Hamas names Yahya Sinwar as new overall leader

After two days of lengthy negotiations in Doha, Hamas has named Yahya Sinwar as its new overall chief, replacing Ismail Haniyeh who was assassinated in Tehran last week.

Since 2017, Sinwar has served as the group's leader inside the Gaza strip. He will now become leader of its political wing.

The Hamas leadership unanimously chose Sinwar to lead the movement, a senior Hamas official told the BBC.

The announcement comes at a moment of soaring tensions in the Middle East, as Iran and its allies threaten retaliation for the killing of Haniyeh, which they blame on Israel. Israel has not commented.

Over the course of two days in Doha, intensive meetings involving Hamas’s leading figures hammered out the options for the group's next chief.

Many scenarios were discussed, but ultimately, just two names were put forward: Yahya Sinwar, and Mohammed Hassan Darwish, a shadowy figure who heads the General Shura Council, a body that elects Hamas's Politburo.

The council voted unanimously to choose Sinwar, in what one Hamas official described to the BBC as “a message of defiance to Israel”.

“They killed Haniyeh, the flexible person who was open to solutions. Now they have to deal with Sinwar and the military leadership,” the official said.

Sinwar was born in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza in 1962.

In the late 1980s, Sinwar founded the Hamas security service known as Majd, which among other things targeted alleged Palestinian collaborators with Israel.

He has spent much of his life in Israeli jail - and after his third arrest in 1988 he was sentenced to four life terms in prison.

However, he was among 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners released by Israel in the 2011 exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive for over five years by Hamas.

The 61-year-old was appointed head of the group's political bureau in the Gaza Strip in 2017, a position he served in until now.