When Flutterwave launched in 2016, the fintech company quickly became the poster child for African startup success stories. In 2021, it achieved unicorn status, reaching a valuation of more than $1 billion, and in 2022, after raising $250 million, it secured a $3 billion valuation.

CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola was celebrated for his leadership and lauded as a trailblazer in African fintech, providing digital payment services for businesses across the continent.

Then later that year, came a flurry of damaging allegations of workplace bullying and accusations of money laundering in Kenya, which sent shockwaves through the industry. At the time, Flutterwave denied financial impropriety, said it had tried to solve a harassment claim amicably, and had a zero-tolerance stance on bullying — but the company’s reputation took a hit.

However, Agboola says Flutterwave has weathered the storm and emerged stronger than ever.

In November 2023, Kenyan authorities cleared the company of all money laundering allegations. Additionally, a former employee who sued the company for reputational damage and emotional distress lost her appeal seeking $900k although the initial $2,500 previously awarded by a Kenyan court was upheld.

“Trust is the business we’re in,” Agboola said. “We’ve been working tirelessly to regain that trust.”

“We have worked on our corporate governance, infrastructure, compliance system and that’s what we are going to keep doing as a company and part of that is why we brought Mitesh in,” he added.

In September, Flutterwave announced it had appointed Mitesh Popat, a former Citibank executive with a wealth of experience working on the continent, as its chief financial officer.

Local media has reported that Flutterwave has also had to deal with security incidents. The company said in a statement that it is “committed to doing our part to ensure the security of the financial system in Africa,” giving the example of its partnership with Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crime Commission, and adding that it has “invested heavily in ensuring the highest level of security across all our products and have a team of world-class talents across finance, risk, legal, and compliance and certifications.”

Bawo Egbakhumeh, a senior compliance and anti-money laundering specialist not connected with Flutterwave, is well-versed in governance and operational challenges faced by growing companies.

But she added that in recent years, “Flutterwave seems to have responded by tightening its governance, improved compliance programs with more focus on accountability and transparency.

“Global partnerships and investor pressure likely pushed the company to make necessary reforms and adherence to improved governance standards,” she said.

A unified Africa

Agboola says that in the last year, the company has secured new payment licenses in Ghana, Zambia, Uganda and Rwanda, and more than 20 in the United States through a major partner bank, facilitating cross-border transactions from the US to Africa.

While the company has previously talked about plans to IPO, Agboola says the company is “focused right now on expansion and deepening the company’s market penetration in enterprise payments.”

“IPO is one of many growth opportunities on the table, and we continue to put processes in place to be well-prepared for that next phase of our growth,” he added.

Beyond the focus on governance and structure, Agboola envisions a future where Africa’s diverse payment systems are seamlessly integrated into a unified marketplace. “Africa today is not a country, but we want to make it feel like one,” he said.

Agboola highlighted the challenges of navigating the continent’s fragmented payment systems, like M-Pesa in Kenya and bank transfers in Nigeria, which complicate cross-border transactions.

“A money transfer from Nigeria to Ghana could take up to three days,” Agboola explained. “Our mission is to ensure that businesses and consumers can transact across borders as effortlessly as they do within them.”

Based in San Francisco but still heavily focused on the African market, recently, the company partnered with MainStreet Bank, unlocking access to 49 US states and allowing seamless cross-border transactions for African businesses through its Send App, Agboola said.

He added that this collaboration, coupled with the integration of American Express into Flutterwave’s payment network, represents a significant win for African businesses, enabling them to reach millions of new customers globally.

“These partnerships are game-changers,” Agboola noted. “With MainStreet Bank, we’re not just connecting Africa with the US; we’re facilitating faster, more reliable payments for merchants and consumers across both continents.”

Beyond partnerships, Flutterwave is also investing heavily in new technologies like AI to enhance its payment infrastructure.

“We are committed to staying ahead of the curve by leveraging AI to improve our compliance, monitoring and risk management,” Agboola said.

The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed by Israel to be chief architect of the militant group’s deadly October 7, 2023, terror attack that set off the war in Gaza, had been killed in battle.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that Sinwar was killed on Wednesday after a “year-long pursuit.”

