Media reports say citing Israeli officials, say Israeli forces in Gaza killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Troops reportedly appeared to have run across him unknowingly in a battle, only to discover afterwards that a body in the rubble was Yahya Sinwar.
The Associated Press reports that Israeli leaders celebrated his killing as a settling of scores just over a year after Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 250 others in an attack that stunned the country. They reportedly also presented it as a turning point in the campaign to destroy Hamas, urging the group to surrender and release some 100 hostages still in Gaza.
U.S. officials reportedly expressed hopes for a cease-fire with Sinwar out of the picture. But eliminating him may not end the devastating war, during which Israel has destroyed much of the Gaza Strip and killed more than 42,000 Palestinians. The Gaza Health Ministry says more than half of those killed were women and children.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, praised the soldiers and made clear that however big a victory, it was not the end of the war, the BBC reports.
The prime minister has reportedly repeated his war aims many times – destroying Hamas as a military and political force and bringing the hostages home.
Netanyahu and the overwhelming proportion of Israelis who support the war in Gaza needed a victory.
Yahya Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He was five years old when it was captured by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war. His family were among more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes by Israeli forces in the 1948 war in which Israel won its independence. His family came from the town now known as Ashkelon, which is close to the northern border of the Gaza Strip.
In his 20s, he was convicted by Israel of killing four Palestinian informers. The BBC notes that during 22 years in jail he learnt Hebrew, studied his enemy and believed that he worked out how to fight them. His time in jail also meant Israel had his dental records and a sample of his DNA, which meant that they could identify his body.
Sinwar was released as one of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners who were swapped in 2011 for a single Israel soldier, Gilad Shalit.
On October 7 last year, in a meticulously planned series of attacks, Sinwar and his men inflicted Israel's worst-ever defeat – and a collective trauma that is still deeply felt.
