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JERUSALEM: Hamas vowed on Friday it would not release the hostages it seized during its October 7 attack on Israel until the Gaza war ends, as it mourned the death of its leader Yahya Sinwar.
The killing of Sinwar, the mastermind of the deadliest attack in Israeli history, had raised hopes of a turning point in the war, including for families of the Israeli hostages and Gazans enduring a dire humanitarian crisis.
However, as Qatar-based Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya mourned Sinwar in a video statement on Friday, he reiterated the group’s position that no hostages would be released “unless the aggression against our people in Gaza stops.”
And Israeli forces pummelled Gaza with air strikes on Friday, with rescuers recovering the bodies of three Palestinian children from the rubble of their home in the north of the territory, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
“We always thought that when this moment arrived the war would end and our lives would return to normal,” Jemaa Abou Mendi, a 21-year-old Gaza resident, told AFP.
“But unfortunately, the reality on the ground is quite the opposite. The war has not stopped, and the killings continue unabated.”
Sinwar was Israel’s most wanted man and his death — announced by the Israeli military on Thursday — deals a major blow to the already weakened group.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Sinwar’s killing an “important landmark in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas.”
He added that while it did not spell the end of the war, it was “the beginning of the end.”
After Sinwar’s killing was announced, some hailed the news as a sign of better things to come.
US President Joe Biden, whose government is Israel’s top arms provider, said Sinwar’s death was “an opportunity to seek a path to peace, a better future in Gaza without Hamas.”
Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged Israel’s government and international mediators to leverage “this major achievement to secure hostages’ return.”
“Now that Sinwar is not a formal obstacle in the way of the release of the hostages, it is unacceptable that they would stay in captivity even one more day,” said Ayala Metzger, daughter-in-law of killed hostage Yoram Metzger.
But she added: “We (are) afraid that Netanyahu does not intend on stopping the war, nor does he intend to bring the hostages back.”
After Sinwar’s death, Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi vowed to keep fighting “until we capture all the terrorists involved in the October 7 massacre and bring all the hostages home.”
Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said that “our fight will not stop until Palestine is liberated.”
Hamas sparked the war in Gaza by staging the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
During the attack, militants took 251 hostages back into Gaza. Ninety-seven remain there, including 34 who Israeli officials say are dead.
Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas and bring back the hostages has killed 42,500 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures which the UN considers reliable.
A “conservative” estimate puts the death toll among children in Gaza at over 14,100, said James Elder, spokesman of the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF.
“Gaza is the real-world embodiment of hell on Earth for its one million children,” Elder said on Friday. “And it’s getting worse, day by day.”
Criticism has been mounting over the civilian toll and lack of food and humanitarian aid reaching Gaza, where the UN has warned of famine.
Sinwar was the head of Hamas in Gaza at the time of the October 7 attack, rising to become the group’s overall leader after the killing of its political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in July.
The Israeli military said Sinwar was killed in a firefight in southern Gaza’s Rafah, near the Egyptian border, while being tracked by a drone.
It released drone footage of what it said was Sinwar’s final moments, with the video showing a wounded militant throwing an object at the drone.
It is unclear whether his successor will be named in Qatar, where Hamas’s political leadership has long been based, or in Gaza, the focus of the fighting.
Sinwar’s death created “a leadership vacuum,” Middle East analyst Andreas Krieg of King’s College London said.
Krieg said that next leader was likely to be someone from the operational level of Hamas. But among those on the battlefield, Sinwar’s younger brother Mohammed Sinwar has emerged as a favorite, he added.
Israel is also fighting a war in Lebanon, where Hamas ally Hezbollah opened a front by launching cross-border strikes that forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes.
Israel ramped up its bombardment on September 23 and by the end of the month sent ground troops across the Lebanese border.
On Friday, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon warned that the escalating war “is causing widespread destruction of towns and villages in south Lebanon.”
The UNIFIL mission has accused Israeli troops of firing at its positions in south Lebanon, which Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni branded as “unacceptable” on Friday.
The war since late September has left at least 1,418 people dead in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.
The war has also drawn in other Iran-aligned armed groups, including in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
Iran on October 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel, for which Israel has vowed to retaliate.
Iran, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels all mourned the death of Sinwar, vowing continued support for their Palestinian ally Hamas.