STICK V DRONE: Israeli officials said that troops engaged in a gunfight with three suspected militants, after which the Hamas leader was tracked down by a drone
Reuters, JERUSALEM
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza and filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday.
As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it, in an apparent act of desperation.
After an intensive search that had lasted for more than a year, the Israeli troops who killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s No. 1 enemy after a gun battle on Wednesday, Israeli officials said.
A screen grab from a video released by the Israeli army on Thursday shows what it says is drone footage of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Rafah in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
Photo: AFP / Handout / Israeli Army
Intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area where he could operate, the military said on Thursday, after dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death.
However, unlike other militant leaders tracked down and killed by Israel — including Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13 — the operation that finally killed Sinwar was not a planned and targeted strike, or an operation carried out by elite commandos.
Instead, officials said he was found by infantry soldiers from the Bislach Brigade, a unit that normally trains future unit commanders.
People celebrate in Jerusalem on Thursday after Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was reported to have been killed.
Photo: AFP
The soldiers were searching in the Tal El Sultan area of southern Gaza on Wednesday, where they believed senior members of Hamas were located.
The troops saw three suspected militants moving between buildings and opened fire, leading to a gunfight during which Sinwar escaped into a ruined building.
According to accounts in Israeli media, tank shells and a missile were also fired at the building.
On Thursday, the military released footage from a mini drone that it said showed Sinwar, badly wounded in the hand, sitting on a chair, his face covered in a scarf. The film shows him attempting to throw a stick at the drone, in a futile effort to knock it down.
At that stage, Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, Sinwar was only identified as a fighter, but troops entered and found him with a weapon, a flak jacket and 40,000 shekels (US$10,732).
“He tried to escape and our forces eliminated him,” Hagari told reporters in a televised briefing.
Hamas has not made any comment itself, but sources within the group have said that the indications they have seen suggest Sinwar was indeed killed by Israeli troops.
“The dozens of operations carried out by the IDF and the ISA over the last year, and in recent weeks in the area where he was eliminated, restricted Yahya Sinwar’s operational movement as he was pursued by the forces and led to his elimination,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Sinwar was the main architect of the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year that set off the war in Gaza.
