U.S. President Joe Biden called Thursday a “good day” for the world after he said Israel informed American officials of killing Hamas’ top leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza.
Sinwar has been described as a chief architect of last year’s Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and sparked renewed conflict in the region.
“Shortly after the October 7 massacres, I directed Special Operations personnel and our intelligence professionals to work side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza. With our intelligence help, the IDF relentlessly pursued Hamas’s leaders, flushing them out of their hiding places and forcing them onto the run,” Biden said in a statement.
“Today, however, proves once again that no terrorists anywhere in the world can escape justice, no matter how long it takes.”
Sinwar has topped Israel’s most wanted list since the attack, and his killing strikes a powerful blow to the militant group. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas of his death.
Biden said DNA tests confirmed Sinwar was dead, with the military saying the body was among three militants killed Wednesday during operations in Gaza.
“To my Israeli friends, this is no doubt a day of relief and reminiscence, similar to the scenes witnessed throughout the United States after President Obama ordered the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden in 2011,” Biden added.
“Israel has had every right to eliminate the leadership and military structure of Hamas. Hamas is no longer capable of carrying out another October 7.”
Foreign Minister Israel Katz called the killing a “military and moral achievement for the Israeli army,” adding it would create the “possibility to immediately release the hostages.”
Air Force Maj.-Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, said its forces had no role in the Israeli operation, even if its intelligence had contributed to Israel’s understanding of Hamas leaders who took hostages last year.
“This was an Israeli operation. There (were) no U.S. forces directly involved,” Ryder said.
In his statement, Biden said he would be speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders to congratulate them and discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families “and for ending this war once and for all.”
Netanyahu, in an address from Jerusalem, said Sinwar’s death provided the chance for peace in the Middle East, but cautioned that the conflict was not over and Israel would continue until its hostaged were returned.
“Today we have settled the score. Today, evil has been dealt a blow but our task has still not been completed,” he said in a recorded statement. “To the dear hostage families, I say: this is an important moment in the war. We will continue full force until all your loved ones, our loved ones, are home.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also commented on Sinwar’s death, saying it delivered a “measure of justice” for his victims and families.
“Sinwar’s death ends a reign of terror. Hamas must lay down its arms, release the hostages, and play no future role in the governance of Gaza,” Trudeau said in a post on X. “We repeat our call for an immediate ceasefire. The suffering in Gaza must end.”
In the hours following Sinwar’s death, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the U.S. wants to kickstart talks on a proposal to achieve a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza
“That obstacle (Sinwar) has obviously been removed. Can’t predict that that means whoever replaces (Sinwar) will agree to a ceasefire, but it does remove what has been in recent months the chief obstacle to getting one,” he said.
Sinwar was one of the chief architects of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel has vowed to kill him since the beginning of its retaliatory campaign in Gaza. He has been Hamas’ top leader inside the Gaza Strip for years, closely connected to its military wing while dramatically building up its capabilities.
An Israeli security official said it appeared that the man who turned out to be Sinwar was killed in a battle, not in a planned targeted airstrike.
Photos circulating online showed the body of a man resembling Sinwar with a gaping head wound, dressed in a military-style vest, half buried in the rubble of a destroyed building. The security official confirmed the photos were taken by Israeli security officials at the scene. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
The Israeli news site N12 said Sinwar appears to have been killed by chance in a battle on Wednesday. It said that troops tracked a group of militants into a building, then attacked the militants with tank fire, causing the building to collapse. As troops unearthed the dead militants, they noticed that one appeared to resemble Sinwar.
Sinwar was imprisoned by Israel from the late 1980s until 2011, and during that time he underwent treatment for brain cancer – leaving Israeli authorities with extensive medical records.
U.S. officials have been in close contact with Israeli officials throughout Thursday morning, according to a senior administration official.
Sinwar was chosen as Hamas’s top leader in July after his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in an apparent Israeli strike in the Iranian capital Tehran. Israel has also claimed to have killed the head of Hamas’ military wing Mohammed Deif in an airstrike, but the group has said he survived.
The report of his death came as Israeli forces continued a more than week-old major air and ground assault in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. On Thursday, an Israeli strike hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing at least 28 people, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Fares Abu Hamza, head of the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency unit in the north, said the dead included a woman and four children, correcting an earlier report of five children. He said dozens of people were wounded.
The Israeli military said it targeted a command center run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad inside the school. It provided a list of around a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was called in. It was not immediately possible to verify the names.
Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza. The Israeli military says it carries out precise strikes on militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza to eliminate Hamas after the militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Some 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up a little more than half of the fatalities.
Northern Gaza was the first target of Israel’s ground invasion nearly a year ago and has suffered the heaviest destruction of the current conflict, with entire neighborhoods in Gaza City and other towns reduced to rubble. Most of the population fled after Israel issued evacuation orders in the opening days of its military campaign, but about 400,000 are believed to have remained despite the harsh conditions.
Earlier this month, Israel once again ordered the full-scale evacuation of the north, and allowed no food aid to enter the area for around two weeks. That led many Palestinians to fear that it had adopted a surrender-or-starve strategy suggested by former Israeli generals.
Israel allowed two shipments of aid to enter the north earlier this week after the United States warned it might reduce its military aid if its ally did not do more to address the humanitarian crisis.
Since the start of the conflict, Israeli forces have launched repeated operations into Jabaliya, a densely populated urban refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. The military says militants have repeatedly regrouped there after major operations.
–with files from The Associated Press