Drone footage released by the Israeli military on Thursday is said to show Yahya Sinwar's final moments before he was killed.

The video appears to be shot from a drone which flies through the open window of a mostly destroyed building.

It approaches a man sitting motionless in an armchair on the first floor of a house that is littered with debris.

The man, who seems to be injured, then throws what appears to be a stick at the drone and the video ends.

We've just got an update from the Israeli military who say they are now searching for a possible third fighter who crossed over its border with Jordan.

Earlier, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it killed two gunmen who crossed into Israel south of the Dead Sea.

More fighters have been dispatched to "reinforce the area", the IDF says, with the military "conducting searches on the ground and air" for another gunman "who likely fled the scene".

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued urgent evacuation orders for more than 20 villages in southern Lebanon.

In a post on X, external, the Israeli military's Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee says residents of the villages listed must leave "immediately and move to the north of the Awali River".

He also warns that residents are "prohibited from going south" and that doing so "could be dangerous to your life".

Lebanon has endured weeks of aerial bombardment that Lebanese authorities say has killed more than 2,300 people and forced more than 1.2m to flee their homes.

Jonathan Head
Reporting from Beirut

Image source, Reuters

In an unusually blunt criticism of Iran, the Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati expressed his surprise over a statement made by the speaker of the Iranian parliament over the future of southern Lebanon.

Iran's Speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, has offered to negotiate with France over UN Resolution 1701, which ended the last major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 and gave the United Nations a mandate to help the Lebanese army keep the peace.

Mikati described the Iranian statement as "blatant interference in Lebanese affairs and an attempt to establish an unacceptable guardianship over Lebanon".

Hezbollah is widely seen as a proxy of Iran - which provides much of its funding and weapons - and with its large bloc of MPs in parliament, wields significant influence over the Lebanese government.

Qalibaf was in Lebanon only last weekend, when he met the prime minister. Mikati says he has asked for the Iranian chargé d’affairs to be summoned to explain the statement - adding that any negotiations on Resolution 1701 should be undertaken by the Lebanese state.

It's been reported that a "strange object" has exploded off Naqoura, south of the city of Tyre in Lebanon.

A correspondent at the Lebanese National News Agency, external says it fell into the sea a short while ago, and smoke was sighted.

No further detail yet but towns and cities in southern Lebanon have been the target of Israeli operations in its campaign against Hezbollah in recent weeks.

Image source, Reuters

Israeli media is reporting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will convene a security meeting later today, following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

It is suggested the meeting will be held at 13:00 local time (11:00 BST) at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Government ministers and security officials will focus on possible progress in hostage deal negotiations in, reports added.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has killed two gunmen who crossed into the country from Jordan.

In a brief statement posted on X in Hebrew, the IDF says it "identified a number of terrorists" south of the Dead Sea. Israeli troops were sent to the area and "neutralised" the fighters, it says.

The IDF is carrying out further searches of the area, the statement concludes.

Image source, IDF

Some more now on how Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was found and killed.

Israeli troops killed three fighters during a patrol in Rafah in southern Gaza on Wednesday. The dead were inspected the next day and soldiers found one of the bodies to have a striking resemblance to the leader of Hamas.

The corpse, however, remained at the site due to suspected booby traps and instead, part of a finger was removed and sent to Israel for testing.

His body was finally extracted and brought to Israel later that day as the area was made safe.

None of the hostages Sinwar was believed to be using as a human shield were present and his small group suggests either he was trying to move unnoticed, or had lost many of those protecting him.

Read more on this story by following this link.

Meanwhile in Gaza, in the ruins of Khan Younis, Palestinians remain convinced that the war will continue, despite Yahya Sinwar's death.

These Palestinians were interviewed for the BBC by local trusted freelancers, as Israel does not let the BBC cross into Gaza except on rare, supervised trips with the army.

"This war is not dependent on Sinwar, Haniyeh, or Mishal, nor on any leader or official," says Dr Ramadan Faris.

"It's a war of extermination against the Palestinian people, as we all know and understand. The issue is much bigger than Sinwar or anyone else."

Another resident, Adnan Ashour, says Israel are "not just after us. They want the entire Middle East. They're fighting in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen... This is a war between us and the Jews since 1919, over 100 years."

