Israel DNA-testing body from Gaza to see if it's Hamas' top leader Yahya Sinwar
Deir al-Balah (Gaza Strip), Oct 17: The Israeli military said on Thursday it was looking into whether Hamas' top leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in a military operation in Gaza. Authorities were conducting DNA tests on a body to determine if it is him, an Israeli security official said.
The military said in a statement that three leaders were killed during operations in Gaza, without specifying where or elaborating further. It said the identities of the three were so far not confirmed, but it was “checking the possibility” that one of them was Sinwar.
The security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the tests on the body had not yet confirmed if it was Sinwar's.
There was no immediate comment by Hamas on the report.
Sinwar was one of the chief architects of Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel has vowed to kill him since the beginning of its retaliatory campaign in Gaza.
If confirmed, Sinwar's death could be a heavy blow to the Hamas group. He has been Hamas' top leader inside the Gaza Strip for years, closely connected to its military wing while dramatically building up its capabilities.
Sinwar was chosen as Hamas's top leader after his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in July in an apparent Israeli strike in the Iranian capital Tehran. Israel has also claimed to have killed the head of Hamas' military wing Mohammed Deif in an airstrike, but the group has said he survived.
President Joe Biden has been briefed on Israel's investigation into whether it killed Sinwar, and US officials have been in close contact with Israeli officials throughout Thursday morning, according to a senior administration official.
The report came as Israeli forces continued a more than week-old major air and ground assault in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. On Thursday, an Israeli strike hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing at least 15 people, including five children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
Fares Abu Hamza, head of Gaza Health Ministry's local emergency unit, 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 members who were present when the strike was called in. It 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 group and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza to eliminate Hamas after the group 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 over 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. That 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 Hamas members have repeatedly regrouped there after major operations.
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Odisha: Taxi driver arrested for looting visitors from Bengaluru
Jajpur (Odisha), Oct 17: A taxi driver was arrested in Odisha's Jajpur district on Thursday for allegedly looting two people from Bengaluru of their gold and diamond jewellery and Rs 2,000 in cash, police said.
The arrested taxi driver has been identified as Prakash Chandra Barala, a resident of Kalapathar area in Khurda district.
The passengers, Tushar Priyadarshi and his wife, had come from Bengaluru and had hired a taxi in Bhubaneswar to visit Joda in Keonjhar district on Wednesday.
When the taxi reached near Panikoili on NH-16 on Wednesday night, Tushar asked the driver to stop the vehicle near a hotel for dinner.
After the couple returned to the vehicle post-dinner and left the hotel, they found their gold jewellery including a chain, three pairs of earrings, a diamond ring and Rs 2,000 in cash missing from their bag, a police officer said.
Priyadarshi asked the driver to take them back to the hotel, where they narrated the ordeal to the hotel owner.
As the driver saw the owner checking the footage of a CCTV camera installed in front of the hotel, he dumped the luggage of the passengers and sped away with the vehicle towards Chandikhole on NH-16, the officer said.
"We have arrested the driver and registered a case under sections of BNS and seized his taxi," Panikoili police station inspector-in-charge Ranjan Kumar Pradhan said.
