Hamas’s de facto leader in Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar, was killed during a recent airstrike, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Wednesday.
Netanyahu previously said last week that it was probable the leader had been killed by significant airstrikes Israel carried out on the European Hospital in Khan Younis on May 13.
At the time of the strike, Israeli sources told CNN that it had targeted Sinwar, the brother of the previous leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar.
Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in October 2024 by an airstrike on Gaza, is regarded as the lead orchestrator of the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, in which over 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage.
The Prime Minister confirmed Mohammed Sinwar’s death during the airstrikes on Khan Younis during a May 28 speech in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, marking 600 days since the October 7 attacks and the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Hamas has not yet commented on Netanyahu’s claim.
Mohammed Sinwar is the latest of a number of Hamas chiefs and top figures to be killed by Israel since the start of the war.
Last August, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that they had killed Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military leader, in a strike the previous month. The strike on July 14, 2024, targeted Deif, hitting a displacement camp. It reportedly killed 90 people, including children.
Days before confirming Deif’s death, Hamas announced the death of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s then-political chief. Haniyeh was killed in a precise strike on his residence in Tehran, Iran.
After the airstrike on the European Hospital in Khan Younis on May 13, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the hospital was no longer accessible. Twenty-eight people were reportedly killed in the airstrike, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency.
Israeli strikes on medical facilities across Gaza have been frequent, with the IDF claiming that these areas are used by Hamas to conduct their operations. The IDF said in a statement on X that the strike in Khan Younis “destroyed an underground terrorist infrastructure of the Hamas terrorist organization,” under the European Hospital.
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said on May 28 that these strikes on medical facilities are part of a “systematic dismantling of Gaza’s already fragile health system,” in a press statement.
The statement detailed that five hospitals have been directly hit in the last two weeks, leaving four non-functional. The organization added that as of May 23, more than 90% of health services across Gaza have become either completely non-functional or partially functional.
