Hamas confirms Mohammed Sinwar’s death, three months after Israeli assassination claim

BEIRUT — Hamas confirmed on Sunday the death of one of its leaders, Mohammed Sinwar, three months after the Israeli army announced it had killed him in a strike on Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Sinwar was “eliminated” on May 13, 2025, “while he was hiding in an underground command and control center,” the Israeli army had said. On May 28, during a parliamentary session, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel had “eliminated Mohammad Sinwar.”

Sinwar was the Hamas chief for the Gaza Strip and the brother of Yahya Sinwar, the former supreme leader of the Palestinian movement, depicted as the main architect of the unprecedented attack carried out on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza. He was himself killed by Israel in October 2024 by Israeli soldiers’ gunfire in southern Gaza.

Greatly influenced by his brother Yahya, 10 years his senior, Sinwar joined Hamas’s military wing in 1991, the same year it was founded, at age 16, just four years after the movement’s founding in 1987. A savvy strategist, he gradually climbed the ranks of the Islamist movement, holding key positions until becoming in 2005 the army commander within the Khan Younis brigade.

For reference

Mohammad Sinwar, shadow brother and de facto Hamas leader in Gaza

‘Martyr members of the Military Council’

On Saturday night, his photo was shown alongside those of political and military leaders of Hamas killed by Israel and broadcast by the Palestinian movement. These photos include (Yahya) Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, Mohammed Deif, the commander-in-chief of the movement’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, and two members of the military council, Bassem Issa and Raed Thabet. They are all presented as “martyr members of the Military Council.”

Two Hamas sources had indicated that Sinwar took over the leadership of the al-Qassam Brigades’ military council after the assassination of Mohammed Deif.

On June 8, the Israeli army said it had identified the body of Mohammed Sinwar, “located in the underground tunnel beneath the European Hospital in Khan Younis.”

The Hamas attack on Oct.7, 2023, left 1,219 people dead on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data. Of the 251 people abducted that day, 47 remain held in Gaza, of whom 25 have been declared dead by the Israeli army. The Israeli retaliation campaign has left at least 63,025 dead in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.