“The troops first attempted to identify him with his teeth but that wasn’t ‘certified enough,’” Dr. Chen Kugel, chief pathologist at Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine, said of the body found in Rafah. So soldiers removed one of the dead man’s fingers. DNA from it was matched against the profile Israel had kept from his years in prison, 1991-2011. The man was Yahya Sinwar.
The soldiers who killed him did not know that when they did it.
A patrol, then a firefight
Troops of the 828th Brigade were working the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah on October 16, 2024. They saw three men moving between buildings. The IDF said the unit was regular infantry, not special forces. Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Ran Canaan engaged a third, hooded gunman, and as Ynet put it, “no one realized the terrorist was Sinwar.”
The men scattered. A firefight followed in which an Israeli soldier was wounded. Sinwar made for a building, from a window of which he threw grenades. The IDF answered with a Merkava Mark 4 tank shell and a Matador missile, and Ynet reported machine-gun fire as well.
A drone then found a dust-covered man in a ruined room. Ynet described him as wounded, on a couch, throwing a stick at the aircraft. A second shell followed. Troops held off entering until the next morning, partly because of booby-trap fears, according to blue News.
The identification
Drone footage the next day showed a body that resembled Sinwar. Photos went to Shin Bet officials, and Ynet said that Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman “immediately realized it was Sinwar” when he arrived. Resemblance was not enough for a result this large, and the dental check fell short. The finger settled it.
The autopsy, carried out 24-36 hours after the operation, found that Sinwar died of a gunshot wound to the head. Shrapnel had torn his forearm, and Kugel said he had tried to stop the bleeding with an electric cord.
Near the same site the IDF also killed Mahmoud Hamdan, head of Hamas’s Tel al-Sultan Battalion, according to the Long War Journal. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called Sinwar’s death “a clear message to the residents of Gaza.” Sinwar was 62, and one of the planners of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Sources
- Yahya Sinwar killed by bullet to head, finger cut off for DNA test: report (Siasat)
- Death in the rubble of Gaza: How the Hamas chief was hunted down (blue News)
- IDF releases details on clash that led to Hamas leader's death (FDD's Long War Journal)
- New details of Sinwar's assassination (Ynet)
