Yahya Sinwar, the de facto leader of terror group Hamas, had his life cut short by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) on October 16, 2024. He was eliminated just one year after he commanded his terrorist-subjects to invade Israel and murder, rape, torture, burn people alive and kidnap Israelis. The damage this Hamas invasion into Israel caused to Israel’s national self-esteem, national pride, to individual people and property could not be repaired other than by all-out retaliation and total destruction of Hamas.
The sequence of events that led to the elimination of Sinwar was set out by Israel military sources as follows:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2024, an IDF infantry brigade was in Tel Sultan, in the Rafah area of southern Gaza. They were about to detonate a bomb that had not exploded. As the IDF soldiers were getting ready to defuse the bomb, they noticed four terrorists running to take cover, afraid that once the bomb exploded it would kill them. And they noticed a fifth terrorist.
At 10:00 a.m., a soldier from Battalion 450 operating in that area alerted the brigade commander and the force began to move toward the target, suspecting the presence of active terrorists.
Around 3:00 p.m. that day, as tanks and infantry forces were deployed to assist, a drone identified four figures moving from house to house. The fifth terrorist followed. An IDF tank fired at the terrorists, hitting them, and they began to scatter.
The terrorist squad split up, one entered a building, while others entered another building. The tank force fired a shell into the second building eliminating most of the terrorists.
An IDF platoon commander from Battalion 450 entered the building where the other terrorist was believed to be. The terrorist threw two grenades at the IDF soldiers while other soldiers continued operating drones. A shoulder rocket was fired at the terrorist but he did not die.
The force then deployed another drone, which spotted a figure in one of the upstairs rooms. He was sitting in an armchair, masked and wounded in the hand. The terrorist saw the drone hovering near him, and threw a wooden stick at it, videoed by the IDF drone. At this point the terrorist lifted up his head and an IDF sniper fired a shot, hitting him in the head.
Expecting the building to be booby-trapped, the IDF soldiers did not enter the building at that time.
The next morning, the force sent another drone to inspect the area and before entering the building they knew could be booby-trapped, the drone showed the body in the rubble. Only then did they realize that this body bore a resemblance to Yahya Sinwar.
The body was removed from the rubble for examination. DNA test results, including fingerprints and DNA confirmed Yahya Sinwar went to meet his devilish creator.
There was a hole in his head from the sniper shot. Of the five terrorists in this incident, he was the last one to be killed.
At the time he was killed the night before, no one knew it was him.
A large sum of cash was found on Sinwar’s body, plus a fake passport, a hand-written map of tunnels which the IDF did not know existed, and a vest full of grenades.
It appeared that Sinwar was on the last leg of an attempted escape trip to cross the border into Egypt so he could run away from the nightmare he helped to create.
Some fluke played a fine retaliation game with one of the masterminds of the October 7th, 2023 massacre that Hamas perpetrated on Israel.
Sinwar planned to abandon his people while leaving them to fight and die.
Two terrorists who were killed near Sinwar were identified as senior members of the Hamas Rafah Brigade. Another body was of the Khan Yunis battalion commander who was with Sinwar since the beginning of the war.
The Intelligence Warning That Wasn’t True
Since the beginning of the war and for a whole year, Israelis were told by different intelligence sources that Sinwar had surrounded himself with living hostages as a life insurance policy.
For the fear of hurting the hostages, no War Cabinet nor Israeli general would have approved his elimination. In this case had they known it was Sinwar he may not have been eliminated.
This is exactly why, when this incident became public, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s first order was to update the hostages’ families, confirming to them that no abductees were present during the operation, and none were hurt.
A small group of young soldiers were doing their work in the Rafah area. While eliminating a group of Hamas terrorists, among them, Sinwar. These soldiers brought about the elimination of the most sought after terrorist and a mastermind of the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel. They did it almost nonchalantly, something IDF generals and elite units were not allowed to do.
How do we say it? God works in mysterious ways!
Israel’s Knesset-Parliament Speaker Amir Ohana posted a message in Arabic on the X social network: “A year ago he [Sinwar] was victorious, now he is annihilated. Where will you [the rest of Hamas] be in a year from now? Return the kidnapped, put down your weapons, save your lives.”