Asked whether he thinks Sinwar's death will affect Hamas, he says: "I hope not, God willing. Let me explain: Hamas is not just Sinwar... It's the cause of a people."

Image source, Reuters

After Israel announced the death of Yahya Sinwar yesterday, families of the remaining 101 hostages that were taken by Hamas and are still in Gaza gathered in Tel Aviv.

It's where they've been demonstrating for the past year, urging the Israeli government to launch new negotiations to get their relatives home.

Einav Zangauker - whose son Matan Zangauker was taken hostage - was there, urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "don't bury the hostages".

"Go out now to the mediators and to the public and lay out a new Israeli initiative," she says.

"For my Matan and the rest of the hostages in the tunnels, time has run out. You have the victory pictures. Now bring a deal!"

"If Netanyahu doesn't use this moment and doesn't get up now to lay out a new Israeli initiative - even at the expense of ending the war - it means he has decided to abandon the hostages in an effort to prolong the war and fortify his rulership.

"We will not give up until everyone returns."

• You can read more on Sinwar's death from our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, here

Here's what we know so far about the moments leading up to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's death.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari has said Sinwar was killed after Israeli forces identified three "terrorists" running from house to house in the Tal El Sultan area of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Hagari has presented a video which he says shows Sinwar being approached by an IDF drone, masked and with an injury to his hand.

The man, who is sitting in an arm chair on the second floor of a mostly destroyed house in the footage, then throws what appears to be a stick at the drone and the video ends.

Sinwar was found with a gun and 40,000 shekels (£8,256), Hagari says.

"He was running away and we killed him," he adds.

The IDF had seen traces of where Sinwar had been previously, Hagari says, adding Sinwar's DNA was found in a tunnel close to where six hostages were killed a few weeks ago.

Image source, Reuters

Former BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir, who's based in Lebanon, has been shedding some light on the current situation in the Middle East while speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live earlier this morning.

Muir says the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has brought "a huge wave of people" saying it's time to put an end to the war, and calling this "a kind of turning point".

However, he adds that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently an "immovable object" who is "in full war mode" and isn't suddenly going to start making peace in Gaza.

Muir says the leadership of Hamas has now been "largely demolished" as a result of Sinwar's death but also says Hamas will fight on, as will Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Another possible "game changer" is how Israel responds to the latest missile strike from Iran.

He says it remains to be seen whether Israel is going to do something "huge and escalatory" that will "give a big twist to the spiral of violence and possibly kind of trigger a regional flare up that would draw the Americans in".

Hezbollah says it has shelled the coastal area of Zvulun with a "large rocket salvo" this morning.

In an update on Telegram, the group says it targeted the area - located north of Haifa - at 0700 local time (0500 BST).

In a separate statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it identified about 15 projectiles from Lebanon this morning after sirens sounded in Haifa Bay, Upper Galilee and Western Galilee.

Some were intercepted and others fell. The IDF also says overnight, a drone was intercepted along the coast inside Israeli maritime territory.

Image source, Getty Images

The UN agency which assists Palestinians in Gaza has condemned Israel's air strike on a school housing refugees in Jabalia in the north of the territory.

Sam Rose, deputy director of Unrwa, told the BBC's Today programme that the incident had killed 28 people, in an area populated by women and children seeking shelter.

The Israeli military said in a statement the strike targeted militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, who operated from within the Abu Hussein School.

Rose says Israel must do more to protect civilians as there is "nowhere for them to go" and it was just one of a series of incidents targeting Unwra schools.

Asked if he accepted Hamas militants may be using the school buildings, he argued that "two wrongs do not make a right" and called for independent investigations into what happened.

It is too early to know how the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar will impact humanitarian efforts in Gaza, says a representative from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

"In the beginning we thought we'd only be here for three months, but this has turned into a chronic emergency of proportions that I don't think anybody anticipated, Sally Stevenson, emergency coordinator for MSF in Gaza tells the BBC.

Stevenson says the health system is "decimated" and the "needs of the population are extraordinary", adding that "any recovery will take time but the impact of the death of Sinwar is really yet to be seen".

On Sunday, the US sent a letter to the Israeli government giving it 30 days to boost humanitarian access to Gaza, or risk having some military assistance cut off.

And on Monday, the first aid in two weeks entered Gaza but the UN's acting humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya described it as a "trickle" and said that “all essential supplies for survival are running out” in the territory.

