The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have released footage of what they claim is Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar walking through a Gaza tunnel with several of his family members.
This would be the first time that Sinwar has been spotted since the Hamas’ October 7 terror attack on Israel. The footage has been released as top Israeli, US, Qatari and Egyptian officials gathered in Cairo to try and reach an extended truce and hostage deal.
The clip filmed on October 10, shows Sinwar in a tunnel underneath the city of Khan Younis in Gaza, walking behind probably his wife and three children along with his brother Ibrahim.
The video was taken by Hamas surveillance footage from the tunnels and retrieved by IDF forces in the area.
Along with this, Israeli officials said that they were in possession of additional footage of Sinwar, including clips that were filmed more recently.
“Every resident of Gaza [can now] see how Hamas leaders live underground and how they don’t think about anything other than themselves, their families and their money,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told Al Arabiya ahead of the airing of the footage.
Sinwar has been described as Israel’s most-wanted man in Gaza with Israeli forces naming him as “the Butcher from Khan Younis” for his alleged role in planning the October 7 attack.
Earlier, this month Israeli forces had detained close relatives of senior Hamas military commanders.
The IDF spokesperson said that the troops raided the tunnel, which is located under a cemetery in the Bani Suheila area of Khan Younis.
The tunnels contained “bedrooms of senior Hamas officials and the office of the commander of the Khan Younis Brigade’s Eastern Battalion, from where he directed the attack on October 7,” the IDF spokesman said, adding that the network connects to tunnels where hostages were held, which the IDF published details on in recent weeks.
In a career spanning three decades and counting, Ramananda (Ram to his friends) has been the foreign editor of The Telegraph, Outlook Magazine and the New Indian Express. He helped set up rediff.com’s editorial operations in San Jose and New York, helmed sify.com, and was the founder editor of India.com.
His work has featured in national and international publications like the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Global Times and Ashahi Shimbun. But his one constant over all these years, he says, has been the attempt to understand rising India’s place in the world.
He can rustle up a mean salad, his oil-less pepper chicken is to die for, and all it takes is some beer and rhythm and blues to rock his soul.
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