Defense Minister Israel Katz on Sunday told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that there are rising indications that Gaza chief Mohammed Sinwar is dead.

Katz made his statement just as IDF sources on Sunday told The Jerusalem Post that it did not recognize foreign reports that Sinwar’s body had been found with around a dozen of his aides, including Rafah Brigade commander Mohammed Shabana.

It appears that the IDF will wait either for Hamas to officially announce him as dead or its own intelligence regarding his body.

Despite the restraint in officially declaring him dead, IDF sources had already told the Post last week that he was very likely dead, and Katz had also hinted the same in recent days.

On Tuesday,  the IDF dropped a large number of bombs on a tunnel hideout under a hospital in Gaza in order to target Sinwar. 

Palestinians inspect the damage at the European Hospital, which was partially damaged following an Israeli airstrike that targeted Muhammed Sinwar in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 13, 2025. (credit: Hatem Khaled/Reuters)
Palestinians inspect the damage at the European Hospital, which was partially damaged following an Israeli airstrike that targeted Muhammed Sinwar in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 13, 2025. (credit: Hatem Khaled/Reuters)
Mohammed Sinwar has been the leader of Hamas, and in control of the remaining 58 Israeli hostages (around 21 of whom are believed to be alive), since mid-October 2024 when his brother, October 7 architect Yahya Sinwar, was killed by military forces in Rafah.

IDF targets new Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar

Shabana would have been one of the two main candidates to succeed him as Hamas’s military leader.

This would leave only Gaza City Brigade commander Az-adin-al-Hadad alive from the prewar original five Hamas brigade commanders, which defense sources have told the Post would make him Hamas’s next military chief.

Reports from the Gaza Strip stated that Zakaria Sinwar, the brother of Yahya and Muhammad Sinwar, was killed along with his sons following an airstrike on a tent sheltering them in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.