Israel says it killed Hamas top military leader Mohammed Sinwar

TEL AVIV - The Israeli military announced on the night of May 31 that it had killed Mohammed Sinwar, one of Hamas’ top military commanders in the Gaza Strip, during airstrikes in May that targeted the vicinity of a hospital in southern Gaza.

Hamas did not immediately respond to the claim of Sinwar’s death.

During the war, the Palestinian armed group has largely not confirmed the killing of its commanders in the moment, only announcing their demise weeks or even months later, if at all.

Sinwar’s death would leave the hierarchy of Hamas’ leadership in Gaza unclear.

Another senior Hamas militant, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, is believed to command the group’s remaining fighters in northern Gaza.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz threatened al-Haddad on the night of May 31 as well as Khalil al-Hayya, one of Hamas’ leaders in exile, saying they would share a similar fate as Sinwar.

“You are next in line,” Mr Katz said in a statement, addressing the two militant leaders by name.

But Sinwar’s death may not immediately change Hamas’ strategy or operations, analysts said.

Since the war

began more than a year and a half ag

o, Israel has targeted and killed a number of Hamas’ top leaders, only to see the group continue its guerilla war against Israel in Gaza.

In May, Israeli aircraft struck an underground compound near the European Hospital, close to the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where Sinwar had recently been present, according to the Israeli military.

At the time, Israeli officials said privately that they had been targeting Sinwar, but they did not mention him in their announcement of the strikes.

The Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, said that at least six people had been killed and at least 40 others wounded in that strike.

Neither Israel nor Hamas made any assertions about whether Sinwar had been killed – and he had survived numerous other Israeli assassination attempts.

Sinwar was the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar – an architect of Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023, whom

Israeli troops killed in 2024

– and he followed in his footsteps for most of his life.

Born in Khan Younis, where his family had fled from what is now Ashkelon, in Israel, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Sinwar followed his older brother into Hamas, ultimately rising through the group’s leadership to its pinnacle.

In addition to the Sinwar brothers, Mohammed Deif, commander of Hamas’ military wing, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in July; and Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s political chief, was

killed on a visit to Iran in July

, when he was attending the inauguration of the Iranian president.

The killings dealt a blow to Hamas’ leadership in Gaza, but they appeared to also fuel the militant group’s determination.

A recent Israeli intelligence assessment suggested that Hamas had more than 20,000 fighters – about the same as before the war – despite thousands being killed since October 2023.

More than 54,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Mohammed Sinwar was an elusive figure who spent much of his life in hiding.

He is believed to have spent much of the war underground in an effort to escape Israeli airstrikes.

But in recent months, he had been seen aboveground in Khan Younis, including at Nasser Hospital, according to a Middle Eastern intelligence official.

In late 2023, the Israeli military said that it had searched his office in a raid on a Hamas military post in Gaza, “where military doctrine documents were located.”

But he continued to elude Israeli forces.

Israel has accused him of being one of those responsible for planning an attack that led to the abduction of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2006.

Shalit was captured in a cross-border raid into Israel and held in Gaza for five years.

Shalit was exchanged in 2011 for more than 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Among those freed was Yahya Sinwar.

Hamas abducted about 250 hostages from Israel in the 2023 attack, holding them in Gaza as bargaining chips for future negotiations.

About 20 living hostages are believed to still be held in Gaza, along with the bodies of more than 30 others, according to Israel. NYTIMES