'Hamas Chief Killed By Gunshot Wound In Head, Had Smashed Arm': Chilling Details Of Yahya Sinwar's Autopsy

The Israeli troops cut off his finger for a DNA confirmation and matched it with a profile that IDF had of him from the time when Sinwar was in Israeli prison for two decades.

Israeli Intelligence services had been searching for Sinwar for months and had been gradually restricting the area where he could operate (Image: Twitter)

Source : Twitter

Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in an Israeli ground raid in southern Gaza, died from a gunshot wound to the head, as per his autopsy report. Sinwar, the Palestinian group's politburo chief, who was dubbed by Israelis "the Face of Evil", was killed in an unplanned operation. Israel Ground Forces (IDF) found a body resembling Sinwar's post-strike scans in the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah. 

The Israeli troops cut off his finger for a DNA confirmation and matched it with a profile that IDF had of him from the time when Sinwar was in Israeli prison for two decades until his release in 2011 in a prisoner-swap deal, Dr Chen Kugel, who oversaw the autopsy said describing its findings in an interview with The New York Times on Friday.

As per Kugel, a small missile or tank shell had hit Sinwar’s arm earlier, causing bleeding which he tried to staunch by using an electrical cord as an impromptu tourniquet. However, the doctor said, “It wasn’t strong enough, and his forearm was smashed" and “it wouldn’t have worked in any case."

While talking to CNN, Kugel said troops first tried to identify Sinwar with his teeth but that wasn't "certified enough". "After the laboratory made the profile, we compared it with the profile that Sinwar had in the term that he was serving here as a prisoner, so then we could finally identify him by his DNA." the doctor added. 

The Israeli forces on Friday released video footage claiming to have captured the final moments of Sinwar. The purported video, captured by a drone deployed to survey the area, showed a visibly injured Sinwar sitting on a sofa, in a ruined Gaza apartment whose walls were blown out by Israeli shelling. The film from a mini drone showed Sinwar, badly wounded in the hand, sitting on a chair, his face covered in a scarf. As the Israeli drone approached him, the wounded Hamas leader attempted to throw a piece of wood at it in a desperate attempt to avoid detection. However, moments later, another Israeli strike on the building caused it to collapse, killing Sinwar and two other militants.

Israeli Intelligence services had been searching for Sinwar for months and had been gradually restricting the area where he could operate. However, unlike other Hamas leaders tracked and killed by Israel, including the group's military commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an airstrike on July 13, the operation which finally killed Sinwar was not planned.