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The Israeli military says it is investigating whether Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar – seen as the mastermind of the 7 October attack – has been killed in Gaza.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it was checking the possibility that it has killed Sinwar following a recent operation that it said had targeted three militants.
“At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” it said in a statement.
The military said there were no signs that hostages had been present in the building where the three were killed. There had been reports from the Israeli army that Sinwar had been hiding among hostages, using them as human shields.
Sinwar was chosen as the group’s top leader following the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh in July in an apparent Israeli strike in the Iranian capital Tehran.
In recent months, Israel has killed several commanders of Hamas in Gaza as well as senior figures of Hezbollah in Lebanon – including its veteran leader Hassan Nasrallah – as it has intensified strikes, particularly against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
It comes as at least 28 Palestinians including children were killed in an Israeli strike on a shelter in the northern Gaza Strip, a Gaza health ministry official said. Dozens of people were also injured in the strike, health ministry official Medhat Abbas told Reuters, as Israel’s bloody assault on northern Gaza continues. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number of wounded at 160.
The Israeli military said dozens of militants were present at the strike, claiming it had carried out a precise strike on Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters inside the compound.
Tanks were sent by the Israeli military into Jabalia in the north, where United Nations officials expressed concern over shortages of food and medicine as Israel faces accusations of a policy of starvation in northern Gaza.
Israel has stopped processing requests from traders to import food into Gaza, Reuters reported 12 people involved in the trade as saying. Since October 11, Gazan traders have not been able to access the system which allows them to import food from Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The flow of goods has hit its lowest level since the start of the war, according to a Reuters analysis of official Israeli data.
The shift has driven the flow of goods arriving in Gaza to its lowest level since the start of the war, a Reuters analysis of official Israeli data shows. The details of the halt in commercial goods into Gaza have not been previously reported.
It comes as a report by the International Labour Organisation revealed unemployment in Gaza hit nearly 80 per cent since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, with almost the entire 2.3 million population forced into poverty.
Referring to both Gaza and the West Bank, the ILO said the conflict had caused “unprecedented and wide-ranging devastation on the labour market and the wider economy across the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.
Gaza’s economic output has also shrunk by 85 per cent since Israel’s invasion began last October in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7, in which 1,139 Israelis were killed according to Israeli tallies.
Israel has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in its subsequent invasion and bombardment of Gaza, according to Gaza’s health authorities.
Referring to both Gaza and the West Bank, the ILO said the conflict had caused “unprecedented and wide-ranging devastation on the labour market and the wider economy across the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.
Elsewhere, Syrian state media reported that Israel had struck Syria’s port city of Latakia early on Thursday, while the US deployed its B-2 bomber plane for the first time since 2017 to strike Houthi rebel underground weapons storages in Yemen.
The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Hossein Salam, meanwhile, warned Israel against responding to the Iranian missile attack on October 1.
Warning that Iranian missiles could penetrate Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, Mr Salami said: “We tell you (Israel) that if you commit any aggression against any point we will painfully attack the same point of yours.”