Killing Sinwar: A chance encounter after a yearlong manhunt for the head of Hamas
CNN
It was around 5:30 in the morning on Thursday in Washington, DC, when senior US officials first got word — and photographs — from their Israeli counterparts: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar might be dead.
It was around 5:30 in the morning on Thursday in Washington, DC, when senior US officials first got word — and photographs — from their Israeli counterparts: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar might be dead. For more than a year since Hamas attacked Israel last October 7, Israeli forces — with some quiet help from the United States — had been hunting the mastermind behind that day. More than once, they had been close, pushing the Hamas chief from one underground hiding place to the next. But Sinwar had moved like a ghost in the endless warren of tunnels dug beneath the streets of Gaza, rarely coming above ground and communicating only through courier to avoid detection by electronic surveillance. In the end, it was only by pure accident that a group of Israeli soldiers stumbled on Israel’s most wanted man. Infantry soldiers from the IDF’s Bislach Brigade, a unit that normally trains future commanders, had been tracking several men among the ruins in southern Gaza, pulverized by Israel’s punishing bombing campaign. Gunfire broke out. The Israelis fired back from a tank and sent a drone swooping into one of the hollowed-out buildings. It was only after the exchange of fire had ended and troops returned the following morning to inspect the rubble that they realized one of the bodies was Sinwar.
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