Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's has promised to press on with Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon, dashing hopes that the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar might help end more than a year of escalating conflict in the Middle East.
Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, meanwhile, vowed to escalate fighting against Israel and its backer Iran said "the spirit of resistance" would be strengthened by the death of its ally Sinwar in Gaza.
Khalil al-Hayya, deputy Gaza Hamas chief and the group's chief negotiator, has confirmed that Sinwar was killed in combat.
"We mourn the great leader, the martyred brother, Yahya Sinwar, Abu Ibrahim," al-Hayya said in a recorded video statement broadcast by Al Jazeera.
In his statement, Hayya said Hamas would not release the captives until the war in Gaza ends.
The hostages "will not return... unless the aggression against our people in Gaza stops," the senior Hamas official said.
He called on Israel to withdraw from Gaza and release Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the 7 October 2023 attack that triggered the Gaza war, was killed during an operation by Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian enclave on Wednesday, a pivotal event in the year-long conflict.
Mr Netanyahu called Yahya Sinwar's killing a milestone yesterday, but vowed to keep up the war which in recent weeks expanded from fighting against Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza into an invasion of southern Lebanon and the bombardment of large swathes of the country.
"The war, my dear ones, is not yet over," Mr Netanyahu told Israelis, saying fighting would continue until hostages held by Hamas are released.
"We have before us a great opportunity to stop the axis of evil and create a different future," he added, referring to Iran and its militant allies across the region in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Mr Netanyahu said the killing of Yahya Sinwar is the "beginning of the end" of the war in Gaza.
"Yahya Sinwar is dead. He was killed in Rafah by the brave soldiers of the Israel Defence Forces," Mr Netanyahu said in an English language video statement released by his office.
"While this is not the end of the war in Gaza, it's the beginning of the end."
Mr Netanyahu's comments contrasted with Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, who said Yahya Sinwar's death offered a chance for the conflict to end.
The US wants to kick-start ceasefire talks and secure the release of hostages, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, adding that Yahya Sinwar had been refusing to negotiate.
"That obstacle has obviously been removed. Can't predict that that means whoever replaces (Sinwar) will agree to a ceasefire, but it does remove what has been in recent months the chief obstacle to getting one," he said.
One senior diplomat working in Lebanon told Reuters that hopes Yahya Sinwar's death would end the war appeared misplaced.
"We had hoped, really throughout this, that getting rid of Sinwar would be the turning point where the wars would end ...where everyone would be ready to put their weapons down. It appears we were once again mistaken," the diplomat said.
Months of efforts by Israel's chief backer the United States to broker ceasefires with Hamas and Hezbollah have failed as Israel has pressed on with its wars, and its arch foe Iran has looked largely powerless to match Israel's military might, including US weapons.
The conflict has caused the first direct Iranian-Israeli confrontations, including missile attacks on Israel in April and 1 October. Mr Netanyahu has vowed to respond to the October attack, which caused little damage.
Washington has pressed Israel to limit targets and not strike Iranian energy facilities or nuclear sites.
Yahya Sinwar, Hamas' overall leader following the assassination of political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, was believed to have been hiding in the warren of tunnels Hamas has built under Gaza over the past two decades.
He was killed during a gun battle on Wednesday by Israeli troops initially unaware they had caught their number one enemy, Israeli officials said.
The military released drone video of what it said was Yahya Sinwar, sitting on an armchair and covered in dust inside a destroyed building. He was tracked by the drone as he lay dying, the video showed. As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it.
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Hezbollah, which began firing rockets at Israel in support of its Hamas ally on 8 October, is the target of Israel's intensifying assault on Lebanon, which has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced 1.2 million.
Israel has now killed several of Hamas' top leaders and in a matter of weeks decapitated the Hezbollah leadership, mainly through air strikes.
The killings have dealt a blow to what anti-Israeli forces call the Axis of Resistance: a group of proxy militant groups that Iran has spent decades supporting across the region.
Iran showed no sign Yahya Sinwar's killing would shift its support. "The spirit of resistance will be strengthened," its mission to the United Nations said.
Hezbollah was also defiant, announcing "the transition to a new and escalating phase in the confrontation with Israel".
The Israeli military said today it had also killed Muhammad Hassin Ramal, Hezbollah's commander of the Tayibe area in southern Lebanon.
Families of Israeli hostages said that while the killing of Sinwar was an achievement, it would not be complete while captives are still in Gaza.
Avi Marciano, father of Noa Marciano, who was killed in captivity by Hamas, told Israeli broadcaster KAN that "the monster, the one who took her from me, who had the blood of all our daughters on his hands, finally met the gates of hell".
