By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
Israel on Wednesday reportedly killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a random clash in southern Gaza where he was battling against the IDF together with a small group of Palestinian fighters, not hiding underground surrounded by hostages as Israel and the US had claimed.
From The New York Times, “Sinwar Evaded Israeli Intelligence for Years. Military Trainees Came Upon Him.”:
For over a year, Israel’s security establishment, backed by the United States, dedicated vast resources and gathered mounds of intelligence in its hunt for Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who was an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks.
But in the end, a unit of trainee squad commanders unexpectedly encountered Mr. Sinwar while on an operation in southern Gaza, according to four Israeli defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The unit was on patrol in southern Gaza on Wednesday when the Israeli soldiers came upon a small group of fighters, the officials said. The soldiers — backed by drones — engaged in a firefight, and three Palestinian militants were killed.
During the battle, Israeli fire brought down part of a building where the militants had taken cover, two officials said. As the dust cleared and they began searching the building, the Israeli soldiers noticed that one of the bodies bore a shocking resemblance to the Hamas leader, the three officials said.
It was a seemingly unlikely place to find him. Israeli and U.S. intelligence had long assessed that Mr. Sinwar — fearful for his own safety — had been hiding deep underground, surrounding himself with Israeli hostages to avoid assassination.
[…] The troops, one of the officials said, were also concerned that there might be hostages in the area as well, but none were found with the fighters.
Israel released drone footage allegedly showing Sinwar’s final moments.
He can be seen sitting in a chair in a bombed out building with his arm amputated, defiantly throwing a stick at an Israeli drone.
Israeli and US intelligence have been claiming for a year that Sinwar was in hiding underground surrounded by a dozen or so hostages as human shields.
Evidently, they were just projecting.
