The Israeli military has released drone images that it says show the last moments of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar: alone in a ruined Gaza apartment, its walls destroyed by bombing, sitting hunched in a dust-covered chair. , with his head and face covered by a kufiya.
With his right arm severely injured, the video shows Sinwar throwing a stick above his head in the direction of the approaching drone. The Guardian has not independently verified the images.
At the time of the footage, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Sinwar had only been identified as a combatant. The military then fired another projectile at the building, causing it to collapse and killing him, said Hagari, who said Sinwar was found with a bulletproof vest, grenades and 40,000 shekels ($10,707).
According to the Jerusalem Post, Hagari told reporters: “Sinwar fled alone to one of the buildings. Our forces used a drone to scan the area, which can be seen in the images I am presenting. Sinwar, who was wounded in the hand by gunfire, can be seen here with his face covered, in his final moments, throwing a plank of wood at the drone. “He tried to escape and our forces eliminated him.”
Hamas has confirmed the murder of Sinwar.
Photos circulating on the Internet on Thursday showed the body of a man resembling Sinwar with an open wound on his head, dressed in a military-style vest, half buried in the rubble of a destroyed building.
According to Israeli authorities, Sinwar was found on Wednesday by infantry soldiers searching an area in Tal El Sultan, southern Gaza, where they believed senior Hamas officials were located.
Troops spotted three suspected militants moving between buildings and opened fire, leading to a shootout during which Sinwar escaped into a ruined building.
In the last months of his life, Sinwar, the main architect of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that was responded to with Israel’s genocide in Gaza, appears to have stopped using telephones and other communication equipment that would have allowed the powerful Israeli intelligence services to track him down.
Israeli officials said they believed he was hiding in one of the vast network of tunnels that Hamas dug under Gaza over the past two decades, but as Israeli troops have discovered more and more, even the tunnels were no guarantee he would escape. to capture.
Intelligence services had been searching for Sinwar for months and had gradually restricted the area in which he could operate, the military said. Dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death.
#video #Israeli #Army #shows #moments #Yahya #Sinwar #throwing #stick #drone #filming