Image source, Getty Images

Yolande Knell
Middle East correspondent, in Jerusalem

Drone footage released by the Israeli military show a fighter with a scarf tied around his face, apparently wounded, sitting on a dusty armchair in the ruins of a house in Rafah. The Israeli army says that only after he was killed did soldiers notice his resemblance to Israel's most wanted man.

DNA testing confirmed his identity as Yahya Sinwar. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the mastermind of a day of "sheer evil" was no more. But he insisted that Israel would continue fighting with full force until all of the hostages held in Gaza were home.

While many Israelis celebrated, the families of some held captive expressed "grave concern" for the fate of their relatives and called on Israeli leaders to use their military success to get a deal.

While the loss of Yahya Sinwar is a major blow for Hamas, Palestinians interviewed in Gaza pointed out that all of the group's former leaders who were killed were replaced, and many see no end in sight to the deadliest war in the history of the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Already hostilities have spread in the region. And following news of Sinwar's death, Iran stated that "the spirit of resistance" would be strengthened.

The Lebanese group, Hezbollah, vowed to respond by escalating its confrontation with Israel.

The death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar - Israel's most wanted man - is a deeply significant moment in the war in Gaza as he was believed to be the mastermind behind the 7 October attacks last year.

Born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza, his parents were originally from Ashkelon in southern Israel but became refugees after the mass displacement of Palestinians in the war that followed Israel's founding in 1948.

Sinwar was first arrested by Israel in 1982, aged 19, for "Islamic activities" and arrested again in 1985. It was around this time that he won the confidence of Hamas founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

He spent much of his adult life - over 22 years - in Israeli prisons from 1988 to 2011 before his release as part of a prisoner swap.

• BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner profiles Hamas leader Yayha Sinwar and why his death is a seismic blow to the group

Image source, EPA

The Israel Defense Forces has given an update saying its operations against “terrorist infrastructure” in Gaza and Lebanon continue.

It says that overnight "the battle team of the Givati Brigade joined the expansion of the 162nd division's operations in the Jabalia area", which is in northern Gaza.

The IDF continues by saying that the division's forces, and planes, have "eliminated dozens of terrorists in attacks" in the region during the last day.

The post adds that the IDF is continuing to “locate and dismantle weapons” in southern Lebanon.

Jeremy Bowen
International editor

Image source, Getty Images

Killing Yahya Sinwar is Israel's biggest victory so far in the war against Hamas in Gaza.

His death is a serious blow for Hamas, the organisation he turned into a fighting force that inflicted the biggest defeat on the state of Israel in its history.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, praised the soldiers and made clear that however big a victory, it was not the end of the war.

The remaining hostages are not free and Hamas is fighting and sometimes killing Israeli troops.

A year of war has killed at least 42,000 Palestinians and left much of Gaza in ruins.

Read Jeremy Bowen's full article on what this means for the conflict.

Sinwar's death presents another challenge for Iranpublished at 06:37 British Summer Time 18 October

06:37 BST 18 October

Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent

The killing of Yahya Sinwar presents yet another challenge for Iran in its already risky calculations in this escalating war and Israel’s accumulating tactical victories.

Sinwar was one of Tehran’s closest allies in the region. He played an increasingly key role in what Iran regards as its regional “axis of resistance” against Israel.

Ever since he was released from prison in Israel in 2011, Sinwar’s relations with the Islamic Republic kept deepening. He travelled to Tehran the next year in a delegation led by Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh who introduced him to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

In 2019, Sinwar publicly praised Iran for its provision of weapons and military training. “If not for Iran’s support for the resistance…we would not have obtained these capabilities".

There may not be the same pressure on Tehran to retaliate as when Haniyeh was killed on Iranian soil, under Iran’s protection, in late July.

It will condemn Israel and glorify another “martyr”. But Iran’s main preoccupation at this moment is Israel’s expected attack in response to Iran’s salvos of ballistic missiles on 1 October.

Before news broke of Sinwar’s killing, the commander of Iran’s revolutionary guards, Hossein Salami, warned “that if you commit any aggression against any point, we will painfully attack the same point as yours.”

But other allies, like Hezbollah and Hamas, are already indicating they will step up their attacks.

Despite being weakened, they will want to make clear - they can still fight.