Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Wednesday that Mohammad Sinwar, a senior Hamas commander in Gaza, was killed in an Israeli military operation earlier this month, reports CNN.

The announcement follows earlier speculation that Sinwar had been fatally wounded in a targeted Israeli airstrike on May 14. At the time, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated that they were still assessing the outcome of the operation and had not yet confirmed his death.

Sinwar was the brother of Yahya Sinwar, the former Hamas leader who was killed in October 2024 during a clash with Israeli forces. Yahya Sinwar had orchestrated the deadly October 7, 2023, attacks on Israeli territory, which triggered the current war in Gaza. Following Yahya’s death, Mohammad Sinwar assumed a leadership role in the militant group.

"The IDF and Shin Bet destroyed an underground terrorist infrastructure of the Hamas terrorist organization under the European Hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. Since the beginning of the war, the IDF and Shin Bet have been working to destroy and neutralize the underground infrastructure of the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip," the IDF said in a post to X. "Earlier today, the IDF and Shin Bet targeted terrorists in the Hamas terror organization who were in a command and control complex established in an underground infrastructure beneath the European Hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip," they wrote in the May 13 post.

Mohammad Sinwar was operating out of an underground command post beneath the European Hospital in Khan Younis when the IDF carried out a precision drone strike. Israel later released footage showing a tunnel leading from the hospital to what it said was a Hamas operational facility.

Sinwar was believed to be one of the last high-ranking Hamas commanders still active in Gaza.