On October 17, a senior Israeli official announced that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was killed by Israeli forces.

Earlier that day, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) released a joint statement indicating that preliminary reports confirmed the IDF had killed three Palestinian militants during military operations in the Gaza Strip. They also stated that they were verifying whether one of the deceased was indeed Yahya Sinwar.

Sinwar took over as the leader of Hamas’s political bureau in August of this year. He is one of the principal founders of the security wing within Hamas and has been in charge of the organization’s operations in Gaza since 2017. Israel regards him as one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attacks on Israel carried out by Hamas last year.

In 1988, Sinwar was convicted by Israel for the suspected killing of two Israeli soldiers and served more than 20 years in prison. He was released in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Hamas. Since becoming the leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2017, he has rarely been seen in public, gaining a reputation for his hardline approach.

On August 6 of this year, Hamas announced Sinwar’s appointment as the leader of its political bureau, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Iran on July 31. (Reported by Wei Ran, CGTN)