Hamas names Yahya Sinwar as new leader
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Hamas has appointed Yahya Sinwar as its new leader, replacing Ismail Haniyeh who was killed in Tehran last week.
Since 2017, Sinwar has served as a group leader within the Gaza strip. Now he will be the leader of its political wing.
Sinwar is believed to remain in the Gaza strip, although his whereabouts are unknown at this time.
The announcement comes at a time of heightened tension in the Middle East, as Iran and its allies threaten to retaliate for Haniyeh’s killing, which they blame on Israel. Israel has yet to comment.
“The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas announces the election of leader Yahya Sinwar as the head of the political office of this movement,” said a Hamas statement.
Sinwar currently tops Israel’s most wanted list. Israeli security agencies believe that he was the mastermind behind the planning and execution of the October 7, 2023 attack, which left more than 1,200 people dead and 251 returned to Gaza as hostages.
The details of how Sinwar’s leadership of the party’s political office will work are yet to be released by Hamas.
The 61-year-old has not been seen in public since the attacks began in October, and is believed to be hiding “ten floors underground” in Gaza. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in June.
In the late 1980s, Sinwar established a Hamas security wing known as Majd, which among other things targeted Palestinian and Israeli collaborators.
Sinwar has spent most of his life in an Israeli prison – and after his third arrest in 1988 he was sentenced to four life terms.
However, he was among 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners released by Israel in 2011 in exchange for an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas for more than five years.
He later returned to his position as a prominent leader in Hamas and was appointed head of the group’s political office in the Gaza Strip in 2017.
The US puts Sinwar on its blacklist of “international terrorists”.
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