It was a pivotal moment of the war in Gaza and, in a surreal twist of modern warfare, Israel said it was filmed by a drone.
Hunched in an armchair, his face masked by a kaffiyeh and his body covered in dust, is a man who Israel says is Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas. His right arm is gravely injured and bleeding. His fate is all but sealed.
The man, nearly motionless, watches as he is filmed, apparently recognizing the hovering Israeli drone for what it is. In his left hand he lifts a long object, possibly a stick, and puts it back down.
Then, after staring at the drone for at least 20 seconds, he defiantly throws the object at it. The video ends a few seconds later.
The Israeli military, which released the video, said it shows the last moments of Mr. Sinwar, an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, before he was killed in Rafah on Wednesday. While the room, the man’s clothing and the arm injury broadly match other visual evidence of Mr. Sinwar’s death, The Times could not independently verify his identity in the video.
In modern warfare, militaries use drones to scope out enemy positions, and often release propaganda videos showing enemy soldiers being killed. On the battlefields in Ukraine, both sides in that conflict have released a steady stream of drone footage showing panicked soldiers moments before their deaths.
But here the drone footage shows a solitary figure remarkably close-up. In a war often seen from far away, in large explosions or wide vistas of broken buildings, the moment is remarkably personal.
There are many unknown details about the video, which was heavily edited before it was released. It does not show how the man’s arm was injured, nor does it show the moment of his death.
At the beginning of the clip, the drone enters a residential building in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, in southern Gaza, through a second-story window.
Photos of the building taken later show more damage, indicating that an explosion occurred at some point after the drone footage was taken.
In another video released by the Israeli military, two tanks are positioned nearby, one of which fires on the building.
Mr. Sinwar was killed soon after the drone footage was recorded. A sniper shot him in the head, and then a tank shell flattened much of the building, the military said.
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