Israeli military says Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar may have been killed in recent strike
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it was checking the possibility that it has killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar following an operation in the Gaza Strip that it said had targeted three militants.
“At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed,” it said in a statement.
It said there were no signs that Israeli hostages had been present in the building where the three militants were killed.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas. Al-Majd, a Hamas-linked website that usually publishes about security issues, urged Palestinians to wait for information about Sinwar from the group itself and not Israeli media outlets, which it said was aimed at breaking their spirit.
Israel’s Army Radio said the incident had occurred during a targeted ground operation in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, during which Israeli troops killed three militants and took their bodies.
It said visual evidence suggested it was likely one of the men was Sinwar and that DNA tests were being conducted. Israel has samples of Sinwar’s DNA from his period in an Israeli jail.
Members of Israel’s security cabinet have been informed that Sinwar is very likely dead, two officials with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant posted a message on X with a biblical quotation from the Book of Leviticus: “You will pursue your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword.”
“Our enemies cannot hide. We will pursue and eliminate them,” Gallant added.
If confirmed, the death of Sinwar would represent a major boost to the Israeli military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a string of high-profile assassinations of prominent leaders of its enemies in recent months.
Get the latest on CBCNews.ca, the CBC News App, and CBC News Network for breaking news and analysis
Architect of Oct. 7 attacks
Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, including several Canadian citizens, while taking more than 250 hostages into Gaza, according to Israeli government tallies. Israel believes about 100 hostages have yet to be repatriated, with about one-third of those believed to have died.
Israel’s campaign in response has killed 42,438 Palestinians and injured 99,246 more, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The count from the ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but the Gaza health ministry has said thousands of women and children have been killed in airstrikes.
Yahya Sinwar, the chief architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, has been at the top of Israel’s wanted list ever since. But he has so far eluded detection, possibly hiding in the warren of tunnels Hamas has built under Gaza over the past two decades.
Previously the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Sinwar was named as its overall leader following the assassination of former political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, in August.
WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that humanitarian groups have been unable to reach northern Gaza to provide food and medical supplies as Israeli troops press on in the region for nearly two weeks.
Israel also killed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, in Beirut last month, as well as much of the top leadership of the group’s military wing.
On Thursday, several Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a shelter in the northern Gaza Strip, a Gaza health ministry official said, while Israel said the attack targeted militants at the site.
Published at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:38:40 +0000
Kamala Harris went on Fox News. It went how you might expect
Kamala Harris came fishing for Republican votes in choppy waters — the airwaves of Fox News. Fox News, meanwhile, sought to sink her boat.
The unusual encounter speaks to the crude electoral math in this U.S. campaign: Harris needs to add some of these viewers to offset potential losses of other voters.
Her message to normally right-leaning voters is that she’s a safe bet who will protect American democracy, many Republicans endorse her, she’s more stable than Trump, and she’s focused on moderate, bread-and-butter issues.
In other words, she hoped to penetrate the Fox News fog with the same messages of her summer convention speech, and another event she held Wednesday with Republicans.
U.S. Vice-President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris engaged in a combative first interview with Fox News on Wednesday, sparring on immigration policy and shifting policy positions while asserting that if elected, she would not represent a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.
It was an extraordinary programming choice given how rarely Harris sat for interviews early in her campaign, let alone in the proverbial lion’s den; Trump himself has done way more adversarial interviews, albeit not so much lately.
Her interviewer was Bret Baier, a news anchor who has occasionally golfed with Donald Trump. On Wednesday, Trump’s golf buddy teed off on Harris.
The interviewer pressed her a way she’s never been pressed before as a presidential candidate: Unrelentingly, on topics seemingly custom-built to remind Fox News viewers why they shouldn’t like her.
Illegal migration; publicly funded sex changes for prisoners; her past left-wing promises; President Joe Biden’s mental decline. The Fox host pressed her on these topics — and, unlike a recent CNN interviewer, he kept following up.
It started with Baier asking how many illegal border-crossers had been released, pending their asylum cases; when Harris started delivering her customary answer, that Trump sabotaged an immigration bill, he pushed back, citing scores of actions the current administration itself took, early on, to loosen the border.
“May I finish responding please? You have to let me finish,” Harris replied, when Baier cut her off, to interrupt her Trump-blaming.
