Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar was confirmed dead after Israel conducted DNA testing
Hamas Chief Yaha Sinwar Killed
In Short
•Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar was confirmed dead after Israel conducted DNA testing
•Sinwar ordered the deadly October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis
•Yahya Sinwar among three terrorists killed by Israel in Gaza
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has confirmed that Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who ordered the October 7 attack on Israel, is dead, according to initial DNA testing. Over the death of Yahya Sinwar, PM Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israeli forces have delivered “a blow to evil“. However, he stated that the mission against Hamas is far from over.
Yahya Sinwar was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in south Gaza in 1962, back when the region was under Egyptian control. His parents were expelled from Ashkelon by Zionist forces in 1948 during the Palestinian Nakba (“catastrophe”), which saw mass-scale ethnic cleansing of Arabs amidst the formation of Israel. Sinwar was active in the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s and was arrested for protesting Israeli occupation while a college student at the Islamic University in Gaza.
He is credited with founding Hamas’s Internal Security Force Al Majd, responsible for managing internal security matters, investigating — and allegedly brutally eliminating — suspected Israeli agents and Palestinian collaborators, and tracking down Israeli intelligence and security services officers. Sinwar is also credited with founding the fearsome al- Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and the largest militia operating in Gaza prior to last year’s October 7 attacks.
In 1988, Sinwar was arrested by Israel for the murder of 12 “collaborating” Palestinians (an act that had earned him the moniker ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’), and plotting the abduction and death of two Israeli soldiers. He spent 22 years in various Israeli prisons before being released in 2011 as part of a massive prisoner exchange deal.