“In recent weeks, IDF and ISA forces, under the command of the Southern Command, have been operating in the southern Gaza Strip, following IDF and ISA intelligence that indicated the suspected locations of senior members of Hamas,” the Israeli military statement read.

“IDF soldiers of the 828th Brigade (Bislach) operating in the area identified and eliminated three terrorists. After completing the process of identifying the body, it can be confirmed that Yahya Sinwar was eliminated.”

The sources said that Israeli infantry troops encountered three militants near a building in Gaza and engaged them. After the battle ended, troops found a body resembling Sinwar and alerted senior commanders.

Israel had also confirmed to US officials that Sinwar was dead according to initial DNA testing, another person familiar with the matter said.

Dental records helped Israel identify Sinwar, a US official and former official familiar with the matter said, in addition to other biometrics. The dental confirmation was able to be conducted relatively quickly, the official said. The Israeli government has Sinwar’s biometrics because he spent more than two decades in Israeli imprisonment for murder.

According to Israeli Army Radio, which is state funded and operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Israeli military detected “suspicious movement” on the upper floor of a building, so fired at it with a tank. Later, the radio station said, a drone scanned the area of the attack, and soldiers recognized the face of Sinwar in the rubble.

The IDF had previously detected “unusual activity” in the area, the radio station reported, so decided last week to “increase scans and not to leave.”

Hamas has yet to make any comment on its leader.

Sinwar was long Israel’s most wanted man in the strip, but he remained elusive.

Sinwar was the top target of Israel’s operation in Gaza, launched in the wake of the October 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage. Israel has killed several senior Hamas figures in its air and ground campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 42,000 people and triggered a humanitarian crisis, according to authorities in the strip.

Pictures purported to show the dead body of Sinwar are circulating widely on social media. In them, a man strongly resembling Sinwar can be seen lying dead in the rubble of a destroyed building with serious injuries to the skull.

Sinwar led Hamas since August, following the assassination of previous leader Ismail Haniyeh.

He had not been seen in public since the Hamas attacks and is thought to have been hiding in the vast network of tunnels worming their way under Gaza.

Israel has publicly accused Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on October 7 – though experts say he is likely one of several. Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Al-Qassam brigades who Israel claimed to have killed in a strike in July, and his deputy, Marwan Issa, have also been named as key figures behind October 7.

A longtime figure in the Islamist Palestinian group, Sinwar was responsible for building up Hamas’ military wing before forging important new ties with regional Arab powers as the group’s civilian and political leader.

He was elected to Hamas’ main decision-making body, the Politburo, in 2017 as the political leader of Hamas in Gaza branch.

Sinwar has been designated a global terrorist by the US Department of State since 2015, and has been recently sanctioned by the United Kingdom and France.

US officials have speculated that his death could be one of the best chances of bringing the Israel-Hamas war to an end. With a ceasefire and hostages deal to pause the war stubbornly stuck for months, senior Biden administration officials had hung onto hope that Sinwar might one day be taken out – and that that could open up doors that simply would not be otherwise.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed to be one of the architects of the militant group’s October 7, 2023, terror attack and Israel’s most wanted man, was killed in Gaza on Wednesday, according to the Israeli military.

Sinwar was one of the key targets of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and Israeli officials branded him with many names, including the “face of evil” and “the butcher from Khan Younis.” Formerly a very public figure, Sinwar had not been seen since the October 2023 attacks, likely surviving the last year of Israel’s siege of Gaza by bunkering down in a vast network of underground tunnels.

In August, Sinwar became one of Hamas’ most senior leaders after his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran.

But he had long been a key player in the militant group. Sinwar joined Hamas in the late 1980s, rising quickly through its ranks. He founded Hamas’ feared international intelligence security branch, the Majd, and was known for employing brutal violence against anyone suspected of collaborating with the Israelis. He was also viewed as a pragmatic political leader by some: In 2017, Hamas elected Sinwar as the political chief of its main decision-making body, the Politburo, in Gaza.

Sinwar was born in a refugee camp in 1962 in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. His family was displaced from the Palestinian village of Al-Majdal – now the Israeli city Ashkelon – during the Arab-Israeli war.

