Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar did not expect Israel’s retaliation to the October 7 attack would be ‘so dangerous’, a friend has said.
Yahya Sinwar’s calculations on the effect of Hamas’ deadly incursion into Israel on Black Satursday ‘didn’t go as planned’, and believed the reaction of the Israelis was ‘uncontrolled, without any justification’, according to Esmat Mansour, the terror leader’s friend.
Mansour, who was once locked up in an Israeli prison with Sinwar, told Sky News that his terrorist friend’s plan was miscalculated and gave Israel an excuse to unleash hellfire on Hamas’s Gaza stronghold.
Mansour said: ‘He didn’t expect the operation to make things this complicated and to go as far as it did and become this dangerous and (it) gave Israel all the reasons and excuses to break all the rules.’
Sinwar’s plan was to use the massacre to aid the release of his friend from prison and turn him into another Hamas leader as well as lifting the ‘Israeli siege’ on the area.
Mansour told Sky News that his terrorist friend’s plan was miscalculated and gave Israel an excuse to unleash hellfire.
Smoke rises following Israeli bombardments in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip
Hawkers are seen selling what little food and basic life necessities they have left on the streets as Palestinians struggle with the rising cost of living due to Israeli attacks in Gaza City
The 61-year-old Hamas chief is one down in line from the supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
The high-ranking terrorist, who is fluent in Hebrew, spent two decades in prison before being released in 2011 in a hostage deal.
Sinwar was one of 1,000 prisoners in Israeli prison to be released back to Palestine in exchange for just one Israleli solider – Gilad Shalit.
Shalit had been taken by Hamas in 2006 when he 19 and spent five year’s held captive.
He was the first hostage soldier to be sent back to Israel alive since 1985.
Yahya Sinwar, Palestinian leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, second left, holds a child in a soldier costume, on stage with a weapon for the cameras
The October 7 Israel massacre by Hamas at a music event saw 1,200 casualties
The IDF recently released footage allegedly showing Sinwar escaping through the tunnels
Palestinians pray in a damaged mosque following an Israeli strike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip
According to the Financial Times, Israel says Sinwar is a ‘dead man walking’ – if they could find him.
The IDF have recently released a video which they claim shows the terrorist chief being led through a tunnel together with a woman and three children three days after the massacre.
The black and white images, reportedly taken on October 10, show a man said to be Sinwar being led through a tunnel together with a woman and three children are said to be the first of him since the Israel-Hamas war broke out.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israeli troops had uncovered the video in a security camera during an operation in a tunnel, without elaborating on the location.
‘The footage shows leader of Hamas and mass murderer, Yahya Sinwar, fleeing with his children and one of his wives,’ he told a briefing.
‘This is how he escaped with his family from an underground tunnel to a secured complex he had built in advance.
‘This video of Sinwar is the result of our hunt. This hunt will not stop until we have captured him dead or alive.’
The authenticity of the video has not been independently verified.
People watch as others search for victims amid the rubble of a smouldering building, following an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip
Fire and smoke erupt after Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip
Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike in Tal Al-Hawa neighbourhood in Gaza City
It was unclear from the footage where the tunnel was located, but in recent weeks the Israeli military has pounded Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city and Sinwar’s hometown.
Earlier this month, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Sinwar was ‘moving from hideout to hideout’ and was no longer leading the group’s military operations in Gaza.
‘He has now become a terrorist on the run from being the leader of Hamas’ in the Palestinian territory, Gallant said, without elaborating on Sinwar’s presumed current location.
Sinwar joined Hamas when Sheikh Ahmad Yassin founded the group in 1987, around the start of the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, against Israeli occupation.
The ascetic militant, known for his secrecy, has not been seen since October 7.
Since then, Israeli military spokesman Richard Hecht called Sinwar the ‘face of evil’ and declared him a ‘dead man walking’.
But Israeli forces in Gaza have failed to locate any of Hamas’s top leaders.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk