Death of Hamas leader | This is the ‘beginning of the end’ of the war in Gaza, says Israel

(Jerusalem) Israel announced Thursday that Hamas leader Yahya Sinouar, considered the architect of October 7, had been killed during an operation in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assuring that this death marked “the beginning of the end” of the war in Gaza.

This 61-year-old radical activist has led the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza since 2017, before being named political leader of Hamas in early August following the death of Ismaïl Haniyeh, killed in Tehran on July 31 in an attack blamed on Israel.

The army and domestic intelligence services “confirm that after a year-long hunt,” soldiers “eliminated Yahya Sinouar […] during an operation in the southern Gaza Strip” on Wednesday, the army said.

“Yahya Sinouar is dead,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a video message in English broadcast overnight. “This does not mean the end of the war in Gaza, but the beginning of the end,” he stressed.

Israeli forces were operating “in recent weeks” in this area following information indicating the probable presence of senior Hamas officials, the Israeli army said.

They “eliminated three terrorists” and DNA identification procedures on the body “confirmed that the Hamas leader had been eliminated.”

The Israeli army has released a short video filmed by a drone showing an injured man and which it presents as images of the Hamas leader just before he was killed.

The man, seated in the armchair of a gutted living room on the first floor of a partially destroyed building, has his face hidden by a fabric that could be a keffiyeh and has in his hand an object resembling a saber which he throws on the drone. According to the army, these images are those of Yahya Sinouar “a few moments with his elimination”.

The death of Yahya Sinouar, considered the mastermind of the attack of unprecedented scale carried out by the Palestinian movement on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil and which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, was not confirmed by Hamas immediately.

This is “an important step” in the decline of Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier in the evening. “Evil has taken a severe blow but the task before us is not yet finished,” he added.

The army chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, affirmed that the war “would not stop” before the capture of all the perpetrators of October 7 and the return of “all the hostages” held in Gaza.

” Happy ”

After the announcement of the death of Yahya Sinouar, US President Joe Biden hailed a “good day for Israel, the United States and the world”.

Mr. Biden said he called Mr. Netanyahu to congratulate him on the death of the Hamas leader, adding that he “hoped” to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza.

Kamala Harris, Democratic candidate for the White House, also considered that his death offered “the opportunity” to “end” the war in Gaza.

For his part, French President Emmanuel Macron declared to the press that the death of the Hamas leader represented an “opportunity” to be seized to put an end to military operations. It’s a “turning point” in the war, he wrote again on X later that night.

During their telephone interview, MM. Netanyahu and Biden assured that it was “an opportunity to promote the release of the hostages” and that they would “cooperate” to achieve this.

The Families Forum, the main association of relatives of hostages in Israel, “urged us to take advantage of this major breakthrough to ensure the return” of the last captives.

In front of a morgue in Tel Aviv, where Sinouar’s body arrived for “additional examinations” according to the police, several people danced and sang, according to images from AFPTV. Among them, Hemda, an Israeli, said she was “happy”.

Five soldiers killed

This announcement comes in an explosive context in the Middle East, where Israel has been shelling the positions of Hezbollah in Lebanon since September 23, which opened a cross-border front on October 8, 2023 in support of Hamas.

After weakening Hamas, Israel shifted most of its operations to the Lebanese front and launched ground incursions into southern Lebanon on September 30 to combat the Lebanese Islamist movement.

Thursday evening, Hezbollah announced it was moving “up a gear” in its war with Israel, claiming to have used precision-guided missiles for the first time to target Israeli soldiers.

Iran, supporter of Hamas, assured that the death of Yahya Sinouar would “strengthen the spirit of resistance” with a view to the “liberation” of the occupied territories. “He will become a model for youth,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York wrote on its X account, assuring that “the resistance will continue.”

Israel says it wants to neutralize Hezbollah on the border to allow the return to the north of its territory of some 60,000 people displaced by its fire over the past year.

On Thursday, strikes targeted the south and east of Lebanon, Hezbollah strongholds with the southern suburbs of Beirut.

At least 1,418 people were killed in the country, according to an AFP count based on official data, with the UN recording nearly 700,000 displaced people.

Hezbollah claimed Thursday to have fired rockets at Israeli troops near the Syrian Golan Heights annexed by Israel, and destroyed two Israeli tanks in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army announced the death of five soldiers in southern Lebanon, without specifying the date, bringing to 19 the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of the ground offensive.

Iran, ally of Hezbollah and Hamas, threatened to “painfully” attack Israel if it struck targets “in Iran or in the region”, in response to Tehran’s missile attack on Israeli territory the 1^is October to which Israel vowed to respond.

Fourteen dead in Gaza

In the Gaza Strip, at least 14 people were killed by an Israeli strike on the Abou Hussein school housing displaced people in the Jabalia camp (north), according to two local hospitals.

Jabalia has been surrounded and shelled since October 6 by the Israeli army, which claims that Hamas is trying to reconstitute its forces there.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has pointed to a “real risk” of famine in the besieged and devastated Palestinian territory, accusing “certain members of the Israeli government” of using it “a weapon of war”.

At least 42,438 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians, in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.