Yaha Sinwar takes over

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(Bild: AFP/JACK GUEZ)

Hamas has appointed its Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar as head of the group following the death of Ismail Haniyeh. The terrorist is considered one of the main architects of the attack on Israeli civilians last October. Sinwar is still believed to be in the Gaza Strip.

Following the death of Hamas figurehead Haniyeh in Iran at the end of July, Sinwar is also to take over the political leadership of the Islamists. This was announced by the terrorist organization on Tuesday evening. The architect of the October massacre is now considered the unrestricted leader of Hamas.

"Butcher of Khan Junis" takes over
Sinwar, a wiry, bearded man with cropped white hair and deep-set eyes under bushy dark brows, belongs to the founding generation of Hamas. In the early years of the Islamist movement, he was responsible for the fight against suspected collaborators with Israel within its own ranks.

Background

• Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Junis in the Gaza Strip.
• Together with Mohammed Deif, commander of Hamas' armed wing, who was killed, the terrorist is regarded as the planner of the unprecedented massacre in Israel on October 7.
• Around 1200 Israelis were killed in the attack and around 240 people were abducted to Gaza. The majority of the remaining hostages are said to have already died.

He was so brutal that he became known as the "Butcher of Khan Yunis". He spent more than two decades in Israeli custody for the murder of four suspected collaborators and two Israeli soldiers. He used this time to learn Hebrew and study the enemy.

Sinwar was part of a prisoner exchange program
Sinwar was released in 2011 - as one of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in return for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. In the same year, Bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Pakistan. Like him, Israel's government assures us, Sinwar is also a doomed man.

In Israel, Sinwar is compared to the former leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network - alluding to the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001.

At the end of December, the Israeli army announced that it had found and destroyed one of Sinwar's hideouts in Gaza City as part of the ongoing ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. Over the years, Hamas has criss-crossed the entire Gaza Strip with a network of tunnels with a total length of hundreds of kilometers. It is suspected that Sinwar is also hiding in it.