The Washington Post says that Israeli and U.S. intelligence believe that Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip Yehiya Sinwar is hiding in tunnels beneath Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. He is surrounded by a human shield of hostages, making it extremely difficult to carry out an operation to capture or eliminate him.
According to the sources in Israeli, American, and Western intelligence, pinpointing Sinwar's location is easier than mounting a military operation to neutralize him without endangering the lives of the hostages he holds nearby.
In recent days, some officials have speculated that Sinwar may have moved a few miles away to Rafah, closer to the border with Egypt. However, Israel is confident that he could not have crossed the border into Egypt.
The architect of the October 7 attacks is believed to be bunkered in the intricate network of tunnels beneath Khan Yunis, the city in southern Gaza where he was born in 1962.
The publication is highly cautious about the U.S.'s contribution to the "hunt for Israel's most-wanted man." Sources of the newspaper state that U.S. intelligence analysts assist with some tunnel mapping using, contributing powerful analytic technologies, decrypting encrypted messages, and extracting information from hard drives of computers and servers of the terrorist group. The article emphasizes that there are no U.S. personnel on the ground in Gaza, and Americans are not involved in the day-to-day operations of the IDF.
