Israeli foreign minister says Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed

Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said Thursday that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday.

“Shinwar’s removal creates an opportunity for the immediate release of the hostages and the possibility of change that could lead to a new reality for Gaza without Hamas and without Iranian control,” he said in a statement, according to NBC News. said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a press statement that Sinwar’s death was an “important milestone” but that for Israel “the war is not over yet.”

“Hamas will no longer rule Gaza. This is the beginning of Hamas’s next day and the opportunity for all Gazans to finally be free from their tyranny,” Netanyahu said.

“We will not stop until we capture all the terrorists involved in the October 7 massacre and bring all the hostages home,” Lieutenant General Helj Halevi, the Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of General Staff, said in a video statement.

Earlier, the Israel Defense Forces said it was investigating the “possibility” that Sinwar was one of the three militants killed in an operation in the Gaza Strip, but could not confirm his identity at the time. Ta.

“Forces operating in the area continue to operate with the necessary precautions,” they added. social media posts. CNBC could not independently verify this report.

President Joe Biden praised the news in a press statement, saying, “I will soon be meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to congratulate them and offer them a path forward to bring the hostages home to their families and bring this war to an end once and for all.” We are planning to discuss this,” he added. It caused great destruction to innocent people. ”

Biden was on his way to Germany to meet with allies for talks on Ukraine and the Middle East when the news broke.

Vice President Kamala Harris echoed the president’s sentiments during a campaign stop in Milwaukee.

“Hamas has been destroyed and its leadership removed,” Harris told reporters. “This moment gives us the opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza, ensure Israel’s security, free the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, and ensure that the Palestinian people have dignity, security and freedom. , and the war must end in a way that allows the right to self-determination. ”

U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Sinwar’s killing was “a seismic event that will change the nature of this conflict” and that Hamas leaders are “the main obstacle to reaching a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.” ”.

“There have been no negotiations to end the war in recent weeks because Shinwar has refused to negotiate,” Miller said. “We now believe there is an opportunity to remove him from the battlefield and remove him from the leadership of Hamas, and we want to seize that opportunity.”

Former leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip Sinwar, 62, was appointed overall commander of the Iran-backed organization in August following the assassination of former political chief Ismail Haniyeh. His death is Israel’s most devastating blow to Hamas in the year-long conflict sparked by an Oct. 7 terrorist attack on the Jewish state by Palestinian militants, with Israel saying that Sinwar He is accused of organizing.

The attack prompted Israel’s Netanyahu government to launch a retaliatory operation in the Gaza Strip aimed at dismantling the Palestinian group’s military capabilities and leadership.

More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 7, according to the local health ministry, and 101 people abducted from Israel are believed to remain hostages to Hamas in the enclave. The Hostage Families Forum, which represents families of prisoners of war, welcomed Thursday’s news. on social mediaHowever, he urged the Israeli government to use this opportunity as leverage to secure the return of the hostages.

The war in Gaza has expanded to include direct hostilities between Israel and Iran, as well as conflicts between the Jewish state and other Tehran-backed factions, including Yemen’s Houthis and the Lebanese group Hezbollah. The leader of Hezbollah was Hassan Nasrallah. killed Last month, the Israeli military bombed Beirut.

The market is mired in conflicts in the Middle East, posing a major risk to oil supplies if Israel responds to recent Iranian hostilities with attacks targeting Tehran’s energy infrastructure and export facilities.

Maritime attacks on ships by the Houthis, who say they have ties to Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom, have also been carried out against non-member vessels, while the Red Sea, a vital trade route linking the Asia-Pacific and the Mediterranean Sea, has been attacked. It is blocked.

Shinwar was born in a refugee camp in the Gaza enclave and spent at least 22 years of his adult life in Israeli prisons. In 1989, he was sentenced to life in prison for ordering the murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians who were believed to be collaborators, and had already been sentenced to “The Butcher of Khan Younis” in a hunt for suspected Palestinians. He was famous as. We will cooperate with Israel.

However, in a highly controversial prisoner exchange in 2011, more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners were exchanged and one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been abducted by Hamas five years earlier, was released early. It was done.

Sinwar later said in an interview that he spent his time in prison learning to speak, read and write Hebrew, and to understand the psychology and behavior of Israeli prisoners of war. In 2015 he was designated a terrorist by the US government.

In May, the International Criminal Court announced that it was applying for arrest warrants against Sinwar and Haniyeh on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. At the same time, it also applied for arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It is unclear who will replace Sinwar as leader of Hamas and what effect his death will have on stalled ceasefire negotiations.