The Israeli military struck the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Tuesday evening in an attempt to kill Muhammad Sinwar, one of Hamas’s top leaders in the enclave, according to Israeli military officials.
There was no immediate confirmation that Israel was successful.
Throughout the war in Gaza, Israel has sought to eliminate Hamas’s hierarchy, methodically assassinating the group’s top officials. After such killings, the Israeli military has often taken weeks to confirm a target’s death, while Hamas has sometimes taken months.
Here’s what we know about Mr. Sinwar, who has survived such assassination attempts before.
He is Yahya Sinwar’s younger brother.
Muhammad Sinwar was born in Khan Younis in 1975. He is the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the Hamas-led attacks on Israel that started the war in Gaza in October 2023 and in whose footsteps Muhammad Sinwar followed for much of his life.
Their family fled what is now Ashkelon, Israel, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war to a refugee camp in Khan Younis.
The younger Mr. Sinwar is believed to have joined Hamas in the late 1980s or early ’90s as Yahya was rising up the organization’s ranks. In 1991, he was arrested by the Israeli military for suspected terror activity, spending less than a year in Israeli custody. He was also jailed for several years in the ’90s in the West Bank city of Ramallah by the Palestinian Authority.
He is known as ‘the Shadow.’
Like his elder brother, Muhammad Sinwar has long been wanted by the Israeli authorities. He is said to have been targeted in six assassination attempts by 2021.
In 2014, the Israeli military believed that it had killed the younger Mr. Sinwar, only to discover that he had survived. In late 2023, the Israeli military said on social media that it had searched his office in a raid on a Hamas military post and training compound in Gaza, “where military doctrine documents were located.”
But both Sinwar brothers continued to elude Israel, until Yahya, then the political leader of Hamas, was killed by the Israeli military in October.
In a 2022 interview with Al Jazeera, it was reported that Muhammad was so elusive that he would not be recognized by most people in Gaza, and did not publicly participate in his father’s funeral to maintain secrecy about his whereabouts.
He is believed to have spent much of the war underground in an effort to escape Israeli airstrikes. But in recent months, he had been seen aboveground in Khan Younis, including at Nasser Hospital, according to a Middle Eastern intelligence official.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said its forces had struck a Hamas command center underneath the European Hospital near Khan Younis. The Gazan health ministry said that at least six people were killed and at least 40 others wounded.
He holds a prominent role in Hamas.
Muhammad Sinwar is believed to be one of the most senior Hamas military commanders left in Gaza.
In addition to Yahya Sinwar, Israel has eliminated Muhammad Deif, commander of Hamas’s military wing who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in July; and Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s political chief, who was killed on a visit to Iran in July, when he was attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran.
By targeting Muhammad Sinwar, the Israeli military may hope to remove a particularly hard-line negotiator. He is known for opposing compromises with Israel in cease-fire negotiations, according to two Israeli officials and the Middle Eastern intelligence official, just as his elder brother had. He has also refused to agree to any truce that would include dismantling and disarming Hamas, which Israel has insisted upon.
In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that the younger Mr. Sinwar had been recruiting new fighters for Hamas in Gaza.
In the Al Jazeera 2022 interview, Muhammad Sinwar, then a senior commander in Hamas’s military wing, spoke about the failed assassination attempts against him and about resisting Israel, saying, “For us, shooting rockets at Tel Aviv is easier than drinking water.”
He is linked to the abduction of Gilad Shalit.
Israel has accused the younger brother of being one of the people responsible for planning an attack that led to the abduction of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.
Mr. Shalit was captured in a cross-border raid into Israel and held in Gaza for five years. Muhammad Sinwar is said to have held the soldier captive himself for some time.
The soldier was exchanged in 2011 for more than 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Among those freed was Yahya Sinwar.
In 2022, the younger Mr. Sinwar told Al Jazeera he believed that such trades could help secure the release of thousands of Palestinians held in Israel. The next year, Hamas abducted about 250 hostages from Israel, taking them to Gaza for use as bargaining chips in future negotiations.
Reporting was contributed by Ronen Bergman, Adam Rasgon, Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman.
