TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday claimed that Hamas’s Gaza chief Mohammed Sinwar has been killed in an Israeli strike.
Sinwar, 49, was the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the late leader of the Palestinian group who was also killed by Israeli forces last year.
Netanyahu made the announcement during a special session of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, called by the opposition to debate what it termed “the government’s complete failure to achieve the war’s goals”.
The Prime Minister responded by listing what he described as significant achievements.
“In 600 days of the ‘War of Revival’, we have indeed changed the face of the Middle East,” Netanyahu told lawmakers.
“We drove the terrorists out of our territory, entered the Gaza Strip with force, eliminated tens of thousands of terrorists, eliminated Mohammed Deif, Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Sinwar.”
Mohammed Sinwar was reportedly the target of a major Israeli airstrike on 13 May on the European Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
At the time, the Israeli military stated that the strike targeted a Hamas command and control centre embedded in underground infrastructure.
On 21 May, Netanyahu hinted that Sinwar was likely among the dead. Five days later, Defence Minister Israel Katz told parliament that, while there was no official confirmation, “all indications” from Israeli intelligence suggested he had been killed.
The Civil Defence agency in Gaza reported that 28 people were killed in the 13 May strike. CCTV footage from the hospital’s courtyard shows civilians, including children and women, moments before the area was engulfed in an explosion.
The hospital has been out of service since the strike. Medics stated they had received no evacuation warning from Israeli authorities, and the hospital had not been covered by any of the military’s evacuation orders.
Hamas has yet to confirm Mohammed Sinwar’s death. The Palestinian group has neither denied nor confirmed his killing.
Mohammed Sinwar joined Hamas shortly after its founding in the late 1980s and rose through the ranks of its military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
By 2005, he was commanding the Khan Younis Brigade.
Mohammed Sinwar was considered close to Hamas’s late military chief Mohammed Deif.
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli military campaign in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of at least 54,084 people, according to the territory’s health ministry.
