Israel’s military said it was working Thursday to confirm whether Hamas’ top commander in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, was among “three terrorists” killed by troops during an operation in the decimated Palestinian territory.
Prominent Israeli journalists quickly began reporting, citing military and intelligence officials, that Sinwar was killed almost by chance on Wednesday, when troops shot three gunmen in or near the southern Gaza town of Rafah. Unconfirmed reports suggested a routine Israeli patrol spotted the men and killed them, then realized one of them resembled Sinwar.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a brief statement only that they were “checking the possibility that one of the terrorists was Yahya Sinwar. At this time, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed”.
A photograph circulating on social media showed a dead man with a severe head wound who resembled the Hamas commander, but CBS News could not immediately verify the image. Sinwar has been among the most wanted figures on Israel’s hit list since Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border terror attack, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.
“In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area,” the Israeli military said Thursday.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted a cryptic message on social media Thursday hinting at the possible assassination of Sinwar. It showed photographs of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohamed Deif, with red crosses on their faces. A third photo between them was blank, with another red cross on top. Israel killed both Nasrallah and Deif over the past year.
Gallant also included part of a quote that appears in the Jewish holy book, the Torah, and the Bible’s Old Testament, which says, “And they pursued the enemy,” which he followed up by saying in his own words, “We are going to reach every terrorist and eliminate them.”
It was not immediately confirmed where in Gaza the operation took place. It was announced hours after more than a dozen Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip that was hosting displaced people, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory.
The IDF said in a statement that it had struck “a compound that previously served as the ‘Abu Hassan’ School,” where it said “dozens of terrorists from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations were present.”
The Health Ministry said at least 15 people were killed, but did not say how many might have been militants.
The IDF released a list of a dozen names of suspected terrorists it said were among those using the compound as a command and control center. It said the men “involved in rocket attacks against Israeli territory as well as planning and committing terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel in recent days” were targeted in a “precise attack” based on intelligence.
The IDF did not say how many of the suspected terrorists were believed to have been killed in the attack, but did say their alleged presence at the school, which like most in Gaza has been used as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the year-long war, was “yet another example of the systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure by the Hamas terrorist organization in violation of international law.”
The military released photographs and videos of weapons, apparently taken by troops on the ground before Thursday’s attack, which it said were found inside the school building — evidence, the IDF said, of a “complete combat complex.”
Israel has recently warned Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, where its military operations have increased in recent weeks.
The strike came four days after the Biden administration sent a tersely worded letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, warning that humanitarian conditions in the decimated Gaza Strip must improve within a month or Israel would risk having its steady supply of American weapons and war funding cut off.
The White House has acknowledged Hamas’s frequent use of civilian infrastructure in Gaza to store weapons and fighters, but stressed that civilians must still be protected and cannot be considered combatants if they are unable or unwilling to flee areas used by the terror groups.
The United States also made clear in its letter to Israeli officials that the Biden administration opposed the way Israel has conducted its parallel war against Hamas allies Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent weeks. Israel says its operation in Lebanon is aimed at stopping Hezbollah’s year-long barrage of rocket and drone attacks along Israel’s northern border. Hezbollah has said it will continue those attacks, in support of Hamas, until the war in Gaza ends.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 2,300 people in Lebanon and displaced most of the country’s population, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
While Israel has taken steps to reverse the dramatic drop in humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza since receiving the Biden administration’s letter, the IDF has continued to bombard Gaza and Lebanon with massive airstrikes this week, insisting it is acting in self-defense.
In Gaza, the Health Ministry says more than 42,400 people have been killed since Israel launched its war on Hamas in response to the U.S.-Israeli designated terror group’s brutal Oct. 7 attack.