Sinwar enrolled in the Islamic University in Gaza in the early 1980s, where he studied Arabic, was involved in Palestinian nationalist student organizations and was detained for his participation in anti-occupation activism. In 1985, before Hamas was formed, he helped organize the Majd, a network of Islamist youths that exposed Palestinian informants working with Israel. Later, that group would be folded into Hamas’ security apparatus of the same name.

Sinwar was imprisoned in Israel on four life sentences in 1988, accused of orchestrating the murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.

During his incarceration, Sinwar was said to have abused and manipulated fellow prisoners, punishing those thought to be informants and bullying others to undertake hunger strikes.

Sinwar said he spent his years in prison studying his enemy, including learning how to read and speak Hebrew through the Open University.

In 2011, he was released as part of a prisoner swap that saw more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners exchanged for Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier who had been held in Gaza for five years.

At that time, Sinwar called the exchange “one of the big strategic monuments in the history of our cause.” Sinwar’s release has been attributed to the fact that his brother was one of Shalit’s kidnappers, who insisted on Sinwar being included in the deal.

After being freed, he returned to Gaza where he began his rise in the militant organization, becoming notorious for the violent treatment he would dole out on suspected collaborators.

While some viewed Sinwar as a hardline militant, others saw him as a master strategist.

Fifteen years into his prison sentence, he used his Hebrew skills to urge the Israeli public to support a truce with Hamas in an interview with an Israeli broadcaster. “We will not recognize Israel, but we are ready to do a long-term truce with Israel that will bring calm and prosperity to the region,” he said.

And in a rare interview with an Italian journalist in 2018, Sinwar indicated that the group was willing to find a political solution, saying: “A new war is in no one’s interest.”

He also alluded to the reality he and others in Gaza were facing under Israel’s blockade, drawing from his own experience in Israeli jail. “I never came out – I have only changed prisons,” he said of life in Gaza.

In 2018, under Sinwar’s leadership, Hamas launched its “March of Return” campaign, which saw Gazans protest weekly near the Israeli border, calling for Israel to lift their blockade and to allow Palestinians the right to return to their ancestral villages and towns. The demonstrations drew international attention and support of human rights groups. At one of the protests, Sinwar applauded those facing “the enemy who besieges us.”

As the group’s political leader, Sinwar focused on the group’s foreign relationships, forging important ties with regional Arab powers.

He was responsible for restoring Hamas’ relationship with Egyptian leaders who were wary of the group’s support for political Islam, and for pulling in continued military funding from Iran, according to research by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

Israel has publicly accused Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on October 7 – though experts say he is likely one of several – making him one of the key targets of its war in Gaza.

The attack was the deadliest assault in Israel’s history. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and also took some 250 people hostage into Gaza.

Sinwar was considered a vital decisionmaker and likely the main point of contact within Gaza during the intense negotiations over the return of the hostages taken into the enclave by Hamas in the October 7 attacks. The talks involved senior figures from Israel, Hamas, the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

Throughout the war, Sinwar consolidated the leadership of Hamas and became by far its most important figure. His influence grew even more following the killing of other senior Hamas officials, including Mohammed al-Masri, popularly known as Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, and Deif’s deputy, Marwan Issa.

In 2015, Sinwar was designated a global terrorist by the US Department of State and the European Union. In recent years, he has been sanctioned by the United Kingdom and France.

Pakistani police fired tear gas and charged at student protesters who ransacked a college building Thursday, as anger spread over an alleged on-campus rape, prompting the government to shut schools, colleges and universities for two days.

Tensions have been high on college campuses since reports of the alleged rape in the eastern city of Lahore spread on social media, and protests have broken out in four cities.

Sexual violence against women is common in Pakistan, but it is underreported because of the stigma attached in the conservative country. Protests about the issue have been rare.

Thursday’s violence started when hundreds of students demonstrated outside a campus in the city of Rawalpindi in Punjab province. They burned furniture and blocked a key road, disrupting traffic, before ransacking a college building. Police responded by swinging batons and firing tear gas to disperse them, police official Mohammad Afzal said.

