CNN —
It was around 5:30 a.m. Thursday in Washington, D.C., when senior U.S. officials first received news and photos from Israeli officials that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar may have been killed.
For more than a year since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year, the Israeli military, with covert support from the United States, has been searching for the mastermind behind that day.
They repeatedly approached, pushing Hamas leaders from one underground hiding place to the next. But Shinwar moved like a ghost in the endless tunnels dug beneath the streets of Gaza, rarely leaving the surface and communicating only through means of communication to avoid detection by electronic surveillance. .
As it turns out, it was by pure chance that a group of Israeli soldiers stumbled across Israel’s most wanted man.
Infantrymen from the IDF’s Bislaw Brigade, a unit that typically trains future commanders, were tracking several soldiers among the ruins of southern Gaza, which has been shattered by Israel’s punitive bombing campaign. A shooting occurred. Israeli forces fired back from tanks and swooped a drone into one of the hollowed-out buildings.
It wasn’t until the gunfight ended and the army returned the next morning to examine the rubble that they realized one of the bodies was Sinwar.
His death marks the end of a year-long investigation that has consumed Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies and dominated discussions about what it takes to end the war. The CIA established a special task force to track down Sinwar. And since October 7, the United States has deployed extensive intelligence assets to the region to gather intelligence on Hamas and its leaders.
But multiple U.S. officials told CNN that the moment of his death came as a complete surprise.
Israeli and U.S. officials often had some overview of the area where Sinwar had been hiding for months. However, the elusive Hamas leader was constantly on the move and his whereabouts were extremely difficult to pin down.
He avoided cell phones and other electronic communications altogether, instead giving personal attention to both military commanders inside the Gaza Strip and Hamas officials in Doha who were representing him in negotiations over a possible ceasefire. I sent a letter giving instructions. Interlocutors sometimes had to wait days or weeks for feedback from Shinwar to give the courier time to exchange written messages.
Mr. Shinwar has not been seen in public since October 7. His only known direct communication with the outside world was through several letters, most recently to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah last month. The Lebanese militant group said he had sent a letter to Nasrallah reaffirming his commitment to fighting Israel and supporting an alliance of Iranian-backed regional armed groups known as the “Axis of Resistance.”
Mr. Sinwar has long been known to be meticulous, even paranoid, about his own safety. It’s unclear what brought him to the ground Wednesday, but it was a fateful decision that put him in danger.
“They come out of hiding and never feel comfortable,” said one U.S. official.
Time and time again, the IDF always seemed to be one step ahead of Sinwar.
At least three times in 2024, the IDF was able to enter the tunnel where Shinwar had just been.
In January, the Supreme Commander of the Israel Defense Forces said DNA evidence confirmed that Israel was hiding in underground tunnels in Khan Yunis in early October 2023. CNN could not independently confirm that analysis.
International media have been blocked from independently accessing Gaza since the war began. The only way would be to have an Israeli military escort, and reporters would be allowed to see only what Israel wants them to see.
In February, CCTV camera footage showed Sinwar moving through a dimly lit tunnel with his wife, children and brother Ibrahim Sinwar in the same area, days after the October 7 attack. .
Shinwar appeared to have moved south as the IDF began closing in on his hometown of Khan Younis. The Israel Defense Forces announced this week that his DNA was found in a tunnel in Rafah, several hundred meters from where six hostages were killed in August.
He was killed on Wednesday in a part of Rafah called Tal al-Sultan, not far from the tunnel. The area had been surrounded by Israeli forces after intensifying attacks by two Hamas battalions throughout the summer.
U.S. intelligence gathering was effective enough to give authorities some insight into Sinwar’s thinking over many long months.
At some point this summer, the CIA said that Sinwar, who is blamed for the tremendous suffering in Gaza, was under pressure from his country’s military commanders to accept a cease-fire and end the war with Israel. I was evaluating it.
Instead of soldiers, the IDF sometimes sent in dogs, ferrets and robots as Israel searched for Hamas operatives hiding in its vast network of underground tunnels.
Sometimes, when the dogs did not return to the ground, the IDF thought it was because there was a lack of oxygen in some parts of the tunnel, several stories above ground. At times, robots were shot, confirming the presence of Hamas.
But he remained frustratingly out of reach.
It is clear that the IDF did not know he was near Tal al-Sultan until he was killed. In mid-September, the IDF brought CNN and other media to the scene. At the time, the IDF gave no indication that Shinwar might be there. And it is unlikely that he took reporters to where he was believed to be hiding.
DNA and dental records
Israeli and U.S. officials remained in close contact as the IDF worked to confirm with certainty that the body found in the rubble north of Rafah on Thursday morning was indeed Shinwar.
But even before that official confirmation came hours later, photos of Shinwar’s body convinced U.S. officials that the mastermind behind the October 7 attack had finally been killed.
By noon in Washington, Israel had used DNA and dental records to confirm the identity of the body, which was kept by Israel because Mr. Sinwar was serving time in an Israeli prison.
In the final battle, Sinwar and two others threw grenades and fired weapons at surrounding Israeli soldiers, who responded with their own gunfire. Armed with a vest, a gun and $10,000 in Israeli shekels, Sinwar fled alone to another building.
Shortly before his death (Israeli officials say the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head), the Israeli military sent a drone to the wrecked building where he had fled. A video from a drone released by the Israeli military quietly describes his final moments. It floats into a room on the second floor, where a masked figure sits alone in a chair, surrounded by dust and debris. The person had a piece of wood in his hand and threw it at the drone just moments before the video ended.
Iran has already hailed Sinwar as a martyr who died in the face of the enemy.
Over the past few months, American officials have come to believe that Mr. Sinwar has become increasingly hardened not only in his determination to continue fighting Israel in Gaza, but also in his own fatalistic outlook.
One U.S. official said Mr. Sinwar did not expect to survive the war. Believing that they would eventually be killed, there was little incentive to agree to a ceasefire, and U.S. officials assessed that negotiations reached a permanent stalemate.
American officials suspected that instead of seeking peace in Gaza, Mr. Sinwar wanted to continue the conflict without an endpoint, stalling Israel and damaging its international reputation.
To the end, U.S. intelligence officials believed that Mr. Sinwar was unconcerned about his own mortality and was determined to continue fighting.
