The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation officially announced the assassination of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar.
An Israeli security official told AFP on Thursday that the military was conducting a DNA test on a militant's body to confirm whether it was Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar.
"The Israeli military is conducting DNA tests on a body of a militant to confirm whether it is Sinwar," the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to media on the issue.
The Israeli army said earlier that it was "checking" whether Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar was killed during a military operation in Gaza, in what would be the latest in a string of militant leaders' deaths.
A brief military statement did not provide details of the specific operation or when it was conducted, but said Sinwar may have been one of three slain Palestinian militants.
During "operations in the Gaza Strip, three terrorists were eliminated", and Israeli defence agencies "are checking the possibility that one of the terrorists was Yahya Sinwar. At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed," it said.
"In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area," the military added.
Israel accuses Sinwar, 61, of being the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing war, along with Hamas's military chief Mohammed Deif.
The Israeli military has said Deif was killed in a strike earlier this year though the Palestinian group has not confirmed it.
Sinwar in August replaced Hamas's former chief Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Iran on July 31. Israel has not claimed responsiblity for Haniyeh's death.
The Hamas attack last year resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people on Israeli soil, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Israel's retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 42,438 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN acknowledges the figures to be reliable.
With AFP
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