Police said they arrested 250 people, mostly students, on charges of disrupting the peace. News of the arrests panicked parents, who struggled to get their children released.

In Gujrat, also in Punjab province, a security guard died in clashes between student protesters and police on Wednesday. Police arrested a person in connection with the death.

They also arrested a man who is accused of spreading misinformation on social media about the alleged rape and inciting students to violence.

Earlier this week, more than two dozen college students were injured in clashes with police in Lahore after they rallied to demand justice for the alleged victim, who they said was raped on campus at the Punjab Group of Colleges.

On Thursday, the government banned rallies and shut educational institutions in Punjab for two days, apparently to prevent more protests, officials said.

The Federal Investigation Agency said it has registered cases against 36 people accused of spreading misinformation about the case on social media.

Authorities, including the province’s chief minister, said there was no assault, as did the woman’s parents. But Punjab police on Thursday urged people to share any information about the alleged rape.

Mauz Ullah, a student at the college where the woman was allegedly raped, said they were protesting to seek justice for her.

He said he did not believe the college or police “as they kept changing their position” on the alleged assault. He said the college initially denied any such incident took place. “If no such incident had taken place, then why did they arrest a guard?” he asked.

The protests appear to have begun spontaneously. Student unions have been banned in Pakistan since 1984.

On Thursday, Usman Ghani, the head of the youth wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami opposition party, demanded an end to the ban on student unions, saying they might have helped resolve the matter without violence.

He said cases of sexual abuse at educational institutions are common.

“But the main thing is how you respond to make sure that the attackers don’t get away without getting arrested,” he said.

Hasna Cheema, from the rights group Aurat Foundation, said neither Pakistani police nor the media were trained to handle such sensitive matters.

“They turn things from bad to worse instead of solving them,” Cheema said.

The Sustainable Social Development Organization said last month that there were 7,010 rape cases reported in Pakistan in 2023, almost 95% of them in Punjab.

“However, due to social stigmas in Pakistan that discourage women from getting help, there is a high chance that due to underreporting the actual number of cases may be even higher,” it said.

This week’s protests come less than a month after a woman said she was gang-raped while on duty during a polio vaccination drive in southern Sindh province.

Police arrested three men. Her husband threw her out of the house after the reported assault, saying she had tarnished the family name.

The last time Charles and Camilla visited Australia in 2018, local marriage celebrant Lesley Kerl wore a bright red dress and managed to get close enough to the royal couple to strike up a conversation.

Naturally, it was about tea – a subject close to the heart of many British people – as Kerl passed Charles, then prince now King, a gift of a teapot from people further back in the crowd of flag-waving supporters.

“I got the bug after I saw him that time,” said Kerl, who counts herself as a supporter of the British royals, but not necessarily a diehard monarchist.

Kerl will be in Sydney on Tuesday to try to meet the 75-year-old British sovereign again during his first tour to a Commonwealth realm since acceding the throne.

After Australia, King Charles will head to Samoa to join world leaders at the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), his first as head of the organization.

This is the King’s first long-haul multi-country trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year, and his schedule has been lightened over the 11-day trip to provide rest times during a pause in his treatment.

Like any royal tour, there’ll be organized pageantry, but also predictable talk around dinner tables, on television and online about when Australia might cut ties with the House of Windsor.

The consensus seems to be that it won’t happen anytime soon – not least because of Australia’s poor record on passing referendums that are required for any change to the country’s constitution.

For the government, the defeat of the most recent referendum last October – not on a republic but to enshrine an Indigenous advisory group in the constitution – was a painful lesson in the expense of holding such a vote and the damage it can do in a country with sharply divergent views.

Hello and farewell?

The sails of Sydney’s famed Opera House will be lit up on Friday for the royal couple’s arrival, but some of the pre-trip conversation has been less than welcoming.

Republicans have rebranded the visit as the “the farewell Oz tour,” selling merchandise including T-shirts featuring the faces of the leading royals as if they were members of a rock band on the verge of breaking up.

“We’d love to wave goodbye to royal reign,” Nathan Hansford, co-chair of the Australian Republic Movement, told Reuters.

