‘Mohammed Sinwar killed in IDF strike’: Israel Defence Minister Israel Katz

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz says ‘according to all indications’ Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas’s brutal leader in Gaza, was killed in massive Israeli air strikes on his underground bunker last week.

Mohammed Sinwar was in a tunnel network hit by a massive Israeli air strike last week.

Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas’s infamous leader in Gaza, has reportedly been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces, with his body found in a tunnel network along with 10 of his aides.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz told MPs that while the IDF had not yet confirmed Sinwar’s assassination: “According to all the indications, Mohammed Sinwar was eliminated,” Ynet TV reports.

Mr Katz made the remarks to the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee soon after Saudi owned Al Hadath TV reported that Sinwar’s body was found in a tunnel network hit by massive Israeli air strikes targeting an underground bunker near the European Hospital in Khan Younis last week.

The commander of Hamas’s Rafah Brigade, Mohammad Shabana – who was first in line to succeed Sinwar – was also killed in the strike, Al Hadath reports.

Another Sinwar brother, Zakaria Sinwar, a lecturer at the Islamic University in Gaza, was also killed along with three of his sons, according to Palestinian media.

Abu Obeidah, Hamas’s spokesman – regularly seen on Al Jazeera with his face covered by a red keffiyeh – was believed to be with Sinwar and Shabana in the tunnel network.

The notoriously brutal Sinwar, who has led Hamas in Gaza since his brother Yahya was killed by Israel last October, helped plan the October 7 2023 massacre and has refused to acknowledge the group’s political leadership in Qatar since his brother’s death.

He has been seen by both Israel and Arab negotiators as a major block to ceasefire talks, and security sources told Israeli media his death could mark a major turn for negotiations. Shabana, his trusted lieutenant, had been expected to take over the terror organisation on the event of Sinwar’s death.

But if the deaths of both men – and their spokesman – are confirmed, it would mean the militant group has been decapitated, leaving only Izz ad-Din al-Haddad, commander of Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade to take over as military chief.

It would also mark an important military victory for Israel at a time when the country is under pressure to wrap up its 18-month-long war in the enclave and as Donald Trump appeared to sideline Jerusalem in his dealings with the country’s Arab neighbours.

After the first air strikes last Wednesday, which saw the Israeli Air Force drop tonnes of bunker busting bombs on the suspected Hamas command and control facility, they struck again on Thursday. Palestinians reported a “belt of fire” at the Khan Younis site, with Israeli media reporting the aim of the renewed attack was to prevent any attempt at rescue of the Hamas leader and other militant commanders, or removal of the rubble.

After the strikes, security officials said anyone in the tunnel not killed immediately by the bombs could not have survived the toxic fumes released by the strikes.

The strikes were compared with those that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in his underground bunker in Beirut last September.

The Israeli Defence Force has refrained from targeting Sinwar over the past months because he is known to surround himself with a human shield of Israeli hostages.

However according to The Jerusalem Post, The IDF recently destroyed one of the last remaining strategic tunnels connecting Rafah and Khan Yunis, severely limiting the ability of Sinwar and Shabanah to move around the Gaza Strip.

The newspaper reported that it was possible the destruction of the tunnels forced the Hamas leaders into the tunnel under the European Hospital, making it easier to target them.

On Wednesday, military intelligence was informed Sinwar was in a Hamas command site under the hospital with no hostages nearby, YNet TV reported.

With only a small window to attack, Israeli Air Force jets were in the air within an hour, leaving Jerusalem no time to inform US of the strike.

Sinwar has been targeted for 20 years by the Israeli Defence Forces but has consistently managed to avoid assassination.

Among his most audacious escapes, according to the Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, was using pre-recorded radio transmissions to give the impression he was speaking live from a certain location, leading the IDF to bomb that site while Sinwar was actually elsewhere.

In 2003 he also escaped unscathed after an explosive device planted in the wall of his home blew up. In 2019, an Israeli operation that reportedly involved poisoning Sinwar and other commanders and abducting them from a beach also failed.

Sinwar, said to be so brutal he would shoot any Palestinian passing in the street who dared look at him, was jailed by Israel in the 1990s for nine months, going on to spend three years in a Palestinian Authority prison in Ramallah, from which he escaped in 2000.

He went on to found Hamas’s secretive “Shadow Unit,” which is tasked with guarding high-value captives, such as Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit whose 2006 abduction Sinwar oversaw.