That essentially set the pattern for the ensuing 25 minutes.
Frosty exchanges
Baier then played a video of a grieving mother whose daughter was killed by an undocumented migrant and asked if she would apologize. Harris said she was sorry for the loss; Baier pressed again for an apology; Harris repeated that she felt awful.
On the topic of when Harris realized Biden had lost a step, cognitively, Baier asked: “You didn’t have any concerns?” Harris defended her boss, and turned the topic to Trump.
Harris tried referring to how unsuited Trump is for power, and referred to the numerous Republicans, including military members, and members of Trump’s team, who have endorsed her, or who even refer to Trump as a fascist.
“He’s unfit to serve, he’s unstable, he’s dangerous,” Harris said.
Baier cast that as an insult to half the country: “Are they misguided, the 50 per cent? Are they stupid?” Baier said, referring to Trump supporters.
Harris defended herself: “Oh, God, I would never say that.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is doubling down on recent controversial comments he made, including suggesting he would use military force against political opponents he called ‘the enemy within.’
In fact, she said, Trump is the one who demeans and diminishes people. Trump is the one who refers to opponents as the enemy within, she said. He’s the one who has talked, for years, about turning the American military on Americans.
Baier pushed back by playing another video clip — this one was of Trump, and was flattering to him; it edited out a soundbite where Trump uses inflammatory language about his opponents, as Harris accused him of.
A Harris spokesperson later posted the two different versions of the clip on the social media platform X, showing what Fox had cut out.
(L) What Trump actually said on Fox about his “enemy within” comments<br><br>(R) What Fox tried to claim he said, but Vice President Harris wouldn’t let stand<br><br>Fox omitted the first 60+ seconds of Trump’s answer, where he again called Democrats the “enemy from within” and “evil.” <a href=”https://t.co/IjGCZRN0rG”>pic.twitter.com/IjGCZRN0rG</a>
—@IanSams
Polls twitch in Trump’s direction
To the interviewer’s earlier point, Trump does, indeed, maintain solid support. In fact, the polls have twitched ever so slightly lately in Trump’s favour, within the margin of error.
Harris still leads the popular vote in most national surveys, but not all: on Wednesday, Harris was five ahead in a poll by one reputable pollster, Marist, and two behind in a poll by Fox News’s well-regarded bipartisan polling team.
- This Sunday, Cross Country Checkup is asking: What’s at stake for you in the US election? Fill out this form and you could appear on the show or have your comment read on air.
The swing-state surveys are less favourable to Harris.
Whether she wins or not could come down to the basic math of whether enough college-educated moderate Republicans, especially women, shift her way, to offset the potential loss of non-college-educated voters of colour.
On the very same day, in the very state where Harris did that interview, Republicans were in a nearby Latino-majority city, registering new voters on a busy street.
Many motorists honked their horns in support, or offered a thumbs up as they passed a pro-Trump registration stand on 7th Street in Allentown.
In another nearby swing county, also with a growing Hispanic population, the local Republican chairman insisted he’s seeing similar movement in his area.
Pete Begley described some new registration numbers as evidence his party is now the election favourite. He then cited Harris’s new media schedule.
“Kamala Harris is now doing interviews with Fox News. This is desperation,” said Begley, the party chair in Monroe County, Penn., near Philadelphia.
“This is a woman that went, what, 60 days without a press conference? So they’re panicking and they’re panicking for one reason: Trump is surging.”
The evidence of that is less clear. What is clear is that Harris wanted some former Trump voters to hear her out.
As Wednesday’s interview ended, with Baier cutting her off, Harris quickly invited viewers to go to kamalaharris.com and see 80 pages of her policies on affordable housing, small business and the military.
“That’s why we invited you here,” Baier said, after an interview that touched none of those things.
Afterward, a Fox News panel called Harris evasive. To be fair, she avoided the substance of some of Baier’s questions, starting with that border exchange.
But the panel’s resident Democrat, Harold Ford Jr., insisted she probably came out ahead just by showing up. He said exchanges like this benefit the country, as people want to hear about how she’s jettisoned some of her 2020 campaign policies.
“Coming on Fox, coming before our audience, is the right thing to do,” Ford said.
Published at Wed, 31 Jul 2024 21:58:04 +0000
