Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was killed in an Israeli strike

Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was killed accidentally during a routine ground operation in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday – after years of evading Israeli forces, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed on Thursday.

“Eliminated: Yahya Sinwar,” the military announced on X.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the death of his country’s most wanted militant as a “major milestone in the demise of Hamas rule in Gaza,” the New York Times reported.

However, the Prime Minister could not declare total victory in the war against the terror group.

“Today evil has suffered a serious blow – the mission before us is still unfinished,” Netanyahu said.

Sinwar – the architect of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust – was killed in Rafah in a routine raid that caught him by chance.

IDF troops were on regular patrol and were not specifically searching for the terror chief when they encountered several Hamas fighters.

A tank unit was searching for Hamas tunnels and military sites in the southern Gaza city when it discovered them moving into a building believed to be empty, former Israeli military officials briefed on the operation said , the Wall Street Journal.

The tank, part of a junior team of soldiers completing a commander’s course, fired a grenade at the building, the officials said.

“This whole event was a complete coincidence,” Amir Avivi, a former senior military commander in the Gaza Division, told the WSJ. “It was only when they went in and saw it that they said it looked like Sinwar.”

Although Israel did not expect Sinwar to be in that building, the IDF and American intelligence had pointed to Rafah as his likely hiding place among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled there earlier that year.

IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Sinwar was being tracked for months. DNA evidence suggests he was in the same tunnel where Hamas killed six hostages in August, including American Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

Dramatic footage vividly captured his final, desperate moments after the IDF sent a drone into the building to survey the damage.

An injured Sinwar, his face covered, can be seen sitting alone in the destroyed building – while the IDF soldiers were unaware that they were seeing the very man they had been looking for since he ordered the October 7 terrorist attack.

When Sinwar finally notices that the drone is hovering just a few meters away from him, he tries to throw a piece of wood at the device in a last-ditch attempt to shut it down.

The soldiers then ordered a second attack on the building, killing Sinwar and two other Hamas terrorists traveling with him.

After recovering the body and comparing it with DNA samples the Israeli military had from Sinwar during his time as a prisoner, officials confirmed that the man killed in the attack was the terrorist leader.

Graphic photos also show the lifeless Hamas leader, wearing a bulletproof vest, surrounded by grenades, lying in the rubble of a building with a head wound.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said at a news conference on Thursday that Sinwar was believed to be trying to flee north when he was killed – which could explain why he was above ground after years of aiding Israeli forces Hamas’s vast network of underground tunnels.

“I believe he was on the run, moving from an underground compound to houses and trying to escape north to a safer compound,” Hagari said.

The Jewish state’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, called Sinwar’s death a “victory for the entire free world.”

“The mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, who was responsible for the October 7 massacre and atrocities, was killed today by IDF soldiers,” Katz said in a written statement from his office.

“This is a major military and moral achievement for Israel and a victory for the entire free world against the Iranian-led axis of evil of radical Islam.”

While intelligence officials assumed Sinwar would be surrounded by hostages acting as human shields, the IDF confirmed that no hostages were injured in the operation Sinwar carried out.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the death of the mastermind on October 7th.

Blinken said the US stood with Israel to hold the Hamas leadership accountable for the Oct. 7 massacre, noting that Sinwar had stood in the way of ceasefire negotiations.

“In the coming days, the United States will redouble our efforts with partners to end this conflict, secure the release of all hostages, and chart a new path that will allow the people of Gaza to rebuild their lives and their hopes without war “and free from the brutal rule of Hamas,” he added.

“Sinwar has repeatedly rejected efforts in recent months by the United States and its partners to end this war through an agreement that would return the hostages to their families and ease the suffering of the Palestinian people,” Blinken said.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hailed Sinwar’s death as a “good day for Israel” and a chance to bring peace to the region.

““I called Bibi Netanyahu to congratulate him on Sinwar,” Biden said upon his arrival in Berlin on Thursday. “It’s time for this war to end and these hostages to be brought home.”

Biden compared the operation to how the Obama administration ordered the raid to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011.

“Today … proves once again that no terrorist anywhere in the world can escape justice, no matter how long it takes,” Biden said.

The president added that he would send Blinken to Israel in the coming days to discuss a “day after” plan for Gaza in which Hamas is no longer in government.

Netanyahu and his Cabinet members had vowed to hunt down and kill Sinwar after learning he was the man behind the Oct. 7 massacre in which more than 1,200 people were killed and another 251 kidnapped in Israel.

Just days after the terrorist attack, Sinwar was seen fleeing with his family through Hamas’ underground tunnel system, with the terror chief managing to evade detection by the IDF for more than a year.

Sinwar, who had been Hamas’s Gaza chief since 2017, rose to the top of the terror group when its former leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in July.

After Sinwar came to power, ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel froze because the new leader opposed an end to the war.

Sinwar, who has previously called the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza “necessary victims,” ​​repeatedly stood in the way of hostage negotiations and urged the group to avoid compromise as he claimed it was ready to permanently eliminate the Jewish state.

The extremist was viewed as a “megalomaniac” even by his own colleagues, who privately described him as an obstacle to Hamas political leaders seeking to legitimize a Palestinian state, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Sinwar, however, had the support of Hamas’ rank and file, who respected him during the 22 years he spent behind bars in Israel before his release in 2011.

The Hamas chief also caused fear as the notorious “Butcher of Khan Younis,” who hunted and murdered Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.

It remains to be seen who will replace Sinwar as Hamas’ de facto leader.

Among the favorites to succeed him is his brother Mohammed, widely seen as a reflection of his older brother’s ideals and blamed for helping Hamas organize the 2006 kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

Shalit was eventually released in 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 Hamas terrorists, including the elder Sinwar.

With Sinwar gone, the families of the remaining 97 hostages are demanding that Israel submit a new ceasefire agreement after their main obstacle is removed, the Times of Israel reports.

“We have settled the score with the arch-murderer Sinwar, but now the lives of my son Matan and the other hostages are in tangible danger more than ever,” mother Einav Zangauker wrote to Netanyahu.

“There will be no real closure and no complete victory unless we save their lives and bring them all back,” she added.

In a conversation with Netanyahu from Air Force One on Thursday, Biden agreed that now was the best time to revise the hostage exchange agreement, a statement from the prime minister’s office said.

With post wires