Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, seen in a file photo from March 22, 2017. Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Getty

Israel's military said it was working Thursday to confirm whether Hamas' top commander in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, was among "three terrorists" killed by troops during an operation in the decimated Palestinian territory.

Prominent Israeli journalists quickly started reporting, citing military and intelligence officials, that Sinwar was killed almost by chance on Wednesday, as troops fired on three armed men in or near the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The unconfirmed reports suggested a routine Israeli patrol spotted the men and killed them, and then realized one of them looked like Sinwar.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a brief statement only that it was "checking the possibility that one of the terrorists was Yahya Sinwar. At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed."

A photo circulating on social media showed a dead man with a severe head wound who resembled the Hamas commander, but CBS News could not immediately verify the image. Sinwar has been among the most wanted figures on Israel's target list since Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border terror attack, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.

"In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area," the IDF said Thursday.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted a cryptic message on social media Thursday hinting at Sinwar's possible killing. It showed photos of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas commander Mohammed el-Deif with red crosses over their faces, and a third photo between them left blank, with another red cross over it. Israel killed both Nasrallah and el-Deif over the last year.

Gallant also included part of a quote that appears in the Jewish holy book, the Torah, and in the Old Testament of the Bible, reading: "And they chased the enemy..."

He followed it by saying in his own words, "We will reach every terrorist — and eliminate him."

It was not immediately confirmed where the operation took place in Gaza. It was announced hours after more than a dozen Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, that was sheltering displaced people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.

The IDF said in a statement that it had struck "a compound that previously served as the 'Abu Hassan' School," where it said "dozens of terrorists from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations were present."

The health ministry said at least 15 people were killed, but it did not say how many could have been militants.

The IDF published a list of a dozen names of purported terrorists it said were among those using the compound as a command and control center. It said the men "involved in rocket attacks against Israeli territory, as well as in planning and committing terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel in recent days" were targeted in an intelligence-based "precise strike."

The IDF did not say how many of the alleged terrorists were believed to have been killed in the attack, but it said their purported presence at the school, which like most in Gaza has been used as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the year-long war, was "a further example of the Hamas terrorist organization's systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure in violation of international law."

The military released photos and videos of weapons, apparently taken by troops on the ground before the Thursday strike, that it said were found inside the school building — evidence, the IDF said, of a "full combat compound."

Israel has recently warned Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, where its military operations have increased over the last several weeks.

The strike came four days after the Biden administration sent a tersely worded letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, warning that humanitarian conditions in the decimated Gaza Strip must improve within a month or Israel would risk having its steady supply of American weapons and war funding cut off.

The White House has acknowledged Hamas' frequent use of civilian infrastructure in Gaza to store weapons and fighters, but stressed that civilians must still be protected and they cannot be considered combatants if they're unable or unwilling to flee areas used by terror groups.

The U.S. also made clear in its letter to Israeli officials that the Biden administration was opposed to the way Israel has conducted its parallel war against Hamas' Hezbollah allies in Lebanon in recent weeks. Israel says its operation in Lebanon is intended to halt Hezbollah's year-long barrage of rocket and drone attacks across Israel's northern border. Hezbollah has said it will continue those attacks, in support of Hamas, until the war in Gaza ends.

The Israeli attacks have killed more than 2,300 people in Lebanon and displaced most of the country's population, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

While Israel has taken steps to reverse the dramatic drop in humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza since receiving the Biden administration's letter, the IDF has continued pounding both Gaza and Lebanon with massive airstrikes this week, insisting it's acting in legitimate self defense.

In Gaza, the health ministry says more than 42,400 people have been killed since Israel launched its war on Hamas in response to the U.S. and Israeli-designated terrorist group's brutal Oct. 7 attack.


An image taken by video provided by the Israel Defense Forces on Oct. 17, 2024, which cannot be independently verified by CBS News, shows weapons the IDF says were discovered inside a school in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Israel Defense Forces/Handout


A Palestinian youth reacts upon seeing the bodies of relatives killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, in an Oct. 12, 2024 file photo. OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP/Getty

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