The Israeli army says it has found the abandoned hideout of the leader of the Islamist Hamas. He is said to have lived with his family in a tunnel under the city of Khan Yunis.
Israel has released a video purporting to show Gaza’s Hamas leader Jahia Sinwar and his family. In the tunnel section under the southern city of Khan Yunis, Sinwar lived with relatives and Hamas fighters while the war raged above them, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
He showed a short video of a tour of the alleged hiding place. In it, an Israeli soldier shows a room where Sinwar lived, including a safe full of millions of dollars in banknotes in Israeli and US currency. The information on the video cannot yet be independently verified. The complex also included toilets and showers, a kitchen with supplies for a long time, and a room for bodyguards with weapons and ammunition. “Everything was left behind here,” says the soldier.
“We are determined to catch him”
Sinwar and his people ran away when they heard Israel’s military approaching, the short video continues. “We are determined to catch him and we will catch him,” Hagari said. The Israeli military is releasing another short video that is supposed to show Sinwar and some of his relatives. The video was recorded on October 10 – three days after Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel – by a surveillance camera in one of Hamas’s tunnels, it said.
In the short shot, a man can be seen from behind walking through the section of tunnel captured by the camera, whose silhouette resembles that of Sinwar. According to the military, the other people seen are Sinwar’s wife and children. The only person seen from the front is said to be Sinwar’s brother Ibrahim. The authenticity of the video cannot yet be independently confirmed. It supposedly shows the Hamas warlord currently fleeing, they said. However, the people in the picture walk calmly along the tunnel without luggage.
Conflict parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by the Palestinian and Israeli conflict parties cannot be directly verified by an independent body.
It is not known where Sinwar and his command staff are today. If the video recording is authentic, these would be the first images of him since the beginning of the war. Earlier this month, family members from the inner circle of Hamas’ senior military leadership in the Gaza Strip and those close to Sinwar were arrested on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities, Hagari said. These include, among others, the father of Hamas brigade commander Rafa Salama. The interrogations of those arrested provided Israel’s security services with important information, it said.