Hours after Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces, Iran remembered Sinwar as a martyr whose vision for a liberated Palestine would be carried forward. 

Sinwar, the architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which prompted the ongoing war between the Jewish state and terror group in the Gaza Strip, was killed Thursday by Israeli forces in Rafah. 

“He told you he was a lion, but in reality, he was hiding in a dark den, and he was killed when he fled in a panic from our soldiers,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised message announcing Sinwar’s death. 

In a statement, the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations compared Sinwar’s demise to the hanging of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was captured by U.S. forces in 2003 and subsequently convicted of crimes against humanity.  

WHO IS YAHYA SINWAR?

“When U.S. forces dragged a disheveled Saddam Hussein out of an underground hole, he begged them not to kill him despite being armed. Those who regarded Saddam as their model of resistance eventually collapsed,” the statement said. 

“However, when Muslims look up to Martyr Sinwar standing on the battlefield — in combat attire and out in the open, not in a hideout, facing the enemy — the spirit of resistance will be strengthened,” the mission said. “He will become a model for the youth and children who will carry forward his path toward the liberation of Palestine. As long as occupation and aggression exist, resistance will endure, for the martyr remains alive and a source of inspiration.”

ISRAEL’S HUNT FOR HAMAS TERROR LEADER YAHYA SINWAR: ‘DEAD MAN WALKING’ 

A demonstrator holds a sign about the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar during a protest calling for a cease-fire deal and the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas Thursday, Oct. 17, in Tel Aviv, Israel. (AP/Ariel Schalit)

Hamas is considered a proxy of Iran, similar to Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon, and other terrorist groups with American blood on their hands. Both groups receive funding and training from Tehran. 

Israel has killed top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, which began launching airstrikes targeting Israel’s north more than a year ago in solidarity with Hamas. 

Israel vowed to kill Sinwar at the start of its military campaign against Hamas. Before Sinwar was elevated to the top leader of the group, his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an apparent Israeli strike in the Iranian capital Tehran. 

1 YEAR AFTER HEZBOLLAH STRIKES, ISRAEL REINFORCES TROOPS AND QUESTIONS MOUNT OVER ‘LIMITED’ OPERATION

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech during a program held after the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli attack and subsequent Iranian strikes at the Imam Khomeini Husseiniyah in Tehran, Iran, Oct. 2, 2024.  (Iranian Leader Press Office/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

In response, Iran launched nearly 200 missiles at Israel. The Jewish state has vowed to respond. For more than four decades, the Iranian regime has meticulously constructed a “Ring of Fire” around Israel, employing various terror groups to extend its influence across the Middle East. 

Amnon Sofrin, former head of the Intelligence Directorate at Mossad, told Fox News Digital, “In central Tehran, there is a huge clock that was set up in 2015, showing how much time is left for Israel, indicating that, by 2040, Israel should no longer exist. They have been preparing for this moment. Some of the Iran-backed militias conducted reconnaissance with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and claimed they would assist once the [Israel Defense Forces] IDF entered Lebanon. 

“However,” Sofrin added, “we are already inside Lebanon, and no pro-Iranian militia has yet provided help. Iran isn’t giving the order to its other proxies in the region to join the ground war — at least not yet.”

On Thursday, Netanyahu vowed to bring an end to “the reign of terror that the Iranian regime has imposed on its own people and on the peoples of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.”

Hezbollah Radwan terrorists training in Southern Lebanon close to the Israeli border. (AP/Hassan Ammar)

Earlier this month, drones loaded with explosives were launched by pro-Iranian militias from Iraq against an Israeli military base in the Golan Heights, killing two Israeli soldiers and injuring 24. 

Fox News Digital’s Efrat Lachter contributed to this report. 

A state judge in Texas has issued a last-minute decision to pause the execution of Robert Roberson, a man convicted in a controversial case of shaken baby syndrome.

Roberson is believed to be the first person ever sentenced to death in the United States for an alleged killing linked to the syndrome.

But on Thursday, with only hours to go until the sentence was carried out, Travis County Civil District Court Judge Jessica Mangrum issued a temporary restraining order halting the execution.

Roberson was convicted of murder in 2003 for the death of his two-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis a year earlier.

But he has strongly maintained his innocence. Experts have also cast doubt on the evidence used to convict him, and the last-minute order has brought relief to those who believed the execution would represent a miscarriage of justice.

“He’s an innocent man, and we’re very close to killing him for something he did not do,” Brian Wharton, the lead detective who investigated Curtis’s death. He has since become a vocal proponent for commuting Roberson’s sentence.

At the heart of the case was the prosecutors’ accusation that the infant Curtis died from shaken baby syndrome, a phrase used to describe head trauma stemming from the abuse of children younger than five.

Critics, however, have dismissed shaken baby syndrome as an unproven diagnosis, based on outdated science and studies of doubtful accuracy.

In January 2002, Roberson brought his daughter to an emergency room, where scans showed internal brain trauma. Curtis had been sick with a fever in the days prior, and Roberson said she had fallen out of her bed.

Some medical experts have suggested she likely died due to complications from pneumonia rather than abuse by Roberson, as prosecutors alleged.

His case has brought national attention to Texas, where a group including conservative lawmakers, criminal justice reform advocates and medical officials have cast doubt on Roberson’s guilt.

Roberson’s lawyers also argued that authorities misconstrued symptoms of their client’s autism as a lack of emotion after Curtis’s death.

Prosecutors had highlighted Roberson’s seemingly stoic nature as evidence of his guilt. But since his conviction, Roberson has been diagnosed with autism, which can affect the way people express themselves.

“Texas plans to execute Robert Roberson next Thursday — despite a conviction based on junk science. Even former detectives on his case believe Roberson is innocent,” the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union said in a social media post last week.

Tell Gov. Abbott to stop this evening’s execution of Robert Roberson.

Roberson was convicted on junk science. The lead detective now says he should be free. Top GOP lawmakers want the execution halted.

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The governor can halt this. Let Abbott know: https://t.co/TSP8F7YxRy

— ACLU of Texas (@ACLUTx) October 17, 2024

Thursday’s execution, however, was halted after a committee in the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives petitioned for a restraining order, in an effort to buy more time.

A number of lawmakers in the Texas House chamber — both Republicans and Democrats — had lobbied for the case to get another look.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had nonetheless rejected Roberson’s bid for clemency on Wednesday, and the US Supreme Court denied a request for a stay on the execution earlier on Thursday.

Robertson was scheduled to die on Thursday by lethal injection at a state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas.

The use of lethal injection as a form of execution continues to be controversial in the US and has resulted in numerous “botched” efforts that critics say caused needless suffering for the condemned.

A 2023 Gallup poll found that people in the US continue to support the death penalty for those convicted of murder by a margin of 53 to 44 percent. However, 50 percent of respondents said that the death penalty was applied unfairly, while 47 percent said it was applied fairly.