We will not stop the war. We will go into Rafah : Israeli PM Netanyahu

 Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been speaking at a televised press conference after the Israeli military said it had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Netanyahu says evil has “suffered a heavy blow” but warns that the “task before us is not yet complete”.

He describes Sinwar’s death as the “beginning of the end”, and says Israel will continue to work until the end of the war. We have demonstrated today that all those who try to harm us, this is what happens to them. And how the forces of good can always beat the forces of evil and darkness. The war is still ongoing, and it’s costly.

To the people of Israel, Netanyahu says that there are “a lot of challenges still facing us” and that “we have to remain resilient” and “stand firm on our ground and to continue to fight”.

We will not stop the war. We will go into Rafah"  

US president Joe Biden has spoken with Benjamin Netanyahu and congratulated the Israeli prime minister for the death of Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, according to Axios.

Both leaders “agreed that there is an opportunity to advance a deal to free the hostages and they will work together to achieve that goal,” according to a statement by Netanyahu’s office.  

Netanyahu described Sinwar as the person who “committed the most terrible massacre in the history of our nation since the Holocaust, the mass murderer who murdered thousands of Israelis and kidnapped hundreds of our citizens”.

Yahya Sinwar: Radical Islamist ideologue utterly committed to Israel’s destruction

 He survived brain cancer in 2008 after being treated by Israeli doctors.  

Sinwar’s grip on Hamas remained unwavering after a year of war, despite some signs of dissent among Gazans.

Dubbed “The Face of Evil” by Israel, Sinwar operated in secrecy, moving constantly and using trusted messengers for non-digital communication. 

In the end, after a year-long, multi-agency manhunt involving the latest technology, Israel’s best special forces and American assistance, Yahya Sinwar appears to have been killed by regular soldiers who had stumbled into him and had no idea whom they had killed.

According to the initial reports, they were not there on an assassination operation and had no prior intelligence that they could be in the vicinity of the elusive Hamas leader, architect of the 7 October attacks, the man Israel most wanted to kill, says a report in 'The Guardian', London. 

It was only after they took a closer look at his face and found identity documents on him that the troops realised they had got Sinwar.

Along the way, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have smashed much of Gaza and are estimated to have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, driving two million from their homes, a humanitarian disaster Sinwar set in motion with the sheer brutality of the initial surprise assault a year ago, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 250 hostage.