Gaza man says Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in his evacuated house

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Gaza man says ****** leader Yahya Sinwar was ******* in his evacuated house

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==Getty Images

Yahya Sinwar, pictured in June 2021, was ******* by ******** forces on Wednesday

A displaced ************ from Gaza has told the BBC that the house the former ****** leader was ******* in was his home for 15 years before he had to flee in May.

Ashraf **** Taha said he was “shocked” as he identified the partially destroyed building in ******** drone footage of the incident as his home on Ibn Sena street in Rafah, southern Gaza.

Yahya Sinwar, the key figure behind the 7 October attacks on *******, was ******* by ******** troops on Wednesday.

The ******** military released drone footage that it said showed Sinwar in a partially destroyed house before he was *******.

BBC Verify analyses footage of the ****** leader Yahya Sinwar’s ********

Mr **** Taha told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Lifeline that he had left his home in Rafah for Khan Younis on 6 May, when *******

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and began an operation against ****** fighters, and had not received any news of his house until now.

Mr **** Taha said his daughter first showed him the footage purportedly capturing Sinwar’s last moments on social media, saying it depicted their house in Rafah. He initially didn’t believe her, he said, until his brother confirmed the house was indeed his.

“I was like ‘yes this is my house’ and I saw the pictures and here I was shocked”, Mr **** Taha said.

He said he had no idea why Sinwar was there or how he got there.

“Never ever did me and my brothers and sons have anything to do with this,” he said.

The BBC has verified that pictures and videos provided by Mr **** Taha of his home match imagery of the house where Sinwar was *******.

BBC Verify compared and matched images of the home’s window archways, external decorations on doorways, shelves, and armchairs from the footage.

The BBC cannot independently verify that Mr **** Taha owned the home.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==Ashraf **** Taha

The tiles around the doorway from the house Mr **** Taha says is his are similar to those from the partially destroyed building where ******** troops said they ******* Yahya Sinwar.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==IDF

The footage of Sinwar’s ******** was analysed by the BBC, and the house in which he was last seen was one of the few partially destroyed buildings in a neighbourhood with extensive damage.

The ******** ******** on Rafah in May was met with strong international criticism, and triggered the exodus of more than a million Palestinians, according to the UN.

Many had been forced to move for a second or third time, as they had been sheltering in and around Rafah after being displaced from other parts of Gaza.

Mr **** Taha said he had built his home in Rafah himself with the help of his siblings. It had cost some 200,000 shekels (£41,400) and had been in good condition when he left, he said.

He described his home’s orange sofas and an orange casserole dish, remembering the last time he saw them as he fled his home.

“These are memories because some of these were brought by my mum and they are very precious to me,” he said.

“What happened has saddened me a lot, the house that I built and all my payments are gone,” he said. “Only **** can compensate us.”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Gaza #man #****** #leader #Yahya #Sinwar #******* #evacuated #house

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up