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Israel said on Thursday it may have killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the deadly October 7 attack last year.
The Israel Defense Forces said it was examining the possibility that Sinwar was one of three militants it killed “during IDF operations in Gaza”.
“The IDF and [Shin Bet internal security agency] are checking the possibility that one of the terrorists was Yahya Sinwar,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
“At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” it added, noting that there were no signs of Israeli hostages in the building where the militants were killed.
The circumstances and location of the Israeli military operation remain unclear.
The IDF is conducting a major ground offensive in Gaza’s north, primarily around the Jabalia refugee camp, but also said over the past day it had killed militants in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and had begun operations in the outskirts of the central refugee camps of Nuseirat and al-Bureij.
Sinwar took over leadership of Hamas this summer, after his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh was killed by an alleged Israeli explosion in Tehran in July.
Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, was killed in a massive Israeli air strike in Beirut late last month. Many of both organisations’ military leaders have been killed over the past year by Israeli assassinations across the region.
This is a developing story