For Bev McArthur, a member of state parliament, such sentiments are “disrespectful.”

“This man is having cancer treatment. He seems to have put that on hold to come out to Australia, as part of the Commonwealth,” McArthur said.

She’s equally disappointed with the response of state premiers who reportedly declined invitations to meet the King and Queen at a royal reception due to diary clashes.

“I think they’re just unable to take the republican hats off their heads,” said McArthur, a member of the Victorian parliament. “The least we can do is have our leaders pay the respect that he deserves.”

Other pressing concerns

The monarch’s arrival comes around one year to the day after the failed Voice referendum, which dealt a crushing blow to many of Australia’s minority Indigenous population.

It would have enshrined an Indigenous advisory body in the constitution to give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a greater say in policies relating to them.

Instead, it was voted down – and to many, the King’s arrival is another painful reminder of the dispossession, slaughter and attempted erasure of their people.

For others, the trip is an irrelevant distraction from a cost-of-living crisis as mortgage-holders struggle to find extra cash to finance loans inflated by high interest rates.

In a week where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was reported to have bought a 4.3 million Australian dollar ($2.9 million) clifftop beach house, talk has also turned to the lack of housing affordability.

For the average Australian, lauding a visiting monarch from a palace in a foreign land is not high on their list of priorities.

A notable trip

While he has traveled overseas since his diagnosis, such as popping over the English Channel to mark the 80th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy in June, this trip will be a significant moment for Charles.

“It is notable that he is visiting Australia in the year after his coronation, as this echoes the 1954 tour by his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II following her coronation in 1953,” said George Gross, royal historian and visiting research fellow at King’s College London.

The lack of travel to Commonwealth realms following his accession had raised eyebrows. The announcements of the first overseas tours to Germany and France were met with surprise. Those trips were followed by a visit to Kenya, which is a Commonwealth member but not a realm.

Charles is head of the Commonwealth organization – an association of 56 independent countries. Of those 14 nations, he is also head of state – in addition to the United Kingdom – though the role is largely ceremonial. Many had expected a stop in New Zealand might have been on the cards while he was in the region. However, while it had been considered, it was ultimately decided against following medical advice.

Aides have been working to ensure this long-haul tour is not too taxing on Charles. Each engagement will have been carefully handpicked to reflect the royal couple’s interests, and where necessary, have been modified to minimize any risks to his convalescence.

They’ll spend time in the Australian capital Canberra, where they will be welcomed by Albanese – who supports a republic – and other government leaders.

They’ll also pay their respects to the country’s fallen at the Australian War Memorial and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander memorial.

Charles will also meet with award-winning professors Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer – the current Australians of the Year. They’re working on a treatment for melanoma, one of Australia’s most common cancers, and Scolyer himself has been treated for brain cancer.

The King’s program also includes several environmental engagements, and the couple will attend a timeless Aussie ritual – a community barbecue. Australians will also get a chance to see the royal couple outside the Opera House.

Kerl plans to be there, once again wearing bright clothing to try to catch the King’s attention.

In some ways, she’s carrying on a family tradition. Back in the 1930s, her father traveled with his mother from Australia to the United Kingdom to see the coronation of King George VI.

“That’s the type of royal blood I came from. They went from Australia via a ship in those days,” she said.

Kerl’s one-hour train ride from the New South Wales coast will be a lot shorter – but she thinks it’s important to show solidarity with a figure she’s long admired from afar.

“I’ve grown up like with him and (Princess) Anne, and here he is finally and having his turn as King. So, I like to support him,” she said.

More than a year after Hamas’ devastating October 7 attacks on Israel, the country’s military said Thursday it had killed the man it considers to have been the chief architect of that cross-border massacre – raising questions about the future of the war and of the militant group itself, which has faced blow after blow in recent months.

The death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar could pose a rare opportunity to strike a ceasefire, US officials say – with Israel having killed several other top Hamas commanders including Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s former political leader, as well as leaders of militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hamas and Hezbollah are both part of an axis of militant groups backed by Iran.

In a recorded video message Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sinwar’s death marked “the beginning of the day after Hamas,” but “the task before us is not yet complete.”

