Armed factions identifying with Palestinian resistance gathered on Friday to mark two years since the death of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas figure killed during fighting in Rafah, as hostilities in Gaza continue despite a ceasefire arrangement whose implementation on the ground remains disputed.
In a communiqué dated October 16, Hamas described his death as representing what it called an act of resistance on the path toward liberation, and stated that the event had opened what the group characterised as a new period of confrontation with the occupation forces. The statement added that shifts taking shape across the region were, in Hamas's view, forging altered conditions through the sacrifices of its people and in the interests of those seeking self-determination and independence.
The Palestinian Resistance Committees described Sinwar as someone who devoted his life to his people and their cause, and whose conduct, in their characterisation, reflected an unyielding sense of national purpose. He was killed on 16 October 2024 in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah while in combat gear, having thrown grenades at Israeli soldiers before hurling a stick at a drone.
Born into the Khan Younis refugee camp — where his family had settled after being uprooted from al-Majdal in 1948 — Sinwar was part of the cohort that established Hamas and spent more than twenty years in Israeli detention before the 2011 Wafa al-Ahrar exchange brought about his transfer back to Gaza. From 2017 he led Hamas's Gaza operations, and following Ismail Haniyeh's killing in July 2024, overall stewardship of the movement — spanning both Palestinian territory and diaspora structures — passed to him.
The targeted killings of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and, shortly after, his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi — both carried out by Israeli forces in 2004 — preceded Hamas's victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections.
Two years on from Sinwar's death, Hamas put forward the position that losses endured by Palestinians form part of a long-running contest against external rule, and that armed opposition to what the group characterises as Israeli military action remains, in its view, the path toward self-determination.
Tallies maintained by the Gaza Health Ministry put the death toll at more than 74,300 and the number of people wounded at more than 175,000 since the conflict began in October 2023, with at least 1,481 of those fatalities recorded after the truce that took hold in October 2025. Records compiled by the UN human rights office counted 1,076 fatalities — 268 of them children — across the period running from the ceasefire through July, with the body also noting conduct that its assessors considered potentially consistent with war crimes. About 60 percent of the Gaza Strip's territory has come under Israeli military control.
