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Who is Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar?

(FILES) Yahya Sinwar attends the opening of a new mosque in Rafah town in the southern Gaza Strip on February 24, 2017. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)
(FILES) Yahya Sinwar attends the opening of a new mosque in Rafah town in the southern Gaza Strip on February 24, 2017. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)
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Who is Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar?

(FILES) Yahya Sinwar attends the opening of a new mosque in Rafah town in the southern Gaza Strip on February 24, 2017. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)
(FILES) Yahya Sinwar attends the opening of a new mosque in Rafah town in the southern Gaza Strip on February 24, 2017. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, has been killed in a military operation.
His death would be a significant moment in Israel's yearlong offensive against the militant group and could complicate efforts to release dozens of hostages held in Gaza.
Sinwar became the head of Hamas after the killing of the previous leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in an explosion in Iran in July that was widely blamed on Israel.
Some things to know about Sinwar:
From refugee camp to Hamas militant Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in the Gaza town of Khan Younis. He was an early member of Hamas, which was formed in 1987. He eventually led the group's security arm, which worked to purge it of informants for Israel.
Israel arrested him in the late 1980s and he admitted to killing 12 suspected collaborators, a role that earned him the nickname “The Butcher of Khan Younis.” He was sentenced to four life terms for offenses that included the killing of two Israeli soldiers, The Associated Press reported.
A prison leader Sinwar organized strikes in prison to improve working conditions. He also studied Hebrew and Israeli society.
He survived brain cancer in 2008 after being treated by Israeli doctors.
Sinwar was among more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in 2011 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of an exchange for an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid.
When Sinwar returned to Gaza, he quickly rose through Hamas' leadership ranks with a reputation for ruthlessness. He is widely believed to be behind the 2016 killing of another top Hamas commander, Mahmoud Ishtewi, in an internal power struggle.
Sinwar became head of Hamas in Gaza, effectively putting him in control of the territory, and worked with Haniyeh to align the group with Iran and its proxies around the region while also building the group's military capabilities.
There is widespread evidence that Sinwar, along with Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ armed wing, engineered the surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor sought arrest warrants in May for Sinwar, Deif and Haniyeh for their alleged roles in the attack.
Israel said it killed Deif in a strike in July, while Hamas says he is still alive.
Where would this leave Hamas? Sinwar has been in hiding since the attack, and cease-fire negotiators have said it can take several days to send and receive messages from him.
Even before becoming Hamas' top leader, Sinwar was believed to have the final word on any deal to release hostages held by the militant group. Some 100 hostages remain in Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.
It's unclear who would replace Sinwar, and what that might mean for the cease-fire efforts, which sputtered to a halt in August after months of negotiations brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

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Despite Truce, Lebanese from Devastated Naqoura Cannot Go Home 

Cars drive past damaged buildings, as residents return to Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)
Cars drive past damaged buildings, as residents return to Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)
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Despite Truce, Lebanese from Devastated Naqoura Cannot Go Home 

Cars drive past damaged buildings, as residents return to Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)
Cars drive past damaged buildings, as residents return to Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)

All signs of life have disappeared from the bombed-out houses and empty streets of the Lebanese border town of Naqoura, but despite a fragile Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire that has held since November, no one can return.

The Israeli military is still deployed in parts of Lebanon's south, days ahead of a January 26 deadline to fully implement the terms of the truce.

The deal gave the parties 60 days to withdraw -- Israel back across the border, and Hezbollah farther north -- as the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers redeployed to the south.

The Lebanese military has asked residents of Naqoura not to go back home for their own safety after Israel's army issued similar orders, but in spite of the danger, Mayor Abbas Awada returned to inspect the destruction.

"Naqoura has become a disaster zone of a town... the bare necessities of life are absent here," he said in front of the damaged town hall, adding he was worried a lack of funds after years of economic crisis would hamper reconstruction.

"We need at least three years to rebuild," he continued, as a small bulldozer worked to remove rubble near the municipal offices.

Lebanese soldiers deployed in coastal Naqoura after Israeli troops pulled out of the country's southwest on January 6, though they remain in the southeast.

The Israelis' withdrawal from Naqoura left behind a sea of wreckage.

Opposite the town hall, an old tree has been uprooted. Empty, damaged houses line streets filled with rubble.

Most of the widespread destruction occurred after the truce took hold, Awada said.

"The Israeli army entered the town after the ceasefire" and "destroyed the houses", he said.

"Before the ceasefire, 35 percent of the town was destroyed, but after the truce, 90 percent of it" was demolished, he added, mostly with controlled explosions and bulldozers.

A resident previously displaced because of the hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, stands in his damaged home as he returns to Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)

- Smell of death -

Under the November 27 ceasefire deal, which ended more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese army has 60 days to deploy alongside UNIFIL peacekeepers in south Lebanon as Israel withdraws.

At the same time, Hezbollah is required to pull its forces north of the Litani River, around 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure it has in the south.

Both sides have accused each other of violations since the truce began.

Around the nearby UNIFIL headquarters, houses are still intact, but almost everywhere else in Naqoura lies destruction.

Facades are shorn from bombed-out houses, while others are reduced to crumpled heaps, abandoned by residents who had fled for their lives, leaving behind furniture, clothes and books.

AFP saw a completely destroyed school, banana plantations that had withered away and unharvested oranges on trees, their blossoming flowers barely covering the smell of rotting bodies.

On Tuesday, the civil defense agency said it had recovered two bodies from the rubble in Naqoura.

Lebanese soldiers who patrolled the town found an unexploded rocket between two buildings, AFP saw.

In October 2023, Hezbollah began firing across the border into Israel in support of its ally Hamas, a day after the Palestinian group launched its attack on southern Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

An Israeli army spokesperson told AFP that its forces were committed to the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon.

They said the army was working "to remove threats to the State of Israel and its citizens, in full accordance with international law".

UN vehicles drive past debris of damaged buildings in Naqoura, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, January 23, 2025. (Reuters)

- 'We want the wars to end' -

On the coastal road to Naqoura UNIFIL and the Lebanese army have set up checkpoints.

Hezbollah's yellow flags fluttered in the wind, but no fighters could be seen.

Twenty kilometers to the north, in Tyre, Fatima Yazbeck waits impatiently in a reception center for the displaced for her chance to return home.

She fled Naqoura 15 months ago, and since then, "I haven't been back", she said, recounting her sadness at learning her house had been destroyed.

Ali Mehdi, a volunteer at the reception center, said his home was destroyed as well.

"My house was only damaged at first," he said. "But after the truce, the Israelis entered Naqoura and destroyed the houses, the orchards and the roads."

In the next room, Mustafa Al-Sayed has been waiting with his large family for more than a year to return to his southern village of Beit Lif.

He had been forced to leave once before, during the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

"Do we have to take our families and flee every 20 years?" he asked. "We want a definitive solution, we want the wars to end."