Hamas is yet to comment on the reports of its leader’s death.

Here’s what you need to know.

How did it happen?

Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has poured their resources into a fierce manhunt for Sinwar, declaring him as the most-wanted man in Gaza and a “dead man walking.” At one point, an Israeli military spokesperson said their hunt “will not stop until he is captured, dead or alive.”

And, US officials believe, the Israeli military got close a few times, at one point even obtaining a video that purportedly showed Sinwar with several family members inside a Gaza tunnel – but he continued slipping away. The Israeli military previously surrounded Sinwar’s house and carried out an intensive assault on his hometown of Khan Younis, but could not find him.

That year-long search finally came to an unexpected end on Wednesday in Rafah, southern Gaza. Israeli forces had been in the area during a routine military operation when they came under fire near a building, according to two Israeli sources familiar with the matter.

The troops returned fire with a tank, then flew a drone into the heavily damaged building, according to the Israeli military. The video, shared by the military, shows what seem to be Sinwar’s final moments: he sits alone in a chair, surrounded by dust and rubble, appearing to look directly at the camera. He holds a piece of wood in his hand, and throws it at the drone before the video ends.

It was only then, and when troops inspected the rubble, that they realized Sinwar was among the bodies, according to the Israeli military.

Dental records and other biometrics helped Israel identify the Hamas leader, according to a US official and former official familiar with the matter.

Sinwar had been trying to escape to the north when he was killed, said another Israeli military spokesperson on Thursday. He was found with a gun and more than $10,000 in Israeli shekels, the spokesperson said.

Who was Sinwar?

Sinwar had long been a key player in Hamas, joining the militant group in the late 1980s and quickly rising through the ranks.

He was born in a refugee camp in Gaza, after his family was displaced from the Palestinian village of Al-Majdal – now part of the Israeli city Ashkelon – during the Arab-Israeli war.

As a student, Sinwar became an anti-occupation activist, but he was imprisoned in Israel on several life sentences after being accused of orchestrating murder. He served 23 years before being released as part of a prisoner swap in 2011.

Sinwar returned to Gaza and quickly established his name in Hamas. He founded the group’s feared international intelligence security branch, the Majd, and was known for employing brutal violence against anyone suspected of collaborating with Israel.

He was also viewed as a pragmatic political leader by some: in 2017, Hamas elected Sinwar as the political chief of the Politburo, its main decision-making body in Gaza.

Sinwar was designated a global terrorist by the US Department of State and the European Union in 2015, and was sanctioned by the United Kingdom and France in recent years.

But he rose to greater prominence after the October 7 attacks as one of Israel’s key targets. Israeli officials have called him the “face of evil” and “the butcher from Khan Younis.”

He became one of Hamas’ most senior leaders in August after Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran. Sinwar had not been seen since the October 7 attacks, likely surviving Israel’s siege of Gaza by bunkering in a vast network of underground tunnels.

What was his role on October 7?

Israel has publicly accused Sinwar of being the “mastermind” behind Hamas’ October 7 attack – though experts say he was likely one of several.

The attack was the deadliest assault on Israel in its history. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people into Gaza as hostages.

Sinwar was considered a vital decision-maker and likely the outside world’s main point of contact in Gaza during the intense negotiations over the hostages’ return.

The talks involved senior figures from Israel, Hamas, the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

What comes next?

While it’s too soon to say what may happen next or how Hamas may respond, Sinwar’s killing marks the latest blow to the group – which has seen several top leaders picked off one by one during Israel’s campaign to dismantle Hamas entirely.

Only a day after Haniyeh’s assassination, Israel confirmed it had killed Hamas’ military chief Mohammed Deif during a previous strike – another one of the reported masterminds behind October 7.

With a ceasefire and hostage release deal to pause the war stubbornly stuck for months, senior US officials had clung to the hope that Sinwar might one day be taken out – opening a pathway to a resolution. With him now gone, officials speculate this could be one of the best chances of bringing the Israel-Hamas war to an end, but are reticent to make any predictions about what that will ultimately mean for the volatile region.

