A series of Israeli airstrikes last week killed Muhammad Sinwar, the de facto commander of Hamas in Gaza, according to reports on Sunday that said his body was found in a Khan Younis tunnel.
Muhammad Sinwar was the younger brother of the former Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by the IDF in southern Gaza last October.
According to a separate report, Zakaria Sinwar, another brother, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday night.
The strikes that reportedly killed Muhammad Sinwar on Tuesday targeted an underground command compound below the European Hospital where he was believed to have been sheltering.
The Hamas-run health ministry reported 16 dead and over 70 wounded in the strike, though there was no immediate word if Sinwar was among the casualties.
The IDF later bombed the area several more times, in an apparent attempt to prevent anyone from approaching the tunnel.
According to the Saudi channel Al-Hadath, his body was recently recovered along with the remains of 10 of his aides.
The report said that there was evidence that the commander of the Rafah Brigade in Hamas’s military wing, Mohammad Shabana, was also killed in the strike.
Israel has not confirmed the deaths of either Muhammad Sinwar or Shabana, but Defense Minister Israel Katz told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Sunday that he believes the younger Sinwar was killed in last week’s strike on the tunnel complex.
“There’s no official confirmation, but according to all the indications Muhammad Sinwar was eliminated,” Katz said, according to leaks to Hebrew media.
Following the killing of Hamas’s top military commander, Muhammad Deif, last July, Muhammad Sinwar took charge of the terror group’s military wing. Later, after Sinwar’s older brother Yahya was killed by IDF troops, he became the de facto leader of the terror group in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials have described Muhammad Sinwar as obstinate with regard to negotiations with Hamas for the release of hostages, and an obstacle to reaching a ceasefire deal.
The younger Sinwar is also wanted for terrorist actions against Israel and has been active in Hamas for decades.
He was jailed by Israel in the 1990s for nine months and spent an additional three years in a Palestinian Authority prison in Ramallah, from which he escaped in 2000. In 2006, Sinwar was part of the Hamas cell that abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. He also previously commanded Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade.
Most of Hamas’s leadership has been eliminated by Israel during the ongoing war, which was sparked when the terror group stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
Also on Sunday, media outlets in Gaza reported that Zakaria Sinwar, the brother of Yahya and Muhammad Sinwar, was killed Saturday night in an airstrike in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip.
According to the reports, he was killed along with three of his children in a strike on the tent where they were residing.
Zakaria Sinwar had worked as a lecturer at the Islamic University in Gaza.
With Israel ramping up its military pressure in the Strip in the last several days, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says that more than 400 Gazans have been killed in Israeli strikes since Thursday.
According to the ministry, over 53,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the war so far. The tolls cannot be verified and do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January, and another 1,600 terrorists inside the country during the October 7 onslaught,