Yahya Sinwar masterminded an attack on Israel that shocked the world, unleashing a still-widening catastrophe with no end in sight.

In Gaza, no figure loomed larger in determining the war's trajectory than the 61-year-old Hamas leader. Obsessive, disciplined and dictatorial, he was a rarely seen veteran militant who learned Hebrew over years spent in Israeli prisons and who carefully studied his enemy.

Israel's President Isaac Herzog on Thursday called for swift action to bring back hostages held in Gaza, as he hailed the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by Israeli forces.

Herzog on social media platform X said the slain Hamas chief was the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the ongoing war and "has for years been responsible for heinous acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians", also calling on Israeli leaders to "act in every way possible to bring back" the remaining hostages.

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is launching a Middle East Humanitarian Appeal to raise urgent funds for people whose lives are being devastated by conflict.

"Over the past year, conflict in the Middle East has devastated lives across the region, and millions have fled their homes in search of safety. Right now, millions of people across Gaza, Lebanon and the wider region are in urgent need of food, shelter and medical care," DEC said in a statement.

Israeli forces in Gaza killed Hamas' top leader Yahya Sinwar, a chief architect of last year's attack on Israel that sparked the war, the military said Thursday. Troops appeared to have run across him in a battle, only to discover afterwards that a body in the rubble was the man Israel has hunted for more than a year.

Sinwar has topped Israel's most wanted list since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war just over a year ago, and his killing strikes a powerful blow to the militant group. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas of his death.

An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in northern Gaza on Thursday killed at least 15 people, including five children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who had gathered at the school.

Shaban al-Dalu was sleeping in his tent in a central Gaza hospital's courtyard, still recuperating from wounds from an Israeli strike on a mosque a week earlier, when a new strike hit, setting off an inferno.

The 19-year-old university student and his 38-year-old mother, Alaa al-Dalu, were among five people killed as the blaze ripped through a tent camp sheltering hundreds of Palestinian families in the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah. Dozens of others, including children, were severely burned.

Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi discussed rising tensions in the region with Egyptian officials Thursday in Cairo during the first such visit by a top Iranian official to the North African nation in around a decade.

Araghchi held talks with his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi focusing on efforts to deescalate Israel's conflicts against Gaza and Lebanon.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami warned Thursday of further retaliation against Israel if it attacks Iranian targets, which Israel has vowed to do after Iran’s missile attack on Oct 1.

"If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in Iran, we will strike you again painfully," Salami said at the funeral of a Guards general killed in an Israeli strike alongside Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon last month.

Long-range American B-2 stealth bombers launched airstrikes early Thursday morning targeting underground bunkers used by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, officials said.

There are no previous reports of the B-2 Spirit being used in the strikes targeting the Houthis, who have been attacking ships for months in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Syria’s military said Israel carried out a strike early Thursday in the coastal city of Latakia, wounding two civilians and damaging a military post.

The military statement that was carried by state media did not give further details.