US President Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu on a call Thursday, where “both leaders agreed that there is an opportunity to advance the release of the hostages and that they would work together to achieve this objective,” the prime minister’s office said in a readout.

But much remains unknown – including the fate of Sinwar’s brother.

If Mohammed survived this week, he will likely continue his brother’s hardline negotiating tactics as Israel seeks to extract its remaining hostages from the Palestinian enclave. But until a clear picture emerges, it will be hard to know the militant group’s next move.

And another front of the conflict is ramping up across the Israel-Lebanon border, with Hezbollah announcing a “new and escalating phase” in its war with Israel on Thursday.

Hezbollah, too, has suffered significant losses in recent months – from the deadly pager and walkie-talkie attacks that killed dozens and injured thousands, many of them civilians, to the assassinations of several high-ranking commanders including their chief Hassan Nasrallah last month.

“Sinwar has died, but so many of our people have been killed, and there is no excuse now for Netanyahu to continue the war,” said 22-year-old Mumen Khalili.

The United States has imposed sanctions on two China-based drone suppliers and their alleged Russian partners, the first time it has penalized Chinese companies for supplying complete weapons systems to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

Washington has long accused China of supporting Russia’s war effort by supplying dual-use goods and components that could be used in the manufacture of weapons, which Beijing denies. But in an announcement Thursday, the US Treasury Department accused the Chinese firms of direct involvement in arms supplies to Moscow.

The Chinese companies had collaborated with Russian defense firms in the production of Moscow’s “Garpiya series” long-range unmanned aerial vehicles, the department said in a statement. The drones were designed, developed and made in China before being sent to Russia for use in the battlefield, it said.

“The Garpiya has been deployed by Russia in its brutal war against Ukraine, destroying critical infrastructure and causing mass casualties,” it said.

“While the United States previously imposed sanctions on (Chinese) entities providing critical inputs to Russia’s military-industrial base, these are the first U.S. sanctions imposed on (Chinese) entities directly developing and producing complete weapons systems in partnership with Russian firms.”

The statement accused Xiamen Limbach Aircraft Engine Co., based in the coastal city of Xiamen, of producing drone engines for the Garpiya series.

The US accused the other sanctioned Chinese company, Redlepus Vector Industry Shenzhen Co., of working with a Russian defense firm to facilitate the shipment of the drones to Russia.

The Treasury Department said Redlepus had also sent shipments to Russia of components that can be used in drones, including aircraft engines, parts of automatic data processing machines and electrical components through Russian defense firm TSK Vektor.

The US also imposed punitive measures on the owner of TSK Vektor, a Russian national, and another company he owns. The US previously sanctioned TSK Vektor last December for helping Russia to acquire attack drones.

“We have seen for some time Chinese companies providing components to Russian companies that Russian companies then use to turn into machinery, weapons, other components that Russia could use in its war,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Thursday.

“This was the first time we actually saw a Chinese company manufacturing a weapon itself that then was used on the battlefield by Russia.”

‘Common views’

Beijing has previously denied supplying weaponry to Russia and maintains it keeps strict controls on such goods.

The Chinese embassy in Washington denied the latest accusations and said China was handling the export of military products responsibly, according to Reuters.

“The U.S. makes false accusations against China’s normal trade with Russia, just as it continues to pour unprecedented military aid into Ukraine,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said in a statement, according to Reuters. “This is (the) typical double standard, and extremely hypocritical and irresponsible.”

China’s support for Russia as the Kremlin wages war in Ukraine has become a key point of tension between Washington and Beijing as they seek to stabilize rocky relations.

Beijing has claimed neutrality in the more than two-and-a-half-year long conflict even as it has deepened political, economic and military ties with Moscow. China has become Russia’s top trade partner, offering a crucial lifeline to its heavily sanctioned economy, and the two nuclear-armed neighbors have ramped up joint military exercises in recent months.

In the latest sign of their deepening alignment, Chinese and Russian defense officials vowed to strengthen their cooperation during meetings in Beijing last week.

The two countries have “common views, a common assessment of the situation, and a common understanding of what we need to do together,” defense chief Andrey Belousov told Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, according to Russian state-run news agency Tass.