Israel says Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, killed in major blow to militant group

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that Hamas’ top leader and long-time commander in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by troops during an operation in the decimated Palestinian territory.

In a message the Israeli government said was shared with dozens of other foreign ministers around the world, Katz said Sinwar, “who is responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7, was killed today by IDF soldiers.”

“This is a great military and moral achievement for Israel and victory for the free world in everything against the evil axis of extreme Islam led by Iran,” said Katz in the statement, sent to CBS News by the Israeli foreign ministry.

The Israeli military said in a subsequent statement that Sinwar was killed “in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip” on Wednesday, without providing any further detail. Reports in Israeli media had said for hours before his death was confirmed that Sinwar was killed by troops conducting a routine patrol near the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Israel initially said it was working to verify whether he was among “three terrorists” killed by troops. 

An Israeli security official tells CBS News that the soldiers noticed that one of the men killed looked like Sinwar. They were able to take DNA samples from the remains to confirm the death. 

President Biden received regular updates aboard Air Force One, on his way to Germany. In a statement Thursday afternoon, Mr. Biden said, “Early this morning, Israeli authorities informed my national security team that a mission they conducted in Gaza likely killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. DNA tests have now confirmed that Sinwar is dead. This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.” 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Sinwar “a vicious and unrepentant terrorist responsible for the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” adding, “His decision to launch the October 7th terror attacks unleashed catastrophic consequences for the people of Gaza, who have now endured the horrors of more than a year of war. The world is a better place with him gone.”

U.S. and Israeli officials described Sinwar’s death as a game changer, and compared its significance to Israelis as being like “their Osama bin Laden.” 

At this point, CBS News is told that there was no U.S. role in this specific attack that killed Sinwar. But for more than a year, the U.S. intelligence community and Joint Special Operations Command have been side-by-side helping the Israelis through intelligence sharing in the Israeli effort to hunt down the leaders of Hamas including Sinwar. 

A photo circulating on social media showed a man resembling the Hamas commander laying dead on a pile of rubble with a gaping head wound, but CBS News could not immediately verify the image. Sinwar had been one of the most wanted figures on Israel’s target list since Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border terror attack, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. 

“In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area,” the IDF said earlier Thursday, referring to the operation that killed two men along with Sinwar.  

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement that “justice has been served to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” adding that it was his hope the killing would “result in further progress toward the release of all hostages still held in Gaza, as well as to a ceasefire for Palestinians who have suffered under Hamas’ grip for far too long.”

Who was Yahya Sinwar?

Sinwar, 61, was accused by Israel of orchestrating the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. He had remained in hiding in Gaza since that massacre was carried out.

“Sinwar is the terrorist, the master terrorist, who planned and carried out the October 7th [massacre], during which so many innocent Israelis were murdered — children, women and the elderly,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement Thursday. “Sinwar died while beaten, persecuted and on the run — he didn’t die as a commander, but as someone who only cared for himself. This is a clear message to all of our enemies — the IDF will reach anyone who attempts to harm the citizens of Israel or our security forces, and we will bring you to justice.”  

Sinwar was named the overall leader of Hamas in August, following the assassination of its former political chief Ismail Haniyeh during a visit to Iran. Before that he had led the group as its top commander in Gaza since 2017. He was considered a ruthless militant commander with close ties to Hamas’ biggest benefactor, Iran.

According to CBS News’ partner network BBC News, Sinwar was born in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. His parents had lived in Ashkelon, which is now southern Israel, but they were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced in the war that followed Israel’s founding in 1948.

Sinwar spent more than 20 years in Israeli prisons before being released in 2011 and rising in Hamas’ leadership. “People just feared him — this is a person that murdered people with his hands,” Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told BBC News. “He was very brutal, aggressive and charismatic at the very same time.”

Speaking during a 2021 news conference in Gaza, after a previous 10-day round of violence between Hamas and Israel, Sinwar told international journalists “the best gift the occupation leaders [Israel] can give me is assassinating me, because since childhood, I was raised in a way that taught me to sacrifice my life for this country.”

“We are not lovers of killing and death, but we are a people who need our rights given back to us,” he said. “If this is secured through popular, nonviolent resistance and international diplomacy then that is preferable, but if we are forced to use the most dangerous means, then we are ready, and our people we will not hesitate to use any means whatsoever to earn their rights.”

Israel’s steady elimination of Hamas leaders

The IDF has killed dozens of commanders and hundreds of fighters belonging to Hamas, long designated a terrorist group by the U.S., Israel and many other countries, since Israel launched its blistering war in Gaza in immediate retaliation for Oct. 7 attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stressed since the beginning of the war that no senior Hamas figure would escape — and there was none more senior in Gaza than Sinwar.

Haniyeh, who spent decades living in exile in Qatar, was assassinated in Iran’s capital in late July after attending the inauguration of that country’s new president. Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility for the brazen assassination in Tehran, but U.S. officials told CBS News at the time that it was an Israeli strike. 

Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing the al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in an airstrike in Gaza in July, according to the IDF.

“There is only one place for Yahya Sinwar, and it is beside Mohammed Deif and the rest of the October 7th terrorists,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said in an interview over the summer. “That is the only place we’re preparing and intending for him.”

Israel’s top coordinator for hostages and the missing told CBS News’ Elizabeth Palmer in September that the Israeli government was prepared to offer Sinwar and his family safe passage out of Gaza if Hamas agreed to relinquish control of Gaza and allow the return of the remaining 101 hostages.

“It would be the end of the war, as [the hostages] will be recovered,” Israeli negotiator Gal Hirsch told CBS News at the time. Sinwar never issued a reply to the Israeli proposal.

There are great unknowns following Sinwar’s death, including what happens to the roughly 100 remaining hostages being held by Hamas, including four living hostages who are U.S. citizens. 

Multiple U.S. officials say this presents a potential opportunity for a diplomatic deal to wind down the conflict, and that a lot depends on the choices made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the coming days. An Israeli official told CBS News that Sinwar’s death goes far in terms of achieving the Israeli objective of destroying Hamas’ command and governing structure.  

It remains unknown who will step in to take over Hamas, or how will this play out in Tehran.

Israeli hostage families react 

Even before his death was confirmed by the IDF, the Israeli Hostages Families Forum said in a statement that his killing was an achievement, but that only the return of their loved ones could be considered a victory. 

“The Hostages Families Forum commends the security forces for eliminating Sinwar, who masterminded the greatest massacre our country has ever faced, responsible for the murder of thousands and the abduction of hundreds,” the group said. “However, we express deep concern for the fate of the 101 men, women, elderly and children still held captive by Hamas in Gaza. We call on the Israeli government, world leaders, and mediating countries to leverage the military achievement into a diplomatic one by pursuing an immediate agreement for the release of all 101 hostages: the living for rehabilitation and the murdered for proper burial.”

Of the 101 hostages still held in Gaza, Israeli intelligence suggests 64 are still alive.

Sinwar’s killing was announced hours after more than a dozen Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, that was sheltering displaced people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.

contributed to this report.