Israel's foreign minister said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has been killed

Israel has killed several commanders of Hamas in Gaza as well as senior figures of Hezbollah in Lebanon, including its veteran leader Hassan Nasrallah

Yahya Sinwar. File Picture: AP Photo/Adel Hana

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the Gaza war, was killed on Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said.

His killing by Israeli forces operating in Gaza marks a huge success for Israel and a pivotal event in the year-long war - although there are a number of possible scenarios.

"Mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, who was responsible for the massacre and atrocities of October 7, was killed today by IDF soldiers," Katz said in a statement.

"This is a great military and moral achievement for Israel and a victory for the entire free world against the axis of evil of radical Islam led by Iran," Katz said.

"Sinwar's assassination creates the opportunity for the immediate release of the hostages and to bring about a change that will lead to a new reality in Gaza - without Hamas and without Iranian control."

Earlier, the Israeli army and police carried out DNA checks on the corpse of the man believed to be that of their arch foe.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

In Israel, families of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza said they hoped that a ceasefire could now be reached that would bring home the captives. In Gaza, residents said they believed the war would go on.

The demise of Sinwar is a major boost to the Israeli military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the devastating war in the Palestinian enclave grinds on into a second year.

Sinwar, who was named as Hamas' overall leader following the assassination of political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, was believed to have been hiding in the warren of tunnels Hamas has built under Gaza over the past two decades.

His death could dial up hostilities in the Middle East where the prospect of an even wider conflict has grown.

But the end of the man who planned the attack last year in which fighters killed 1,200 people in Israel and captured more than 250 hostages could also help push forward stalled efforts to end the war that attack triggered. During the year-long conflict Israel has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians.

Israel's Army Radio said the incident had occurred during a ground operation in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip during which Israeli troops killed three militants and took their bodies.

A ruthless enforcer once tasked with punishing Palestinians suspected of informing for Israel, Sinwar made his name as a prison leader.

He emerged as a street hero from a 22-year Israeli sentence for masterminding the abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians. He then quickly rose to the top of the Hamas ranks. He was dedicated to eradicating Israel.

Israel has carried out relentless airstrikes and ground operations to try and reach Netanyahu's goal of destroying Hamas.

In northern Gaza on Thursday, Israeli strikes killed 19 Palestinians including children at a school in the Jabalia camp that is sheltering displaced people, a Gaza health ministry official told Reuters.

A member of Israeli security forces surveys damage to a home struck by a rocket fired from Lebanon in the town of Majd al-Krum, northern Israel on Wednesday Picture: AP Photo/Ariel Schalit

It comes as Israeli forces continued a more than week-old major air and ground assault in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, where the Abu Hussein school was hit on Thursday.

Fares Abu Hamza, head of Gaza health ministry’s local emergency unit, confirmed the death toll from the strike and said dozens of people were wounded. He said the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was struggling to treat the casualties.

“Many women and children are in critical condition,” he said.

The Israeli military said it targeted a command centre run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad inside the school.

It provided a list of around a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was called in. t was not immediately possible to verify the names.

Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza.

The Israeli military says it carries out precise strikes on militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children.

In a separate development, a building in central Beirut that houses offices of the Al Jazeera news network and the Norwegian embassy was evacuated after a warning.

Mazen Ibrahim, Al Jazeera’s Lebanon bureau chief, said the building’s administration had received three calls telling everyone to leave the property, which he said also houses the embassies of Norway and Azerbaijan, as well as dozens of offices.

He said it was unclear who called in the warning.

Norwegian foreign ministry spokesperson Ragnhild Simenstad said the building was evacuated after a “bomb threat”, without elaborating.

Smokes rise following an explosion in southern Lebanon as seen from northern Israel on Thursday. Picture: AP Photo/Leo Correa

Israel has ordered the evacuation of several buildings, as well as entire cities, towns and villages, as it strikes what it says are targets linked to the Hezbollah militant group.

There have also been several instances of evacuation warning calls and text messages that turned out to be bogus, which Lebanese security agencies said they were investigating.

Israel launched its campaign in Gaza to eliminate Hamas after the militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Some 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up a little more than half of the fatalities.

Northern Gaza was the first target of Israel’s ground invasion nearly a year ago and has suffered the heaviest destruction of the war, with entire neighbourhoods in Gaza City and other towns reduced to rubble.

Most of the population fled after Israel issued evacuation orders in the opening days of the war, but about 400,000 are believed to have remained despite the harsh conditions.

Earlier this month, Israel once again ordered the full-scale evacuation of the north, and allowed no food aid to enter the area for around two weeks.

This led many Palestinians to fear that it had adopted a surrender-or-starve strategy suggested by former Israeli generals.

Israel allowed two shipments of aid to enter the north earlier this week after the United States warned it might reduce its military aid if its ally did not do more to address the humanitarian crisis.

Since the start of the conflict, Israeli forces have launched repeated operations into Jabaliya, a densely populated urban refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

The military says militants have repeatedly regrouped there after major operations.

- Additional reporting from Associated Press