The hunt lasted a year – an eternity. Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attack, was eventually killed by the Israeli army, which announced his death on Thursday, October 17. This victory was not achieved due to readings from the Israeli radars that probed Gaza's subsoil, in the hope of locating the Islamist movement's leader under the immense network of tunnels he had helped to build. Nor was Israel's public enemy number one eliminated in one of the Israeli army's commando operations, which are based on their intelligence and had, at times, missed him by a hair's breadth. The fugitive, who was thought to be holed up in underground bunkers, where it was believed that he was keeping a group of Israeli hostages around him to use as human shields, was killed in an exchange of fire with an Israeli patrol in Rafah, in the south of the enclave.
The soldiers didn't know they were shooting at their country's most wanted man. On Thursday evening, the Israeli authorities released a video supposedly showing Sinwar's last moments, filmed by a drone. It shows a wounded man, sitting in an armchair in a ruined house. In a last gasp, he throws a stick toward the camera filming him. An Israeli army strike then blows the whole scene up. Three bodies were pulled from the rubble, including his own, which was partly recognizable. Analyses of his DNA and teeth, which the Israeli police had kept since his long stay in Israeli prisons, made it possible to formally identify him. Sinwar's death means the trio behind the October 7 bloodbath, and the devastating war that followed, have all been killed: Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas's military wing, was killed in a strike in July, and Marwan Issa, his second-in-command, was eliminated in March.
Before his final moments above ground, Sinwar was thought to have spent a year underground in his maze of tunnels, communicating with the outside world through messengers, notably to pass on his instructions concerning ceasefire negotiations. He had made the end of hostilities conditional on a reciprocal agreement to release Israeli hostages (of the original 250 captives, 101 remain, according to Israel, half of whom would allegedly be dead) and Palestinian prisoners, and on the Israeli army's complete withdrawal from Gaza. This is how he hoped to emerge victorious from the ruins of the coastal enclave.
The ranks of his messengers, some of whom had been close to him during his two decades in prison, had thinned as they were eliminated by the Israeli army. Sinwar had recently stopped sending out instructions, giving rise to speculation that he may have been killed by the army, unbeknownst to it, during a bombing raid on Gaza.
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