The political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Tehran, Iran, according to a statement from the Gaza government, which held Israel accountable for his death.
According to the statement, Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards perished after the building in which they were lodging was struck. Haniyeh was in Tehran on Tuesday to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“With condolences to the heroic nation of Palestine and the Islamic nation and combatants of the Resistant Front and the noble nation of Iran, this morning [Wednesday] the residence of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political office of the Islamic Resistance of Hamas, was hit in Tehran, and following this incident, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred,” the IRGC statement read.
According to media reports, the Hamas leader was killed when an “airborne guided projectile” hit a special residence for military veterans in the north of Tehran, at which he was staying, at about 2am local time (22:30 GMT on Tuesday).
Israel remained silent on Haniyeh’s death, with media there reporting that the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered cabinet ministers not to comment. Far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, however, celebrated the Hamas leader’s death on social media platform X.
The killing “makes the world a little better,” he wrote in Hebrew.
The Islamist outfit has blamed Israel and claimed that Haniyeh was killed in a “treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran.” The group said an investigation is ongoing to find out more details about the attack.
Just a day before his assassination, the Hamas chief attended the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday. He also met Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s health ministry has said that three people, including two children, have been killed and 74 wounded in a strike the Israeli military described as a “targeted assassination operation” against a Hezbollah commander in southern Beirut.
The killings come at a time when United States President Joe Biden’s administration is trying to push Hamas and Israel to agree to at least a temporary cease-fire and hostage release deal.
Hamas, the Palestinian political movement that rules the Gaza Strip, elected Ismail Abdulsalam Ahmed Haniya as the head of the group’s political bureau, replacing Khaled Meshaal, on May 6, 2017.
Born in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza to parents who fled from the city of Asqalan after the state of Israel was created in 1948, Haniya studied at the al-Azhar Institute in Gaza and graduated with a degree in Arabic literature from the Islamic University in Gaza.
Earlier this year, an Israeli attack killed three of his sons in northern Gaza.
Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and had been living in exile in Qatar. It is worth mentioning that the top Hamas leader in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar, masterminded the October 7 attack in Israel which sparked the latest Israel-Hamas war.
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