Hamas announced on Tuesday that it had elected Yahya Sinwar as head of its political bureau, replacing Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated last week in an attack on his residence in Tehran as he attended the inauguration of Iran's new president.

Archival footage shows Yahya Sinwar accompanying Ismail Haniyeh on various occasions in Gaza, including press conferences and official meetings.

On Tuesday, Hamas announced that 'Following in-depth and extensive consultations and deliberations in the movement's leadership institutions, the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas decided to choose the Mujahid leader Yahya Sinwar as the head of the movement's political bureau, succeeding the martyred leader Ismail Haniyeh'.

The group expressed its confidence in Sinwar, who spent half his adult life in Israeli prisons, to lead at a 'critical stage and in a complicated local, regional and international situation'.

Born in 1962 in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza, Sinwar is a co-founder of Hamas, which was formed in the late 1980s. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Israeli court for the murder of suspected collaborators and Israeli soldiers.

He was released in 2011, along with over a thousand other Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. He was appointed leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2017 and was re-elected to the position in 2021.

Sinwar is one of three Hamas members for whom ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has requested arrest warrants for 'crimes against humanity'. The other two members are Mohammed al-Deif, who was killed by the Israeli army in Khan Younis, and Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel and some of its closest allies, such as the US and the EU.