Hamas names Yahya Sinwar as new overall leader

“The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas announces the selection of leader Yahya Sinwar as the head of the political bureau of the movement,” a statement from Hamas said.

Sinwar currently tops Israel’s most-wanted list. Israel’s security agencies believe he masterminded the planning and execution of the 7 October 2023 attacks, which left over 1,200 people dead and 251 taken back into Gaza as hostages.

Details of how Sinwar’s leadership of the group’s political bureau will function are yet to be released by Hamas.

The 61-year-old has not been seen in public since the attacks in October, and is believed to be hiding “10 storeys underground” in Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in June.

In the late 1980s, Sinwar founded the Hamas security service known as Majd, which among other things targeted alleged Palestinian collaborators with Israel.

Sinwar has spent much of his life in Israeli jail – and after his third arrest in 1988 he was sentenced to four life terms in prison.

However, he was among 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners released by Israel in 2011 in exchange for an Israeli soldier held captive for over five years by Hamas.

He later returned to his position as a prominent leader in Hamas and was appointed head of the group’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip in 2017.

The US includes Sinwar on its blacklist of “international terrorists”.