Tehran: In a major victory for Israel, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in a strike targeting his residence in Tehran, the Palestinian militant group said in a statement on Wednesday. The group mourned the death of Haniyeh, who was killed in "a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran".
Haniyeh resided in Qatar and was the tough-talking face of Hamas' international diplomacy as war with Israel has raged on in Gaza for over nine months, resulting in widespread death and destruction in the besieged territory. The 62-year-old leader was the chief of Hamas' political bureau and a long-time leader of the militant group, designated as a "specially designated" global terrorist by the United States.
“Hamas declares to the great Palestinian people and the people of the Arab and Islamic nations and all the free people of the world, brother leader Ismail Ismail Haniyeh a martyr,” Hamas said in its terse statement.
Earlier, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said he had been targeted in his residence along with an Iranian bodyguard. Iran gave no details on how Haniyeh was killed, and the Guard said the attack was under investigation. Israel itself did not immediately comment but it often doesn’t when it comes to assassinations carried out by their Mossad intelligence agency.
However, suspicion immediately fell on Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas over the group’s October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage. Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian’s swear-in ceremony on Tuesday.
The apparent assassination comes at a precarious time, as the Biden administration has tried to push Hamas and Israel to agree to at least a temporary ceasefire and hostage-release deal. Israel is suspected of running a yearslong assassination campaign targeting Iranian nuclear scientists and others associated with its atomic programme.
In April, Haniyeh's three sons and four grandchildren were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in Gaza. The three sons - Hazem, Amir and Mohammad - were killed after the car they were driving in was bombed in Gaza's Al-Shati camp, Hamas said. Four of his grandchildren were also killed in the attack, according to the Hamas-run media.
Last month, the Hamas chief lost ten members of his family, including his sister, who were killed in another alleged Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. Another of Haniyeh’s sisters, who lives in Israel, was arrested in April on suspicion of contact with operatives from the terror group and supporting acts of terror.
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