations to the Lebanese front. In almost a month, at least 1,373 people have been killed in the country, according to an AFP count based on official data, with the UN recording nearly 700,000 displaced people. Iran, an ally of the Syrian regime, Houthi rebels, Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas, threatened Thursday to attack “painfully“Israel if it hit targets”in Iran or the region“, in response to the missile attack carried out by Tehran on Israeli territory on October 1 to which Israel vowed to respond.
This attack was presented by Iran as retaliation for the assassination of Ismaïl Haniyeh, and that of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, killed in an Israeli strike on September 27 near Beirut. The head of Iranian diplomacy, Abbas Araghchi, met in Cairo with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi. They discussed the “need to stop regional escalation” and achieve a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza, according to the Egyptian presidency. Hezbollah for its part claimed Thursday to have fired rockets against Israeli troops near the Syrian Golan Heights annexed by Israel, and destroys two Israeli tanks in southern Lebanon. Israel says it wants to neutralize Hezbollah on the border to allow the return to northern Israel of some 60,000 people displaced by its incessant fire for a year.
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