What to Know About Mohammad Sinwar, the Hamas Leader Targeted by Israel

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What to Know About Mohammad Sinwar, the ****** Leader Targeted by Israel

The Israeli military struck the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Tuesday evening in an attempt to kill Mohammad Sinwar, one of ******’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 ******’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 ****** 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.

Mohammad Sinwar was born in Khan Younis in 1975. He is the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the ******-led attacks on Israel that started the war in Gaza in October 2023 and in whose footsteps Mohammad Sinwar followed for much of his life.

Their family fled Ashkelon, Israel, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war to a refugee camp in Khan Younis.

The younger Mr. Sinwar is believed to have joined ****** in the early 1990s as Yahya was rising up the organization’s ranks. In 1991, he was arrested by the Israeli military for

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, spending less than a year in Israeli custody. He was also jailed for

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s in the West Bank city of Ramallah by the ************ Authority.

He is known as ‘the Shadow.’

Like his elder brother, Mohammad 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

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only to discover that he had survived. In late 2023, the

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that it had searched his office in a raid on a ****** 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 ******, was killed by the Israeli military in October.

In a 2022

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, it was reported that Mohammad was so elusive that he would not be recognized by most people in Gaza, and had even missed his father’s ******** 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 ****** 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 ******.

Mohammad Sinwar is believed to be one of the most senior ****** military commanders left in Gaza.

In addition to Yahya Sinwar, Israel has eliminated Muhammad Deif, commander of ******’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 Mohammad 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 ******, which Israel has insisted upon.

In January,

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that the younger Mr. Sinwar had been recruiting new fighters for ****** in Gaza.

In the Al Jazeera 2022 interview, Mohammad Sinwar, then a senior commander in ******’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. Mohammad 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, ****** 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.

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