The IDF is targeting the top Hamas official Yahya Sinwar, who is hiding out in Gaza. Israel says he is “a dead man walking,”
Israeli forces have Hamas’ top leader surrounded in the ruins of Gaza City, Israel’s defense minister said.
Yahya Sinwar, 61, is considered to be the mastermind behind the October 7 terrorist attacks on southern Israel that left 1,400 people dead and more than 240 hostages abducted to Gaza.
The Hamas government and its offices are based in Gaza City, which is currently under siege by Israeli forces.
Earlier this week, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said in a TV press statement, per The Times. Sinwar was “hiding in his bunker without contact with his associates,” Gallant said before vowing to eliminate him.
He said that Sinwar, the overall head of Hamas in the Gaza enclave, who has been described by Israeli officials as “a dead man walking,” was surrounded, although he did not specify where.
On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported that its troops of the 7th Brigade had raided the office of Sinwar’s brother, Muhammad, capturing military documents and killing 30 “terrorists.”
Sinwar was freed in a prisoner swap after years in an Israeli prison in 2011. Back in Gaza, he worked closely with Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Iz Ad Din Al Qassam Brigades — Hamas’s military wing and a “specially designated global terror group,” according to US authorities.
Sinwar and Deif were central to the planning of the October 7 attacks, it is believed.
