Hamas' Gaza chief Mohammed Sinwar, the younger brother of the group's deceased leader Yahya Sinwar, has been killed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told lawmakers Wednesday.
One of Israel's most wanted men, Sinwar took over last October after his sibling was killed in southern Gaza. If confirmed by Hamas, the younger man's death would be one of the first such high-profile assassinations carried out by Israel in several months.
Mohammed Sinwar's older brother masterminded the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that triggered the war with Israel that has ground on for 600 days. He was later named the militant group's overall leader after Israel killed his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, and Hamas military wing leader and fellow Oct. 7 architect Mohammad Deif.
“We eliminated Mohammad Deif, Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Sinwar,” Netanyahu said when confirming the death to Israel's parliament, known as the Knesset.
“In the last two days, we have been in a dramatic turn towards a complete defeat of Hamas,” he added.
Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting in the Gaza Strip until Hamas is destroyed and until it returns the remaining 58 hostages seized during the Oct. 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed.
Nearly 54,000 people, including thousands of children, have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to Palestinian health officials.
Netanyahu’s comments came after the Israeli military said in a statement that it had struck “dozens of targets throughout the Gaza strip” over the past 48 hours, including anti-tank missile posts and weapons storage facilities.
Hamas has yet to publicly comment on Mohammed Sinwar, and it was not immediately clear what his death would mean for its leadership.
Reuters reported that Sinwar's close associate Izz al-Din Haddad, leader of Hamas' northern Gaza armed wing, would most likely step into any power vacuum.
What that means for the ability of Hamas' exiled political leadership council to exert influence over military policy and ceasefire negotiations would only be discernible in the coming weeks.
In his comments to the Knesset, Netanyahu said Israel was “taking control of food distribution” in Gaza, referring to the new U.S.- and Israel-backed aid distribution system there.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave said that at least one person was killed and 48 were wounded when gunshots were fired on a crowd that overran a new aid distribution site. It was not immediately clear who opened fire.
Thousands of hungry Palestinians flooded the aid center Tuesday and made off with boxes of food before Israeli soldiers fired live rounds into the air to disperse the crowds.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation facility near the southern city of Rafah is the first of four food distribution sites set up by the U.S.-backed organization and the Israeli military to control the flow of humanitarian aid into the crowded Palestinian territory. Its opening came after Israel began to ease its three-month aid blockade earlier this week.
