The Israeli military has released drone footage that purports to show the final moments of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar: Alone in a destroyed apartment in Gaza, whose walls had been destroyed by shelling, he sat hunched over on a dust-covered chair, his head and face covered covered with a scarf.

The video shows Sinwar throwing a stick above his head towards the approaching drone, with his right arm appearing to be severely injured. The Guardian has not independently verified the footage.

When the footage was captured, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Sinwar had only been identified as a fighter. The military then fired another grenade at the building, causing it to collapse and killing him, Hagari said. He said Sinwar was found with a bulletproof vest, grenades and 40,000 shekels ($10,707).

According to the Jerusalem Post, Hagari told reporters: “Sinwar fled alone into one of the buildings. Our forces have been scanning the area with a drone, which you can see here in the footage I present.”

“Sinwar, who was shot in the hand, is seen here with his face covered, throwing a wooden plank at the drone in his final moments,” he said.

“He tried to escape and our forces eliminated him.”

Hamas has not commented on Sinwar's killing.

Photos circulating online showed the body of a man resembling Sinwar with a gaping head wound, dressed in a military vest, half-buried in the rubble of a destroyed building.

Israeli officials said Sinwar was found on Wednesday by infantry soldiers searching an area in the Tal El Sultan area of ​​the southern Gaza Strip where they believed senior Hamas members were staying.

Troops saw three suspected militants moving between buildings and opened fire, leading to a shootout in which Sinwar fled into a destroyed building.

In the last months of his life, Sinwar, the main architect of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, appears to have stopped using telephones and other communications devices that would have allowed the powerful Israeli intelligence services to track him down.

Israeli officials said they believed he was hiding in one of the vast tunnel networks Hamas had dug under Gaza over the past two decades. However, as more and more tunnels were discovered by Israeli troops, even the tunnels were no guarantee of avoiding capture.

Intelligence agencies had been searching for Sinwar for months and gradually narrowed his area of ​​operations, the military said. Dental records, fingerprints and DNA tests provided final confirmation of Sinwar's death.