Herzi Halevi, the Israeli army chief of staff, has vowed to “find” the new Hamas leader and eliminate him. Halevi believes the new leader was one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attack.
Israeli Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi vowed on Wednesday to “find” the new leader of the Islamist group Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, and eliminate him, in a statement released a day after his appointment as head of the Palestinian movement.
“We will intensify our efforts to find him, attack him and ensure that they (Hamas leaders) have to once again replace the head of the political cabinet.” of the organization classified as terrorist by Israel, Halevi said.
Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in the Gaza Strip for seven years, was named leader of the Islamist movement on Tuesday. He succeeds Ismail Hanyieh, who was killed last week in Tehran in an attack attributed to Israel.
Speaking to Air Force fighter pilots, Halevi joked about Sinwar’s job change.
“Oh [novo] The political position does not change anything in relation to the fact that he is a murderer responsible for the planning and execution of what happened on October 7, so this change of title not only does not prevent us from looking for him, but rather encourages us,” he said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday night that Yahya Sinwar must be “eliminated quickly.”
The Israeli army and authorities accuse Yahya Sinwar of being one of the masterminds behind Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israelon October 7, 2023, making him one of Israel’s most wanted men.
On that day, Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israeli territory and killed 1,194 people, most of them civilians, and hours later Israel declared war on the Gaza Strip to “eradicate” the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Since 2007, in power in Gaza and classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) also took 251 hostages that day, 111 of whom remain in captivity and 41 have died in the meantime, according to the most recent assessment by the Israeli army.
The war, which entered its 306th day on Wednesday and continues to threaten to spread across the Middle East, has so far left at least 39,677 dead and 91,645 wounded in the Gaza Strip, as well as around 10,000 missing, most of them civilians, presumably buried in the rubble after ten months of war, according to updated figures from local authorities.
The conflict has also displaced more than two million people, plunging the overcrowded and impoverished Palestinian enclave into a severe humanitarian crisis, with more than 1.1 million people in “catastrophic hunger” that is taking its toll – “the highest number ever recorded” by the UN in its global food security studies.
Source: Observadora
