ISRAEL was just minutes away from finally killing Hamas' new leader Yahya Sinwar in a Gaza tunnel, an IDF commander said.
Sinwar is now the last man standing after taking over from former chief Ismail Haniyeh after he was killed by a suspected Israeli rocket.
Dubbed Gaza's Bin Laden, he is also the masterminded the horrific October 7 massacre in Israel last year that saw 1,200 killed and another 250 taken hostage.
Evil Sinwar has been cowering out in the war-torn Gaza strip for months after he became the IDF's primary target for his despicable role in the civilian massacre 10 months ago.
But Israeli troops almost managed to kill him on their latest raid as they found the kingpin's coffee still warm, the force claimed.
IDF commander Dan Goldfus told Israeli reporters on Sunday: “We were close. We were in his compound. We got to an underground compound. It was ‘hot.’
“We found a lot of money there. The coffee was still hot. Weapons strewn around.”
The commander confirmed they arrived minutes after Sinwar and his men left.
A video that the IDF released in February showed soldiers pointing off a tunnel that Sinwar, his family, and other high-ranking Hamas officials had been using as a compound during the conflict.
The tunnel featured two bathrooms, a fully equipped kitchen, sleeping quarters, and a separate compartment that the IDF claimed belonged to Sinwar himself. Inside, soldiers discovered a safe containing millions of dollars.
Goldfus detailed the military's victories in the fight against Hamas, stating that IDF forces were breaking up the terrorist group both above and below ground.
He said: “It doesn’t happen in two days. I know everyone wants it to happen fast, so do we, but we’re dismantling an infrastructure of many years."
Only a few "trusted" people know where Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is hiding, The Times of Israel reports.
The evil kingpin reportedly communicates with the rest of the terror group's leadership through a chain of proxies to avoid being found.
It is understood that Sinwar has been present in several areas in Gaza throughout the war, providing directives to Hamas officials every two weeks, if not every week.
In rare situations, a phone contact has been arranged using specific security measures, according to The Times of Israel.
But his commands and positions are typically delivered through handwritten or printed communications signed by him, which are manually transferred from person to person until they reach their target.
Heartless Sinwar had previously sent chilling letters saying how he wanted innocent Palestinians to die at war.
The leaked messages showed Gaza's Bin Laden's calculated disregard for human life as he brands the mounting death toll as a "necessary sacrifice".
The terror boss seemed more concerned with safeguarding his own future than achieving peace, according to correspondence between him and ceasefire negotiators.
“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Sinwar said in one of dozens of messages to Qatari and Egyptian officials reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The blood-curdling letters revealed a deliberate indifference towards civilians and Sinwar's conviction that the months-long conflict will hurt Israel more than Hamas.
The messages also seem to validate the idea that Sinwar is ready to prioritise his political goals over the protection of families in war-torn Gaza.
In a statement to Hamas leaders in Doha, he said civilian casualties in national-liberation struggles in nations like Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives defending their independence from France, are "necessary sacrifices".
Meanwhile, Israel has sent communications to the United States and many European countries warning that any direct action by Iran will be met with an Israeli strike on Iranian soil.
According to reports by Israeli Army Radio, Jerusalem has stated that it is determined to attack Iran even if it results in no Israeli casualties.
The messaging is intended to prevent international pressure to respond harshly to an Iranian strike, reports say.
YAHYA Sinwar spent 22 years in an Israeli prison for terrorist murder and kidnap plots and spent every second honing his burning hatred for his captors.
His astonishing rise to the top of the Hamas terror tree came despite being sentenced to four life sentences in 1989 for planning the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians he suspected of working with Israel.
The bearded beast’s life was first saved when he was cured of cancer by an operation in a prison.
Then in 2011 he was freed, among 1,026 others, in a prisoner exchange for a single Israeli soldier in a deal that has been damned by his thousands of victims ever since.
Israeli intelligence chiefs told how — even while in prison — the fanatical fiend killed as many as 15 Palestinians he suspected of treachery, usually with a razor blade or machete.
And his jailers told how the evil genius dedicated his every waking moment to studying his enemy as he began plotting the conflict now raging in Gaza.
Coward Sinwar went into hiding following the October 7 massacre, where more than 1,200 people were barbarically killed.
