Last stand Why Sinwar's 'warrior death' will gain him martyr status

A discrepancy in the official Israeli account of Yahya Sinwar's final moments has emerged that appears likely to add fuel to the martyr's cult fast developing around the Hamas leader.

- Julian Borger

The autopsy carried out on Sinwar concluded he died from a gunshot wound to his head, at odds with the initial Israel Defense Forces (IDF) version, which implied he was killed by a tank shell fired into the building where he made his last stand.

The IDF released footage of a tank firing at the building in Rafah's Tel al-Sultan refugee camp, and the military spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, said: "We identified him as a terrorist inside a building, fired at the building and then went in to search."

However, according to Chen Kugel, the director of Israel's national forensic institute, who carried out the autopsy, the cause of death was a bullet wound to the head. In an interview with the New York Times, Kugel did not speculate on who fired the fatal shot, whether it was during a skirmish with Israeli soldiers before the tank round was fired, or after he was found in the rubble of the building, or by Sinwar himself so as not to be taken alive.