Israel has killed the leader of Hamas and mastermind of the Oct 7 massacre Yahya Sinwar in a Gaza shoot-out.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops fired upon a group of Hamas terrorists in a clash in the southern city of Rafah on Wednesday night.

Photographs from the scene showed the corpse of Sinwar, Israel’s most wanted man, with a bloody hole in his skull.

The assassination marks the most significant killing of the year-long war and a significant victory for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, who had long described him as a “dead man walking.”

Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, announced the killing on Thursday afternoon in a statement to the media.

“The mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7th, was eliminated today by IDF (Israeli military) soldiers,” he said.

“This is a great military and moral achievement for Israel and a victory for the entire free world against the evil axis of extreme Islam led by Iran.”