Top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has been killed in an Israeli attack in Tehran, according to the group.
Iranian media reported that Haniyeh was staying at a building for war veterans when the attack happened around 02:00 (00:00 GMT), with some reports indicating he was killed in an air strike.
Haniyeh, 62, was widely recognized as Hamas’s overall leader.
Israel has not commented on the incident but has vowed to destroy Hamas following the 7 October attack on southern Israel, which resulted in 1,200 deaths.
Israel has since launched a large-scale military operation in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, killing at least 39,400 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Haniyeh was in Tehran for the inauguration of the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who was sworn in on Tuesday.
Musa Abu Marzuk, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, called the attack a “cowardly act” that “will not go unanswered.”
Another senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, stated that the group would “continue on its path.”
Iran’s foreign ministry said that Haniyeh’s “martyrdom” would “strengthen the deep and unbreakable bond between Tehran, Palestine, and the resistance,” as reported by state media.
The attack has been condemned by several foreign ministries, including those of Turkey, Russia, and Qatar.
Haniyeh’s death came just hours after Israel claimed to have killed Fuad Shukr, the top military commander of Hezbollah, in an air strike.
This attack was in retaliation for a rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. While Hezbollah has not confirmed Shukr’s death, they acknowledged that he was in a targeted building.
Haniyeh was a key figure in Hamas since the late 1980s and was imprisoned by Israel for three years in 1989 during a crackdown on the first Palestinian uprising.
He was exiled in 1992 to a no-man’s-land between Israel and Lebanon, along with other Hamas leaders.
In 2006, Haniyeh was appointed Palestinian prime minister by President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas won the most seats in national elections.
However, he was dismissed a year later after Hamas ousted Abbas’s Fatah party from the Gaza Strip in a violent conflict.
Haniyeh rejected his dismissal as “unconstitutional” and continued to rule in Gaza, asserting that his government “would not abandon its national responsibilities towards the Palestinian people.”
Haniyeh was elected head of Hamas’s political bureau in 2017. In 2018, the US Department of State designated him as a terrorist. He had been living in Qatar for the past several years.
Source-BBC
