New Delhi: Flying through a window, a drone enters a ruined apartment in Gaza, littered with debris as a result of constant Israeli shelling. As it goes further in, a lone human figure can be made out, sitting on a chair blanketed by dust. His arm appears wounded and a scarf covers his head and face. It gets closer and closer, and he flings a stick at it.
Those were the last moments of Yahya Sinwar—the architect of the 7 October, 2023, attacks on Israel who went on to become the leader of Hamas—as seen in drone footage released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The IDF announced on 17 October that Sinwar had been eliminated in a ground operation in Rafah in southern Gaza.
The IDF had been trying to find and kill Sinwar for over a year, but this was a chance encounter, not a planned strike. The BBC reported that Israeli soldiers from the 828th Bislamach Brigade encountered and eliminated three fighters on a routine patrol.
It was when they returned to the site the next morning that the soldiers realised one of the bodies resembled the leader of Hamas. To confirm whether it was Sinwar, a part of his finger was sent to Israel for testing. His identity was confirmed through dental records and DNA tests, The Jerusalem Post reported.
In a statement after Sinwar’s elimination, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that Sinwar was hiding in an area that the forces had surrounded for a long period of time. “We didn’t know he was there, but we continued to operate with determination,” he said.
According to Hagari, the attack was carried out after the IDF identified three terrorists fleeing between houses in Gaza. Sinwar fled alone into one of the buildings and it was then that the IDF used a drone to scan the area.
Hagari said that it was during the gunfire by the IDF forces that Sinwar injured his arm.
“We identified him as a terrorist inside a building, fired at the building, and then went in to search. We found him with a vest, a pistol, and 40,000 shekels (Israeli currency). He was on the run, fleeing, and our forces eliminated him,” Hagari said, according to The Jerusalem Post.
The Israeli military had been trying to find and kill Yahya Sinwar for a year, since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began last October.
At the time the IDF confirmed the killing of Sinwar, it also stated that in recent weeks, IDF and ISA (Israeli Security Agency) forces had been operating in the southern Gaza Strip, following intelligence that indicated the suspected locations of the senior members of Hamas.
The IDF also said that the soldiers operating in the area “identified and eliminated three terrorists”.
Israel could launch the offensive because it had previously noticed “unusual activity” on the basis of which it had decided to increase the number of scans, according to a CNN report.
Also Read: Hamas’s brutal enforcer, hardened by 2 decades in Israeli prisons. Who was Yahya Sinwar