Israel denies reports Hamas leader and brother have escaped to Egypt

Speculation about the whereabouts of Yahya Sinwar have flourished in the media since Oct 7 – Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Israel has denied reports that Hamas’s leader and his brother may have escaped with some hostages into Egypt’s Sinai desert.

Security sources in Saudi Arabia said Israeli officials believed Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar fled through a tunnel using captives as human shields.

The Israeli army denied the reports, made in the Elaph newspaper, saying it did not have any information about the Hamas leader fleeing.

Speculation about Hamas’ leadership and the hostages’ whereabouts have flourished in the media since the beginning of the war, but Israel still estimates that the remaining 134 hostages are in Gaza.

According to Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, Hamas members no longer trust their leadership’s handling of the war.

“Hamas does not trust its commanders – this is a very, very noticeable thing. Hamas-Gaza is MIA, there is no one to talk to among leadership on the ground. That means there is a tender [in Hamas] for who will run Gaza,” MRGallant said.

The IDF estimates that 18 of Hamas’s 24 battalions in Gaza have been destroyed, while 12,000 of the terror group’s members have been killed in Gaza and another 1,000 inside Israel in the first days after Oct 7.

Hamas, on the other hand, revealed for the first time since it started the war that it estimated around 6,000 of its members have been killed.

“Hamas is left with marginal [forces] in the central camps and with the Rafah Brigade, and what stands between them and a complete collapse as a military system is a decision by the IDF,” Mr Gallant said.

Giora Eiland, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, also dismissed the idea of hostages being moved out of Gaza.

Mr Eiland told Telegraph: “It makes sense that many or all of the hostages who were kept in Khan Younis have been taken to Rafah in recent weeks. But I don’t think they have been taken out of Gaza.

Hostage rumours ‘psychological warfare’

“The IDF has found evidence of the presence of hostages in the tunnels of Khan Younis and it seems as if they stayed there for quite some time.”

Mr Eiland said the rumours about hostages being smuggled out of Gaza are part of Hamas’ psychological warfare to create “confusion, disappointment and frustration” in Israel.

The IDF said on Monday its forces continued to operate against terrorists in both northern, central and southern Gaza, but that yet another brigade was being pulled out of Gaza after it “completed its mission”.

Thousands of soldiers have been withdrawn from Gaza in recent weeks, some of whom relocated to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon which suffers from daily attacks by Hezbollah.

In Gaza, the IDF is preparing for the last large offensive in Rafah, a city where an estimated 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering. War cabinet member Benny Gantz warned Hamas that if the hostages are not released before Ramadan in three weeks, the IDF would enter Rafah.

“The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know: if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue to the Rafah area. We will do so in a coordinated manner, facilitating the evacuation of civilians in dialogue with our American and Egyptian partners to minimise civilian casualties,” Gantz said on Sunday.

Israel believes that four Hamas battalions operate in Rafah, and that many of the hostages are kept there.

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