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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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Israeli Strikes Hit Southern Lebanon, but Tense Ceasefire Holds

Smoke billows over Beirut's southern suburbs after Israeli strikes, amid hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Baabda, Lebanon, November 25, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke billows over Beirut's southern suburbs after Israeli strikes, amid hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Baabda, Lebanon, November 25, 2024. (Reuters)
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Israeli Strikes Hit Southern Lebanon, but Tense Ceasefire Holds

Smoke billows over Beirut's southern suburbs after Israeli strikes, amid hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Baabda, Lebanon, November 25, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke billows over Beirut's southern suburbs after Israeli strikes, amid hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Baabda, Lebanon, November 25, 2024. (Reuters)

Israeli jets Sunday launched an airstrike over a southern Lebanese border village, while troops shelled other border towns and villages still under Israeli control, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported.

The attacks come days after a US-brokered ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike in the village of Yaroun, nor did the Hezbollah. Israel continues to call on displaced Lebanese not to return to dozens of southern villages in this current stage of the ceasefire. It also continues to impose a daily curfew for people moving across the Litani River between 5 pm and 7 am, The AP reported.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the Lebanese military have been critical of Israeli strikes and overflights since the ceasefire went into effect, accusing Israel of violating the agreement. The military said it had filed complaints, but no clear military action has been taken by Hezbollah in response, meaning that the tense cessation of hostilities has not yet broken down.

When Israel has issued statements about these strikes, it says they were done to thwart possible Hezbollah attacks.

The United States military announced Friday that Major General Jasper Jeffers alongside senior US envoy Amos Hochstein will co-chair a new US-led monitoring committee that includes France, the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon known as UNIFIL, Lebanon, and Israel. Hochstein led over a year of shuttle diplomacy to broker the ceasefire deal, and his role will be temporary until a permanent civilian co-chair is appointed.

Lebanon meanwhile is trying to pick up the pieces and return to some level of normal life after the war that decimated large swaths of its south and east, displacing an estimated 1.2 million people. The Lebanese military said it detonated unexploded munitions left over from Israeli strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon. Elsewhere, the Lebanese Civil Defense said it removed five bodies from under the rubble in two southern Lebanese towns over the past 24 hours.

The first phase of the ceasefire is a 60-day cessation of hostilities where Hezbollah militants are supposed to withdraw from southern Lebanon north of the Litani River and Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. Lebanese troops are to deploy in large numbers in the south, effectively being the only armed force in control of the south alongside UNIFIL peacekeepers.

But challenges still remain at this current stage. Many families who want to bury their dead deep in southern Lebanon are unable to do so at this point.

The Lebanese Health Ministry and military allocated a plot of land in the coastal city of Tyre for those people to be temporarily laid to rest. Dr. Wissam Ghazal of the Health Ministry in Tyre said almost 200 bodies have been temporarily buried in that plot of land, until the situation near the border calms down.

“Until now, we haven’t been able to go to our village, and our hearts are burning because our martyrs are buried in this manner,” said Om Ali, who asked to be called by a nickname that means “Ali’s mother” in Arabic. Her husband was a combatant killed in the war from the border town of Aita el-Shaab, just a stone’s throw from the tense border.

“We hope the crisis ends soon so we can go and bury them properly as soon as possible, because truly, leaving the entrusted ones buried in a non-permanent place like this is very difficult,” she said.

In the meantime, cash-strapped Lebanon is trying to fundraise as much money as it can to help rebuild the country the war cost some $8.5 billion in damages and losses according to the World Bank, and to help recruit and train troops to deploy 10,000 personnel into southern Lebanon. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri also called for parliament to convene to elect a president next month to break a gridlock of over two years and reactivate the country's crippled state institutions.