Murderous Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar hid in the same Gaza tunnel where Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five others were found brutally murdered — before the Oct. 7 mastermind tried running away one last time before finally being assassinated Thursday, according to reports.
Sinwar’s DNA was detected several weeks ago in an underground room inside the tunnel complex in Rafah — close to where the hostages were executed by their terrorist captors in late August, the Times of Israel reported.
Sources told Channel 12 that Sinwar had, at one point, been hiding with the six hostages, although it was unclear exactly when, or how long, Sinwar was lying low in the tunnel complex.
Israeli authorities are now investigating whether the hostages were shot dead to help the terror leader escape and evade capture, the outlet said.
The bodies of Goldberg-Polin and his fellow hostages — Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi — were discovered in the passageway on Aug. 31, roughly two days after they were murdered.
“We don’t know if he pulled the trigger, or ordered their deaths,” Gat’s cousin, Gil Dickmann, told a press conference.
“It’s devastating to us and shows how close we were to getting them out.”
“We don’t know for how long they were held together or with Sinwar or the conversations they were having. Now all six are gone and so is Sinwar,” Dickmann added.
The details emerged after Sinwar, who has managed to elude Israeli forces for years, was wiped out in a routine ground operation in southern Gaza on Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sinwar — the architect of the single deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust — had “ran away in fear from our soldiers” prior to being assassinated.
“He told you he was a lion, but in reality, he was hiding in a dark den — and he was killed when he fled in a panic from our soldiers,” Netanyahu said Thursday in a televised address as he hailed Sinwar’s death.
In the wake of his assassination, relatives of the slain six hostages urged the Israeli government and other world leaders to leverage his demise to negotiate the release of the remaining hostages currently being held prisoner by Hamas.
“When the six were murdered we said we don’t know who murdered them and don’t care about revenge, we care only about bringing back the 101 hostages,” Dickmann said.