Gaza Drone Video Shows 'Remarkably Personal' Scene

Hamas has confirmed the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, killed in Gaza by Israeli military troops on Wednesday, and the New York Times now reports on a "heavily edited" drone video appearing to show his final moments. The footage, released by the Israel Defense Forces, shows a barely moving man that Israel says is Sinwar slumped in an armchair, "his face masked by a kaffiyeh and his body covered in dust," with one of his arms "gravely injured and bleeding." When he sees he's being recorded, "apparently recognizing the hovering Israeli drone for what it is," the man picks up an object that looks like a stick and eventually hurls it at the drone. The video cuts out shortly after. "In a war often seen from far away, in large explosions or wide vistas of broken buildings, the moment is remarkably personal," the Times notes. More:

• 'On the run, hurt, alone, but still defiant': The Times has a separate story on the weeks leading up to Sinwar's death, in which Israel amassed "mounting evidence" that he was holed up in Rafah's Tel al-Sultan neighborhood.

• Hiding with hostages: DNA taken by the IDF from a Gaza tunnel where six Israeli hostages were found murdered in August shows that Sinwar had apparently hid among them for a time, per USA Today.
• Stroke of luck: The Wall Street Journal details the longtime search for Sinwar by Israeli soldiers and spies. "At times they came tantalizingly close, but he was always one step ahead," the paper notes. Then, troops on a routine patrol accidentally stumbled upon three militants on Wednesday, one of whom surprisingly turned out to be Sinwar.
• Who found him? The soldiers who found and killed Sinwar were trainee squad commanders from an infantry school unit, which the Guardian notes "is all the more ironic in light of the yearlong fruitless manhunt conducted by the cream of Israel's special forces and intelligence units."
• Hamas: Even though Netanyahu says he won't stop the incursion into Gaza until all of the Israeli hostages from Oct. 7 are released, the militant organization has responded by saying it won't release the hostages until Israel calls it quits, pulls its troops out of Gaza, and releases Palestinian prisoners, per CNN.
• Group's next leader: The AP dives into the leadership vacuum now present in the group and on who might step up to take his place. One option is that the militants will pick someone but not publicly name them, "for security reasons," according to Sadeq Abu Amer, who heads up the Turkey-based think tank Palestinian Dialogue Group.

More on the possible path forward. (More Yahya Sinwar stories.)