Israel’s military posted a video that it said shows Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in one of the terrorist group’s tunnels under the city of Khan Younis from October.
Israeli leaders have vowed to hunt down Sinwar and other Hamas leaders whom they hold responsible for carrying out the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that left roughly 1,200 people dead. But, after four months of continued military operations throughout the Gaza Strip, Sinwar and other Hamas senior leaders have eluded Israel’s military.
This video, which the IDF shared on Tuesday, appears to show Sinwar with his wife and children and another unidentified individual. The military said the video is from Oct. 10, just three days after Hamas carried out the most deadly terrorist attack in Israel’s history.
In December, the IDF surrounded Sinwar’s house but did not find him.
Hamas leaders are believed to have headed to southern Gaza as Israel’s operations began mainly in the northern part of the strip. The terrorist group hides in tunnels it spent years and millions of dollars meant for aid to build that are intentionally underneath densely populated civilian areas.
“We do know that Hamas leadership and fighters migrated south, they got pressured in the north, so they went down to Khan Younis,” national security communications adviser John Kirby said on Monday. “Of course, they were already in Khan Younis but they kind of congregated there. And then as the Israelis [put] pressure on them in Khan Younis, they gravitated further south.”
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The Israeli military intends to go into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which is where more than 1 million Palestinians have fled at the Israelis’ instruction. Israeli forces urged Palestinians to leave their homes and go south to avoid the war, but are now out of space to migrate south to, raising questions as to whether Israel will carry out military operations in such a densely populated area.
The U.S. is among a long list of governments warning about a possible catastrophe if Israel were to conduct full-scale operations without accounting for the significant refugee population. Israeli leaders argue that they need to go into Rafah to clear out the last remaining Hamas battalions and to capture its leaders, like Sinwar.
