The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Thursday released drone footage that captured the final moments of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas terror leader responsible for the October 7 atrocity, before he was killed by Israeli ground forces in the Gaza city of Rafah. Published.
The drone entered the building where Shinwar was hiding through a second-story window and found him sitting in an armchair surrounded by rubble, missing one of his hands.
The terrorist leader stared helplessly at the drone and defiantly raised his weapon when he heard the sound of the propellers. His final act was to throw his weapon at the drone and fail. The weapon looks a bit like a damaged rifle, but military after-action reports describe it as a “wooden stick.”
According to a report by Doron Kadosh, military correspondent for Israel Army Radio, Israeli ground forces in the Tel Sultan area of Rafah noticed suspicious activity around 10 a.m. local time. They monitored the area until about 3 p.m., when several Hamas operatives flew from house to house in a pattern that suggested they were clearing the way for the movement of their comrades. I observed that.
The Israeli military had no idea at the time that the action was carried out by Yahya Sinwar and his entourage, who were apparently planning to flee from Rafah across the border into Egypt. As the Israelis engaged the terrorists, they dispersed to different buildings.
Masked and hooded, Sinwar took refuge on the second floor of the building seen in the IDF drone video above. Israeli tanks fired shells into the building, leaving both the building and Shinwar in poor condition, as seen in the video.
Sinwar and his bodyguard tried to leave the building, but an IDF platoon surrounded the house and threw two grenades, forcing them back. Sinwar's hand appears to have been chopped off, either by the first tank shell or a later Israeli grenade.
The drone footage ended just before Israeli forces fired another tank shell into the building, delivering the final blow to Shinwar. His body was discovered the next morning when Israeli Defense Forces swept through the rubble and discovered the bodies of several Hamas men, one of whom they noticed resembled the terrorist leader. Shinwar's identity was confirmed through DNA analysis on Thursday.
