Israeli forces recovered the body and confirmed the identity of Mohammad Sinwar, the former chief of Hamas, over the weekend from a tunnel beneath the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza.
In addition to Sinwar, another Hamas leader, Mohammad Shabana, the former commander of the Rafah Brigade, was also found dead along with a number of other militants in the bunker, some of whom Israeli forces are still trying to identify.
“They were in this room when they were attacked by the [Israeli military], the Air Force planes, about a month ago,” Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Efi Dufferin said. “We can now say with certainty that Sinwar was here and found his death here. We will continue to pursue them, until the last of them, and until the goals of the war are achieved.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on May 21 that officials believed Israeli forces had killed Sinwar in an airstrike. The strikes that killed him, which occurred about a week before the prime minister’s announcement, targeted the periphery of the hospital, killing nearly two dozen people.
At the time, the Israeli military claimed that it had struck “Hamas terrorists in a command-and-control center” under the hospital.
Israel has long accused Hamas of diverting resources and funds to build a significant underground tunnel system designed to evade them in times of conflict. Israel has conducted at least 686 attacks on health facilities in Gaza over the course of the war, according to the World Health Organization, rendering many of the hospitals inoperable.
“We were dragged by Hamas to this point,” Defrin added, according to the New York Times. “If they weren’t building their infrastructure under the hospitals, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t attack this hospital.”
Last year, Israeli forces killed Sinwar’s brother, Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to have been the mastermind behind Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack. Israel has killed several of Hamas’s most senior members, raising questions about who the current leader may be and who is making the decisions regarding diplomatic negotiations.
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Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, hundreds of whom were civilians, and kidnapped another 250 people. The group is still holding around 55 people, about one-third of whom are believed to still be alive.
The two sides continue to be at an impasse on a diplomatic end to the war and establishing a postwar reconstruction plan for the Gaza Strip.
