Top Hamas political leader who left the Palestinian Gaza Strip since 2019 to exile in Qatar, Ismail Haniyeh has been confirmed killed through airborne projectile at night of Tuesday early morning at a military residential building in Tehran, the capital of Iran ahead of the presidential inauguration he visited the country to attend.
The Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh was killed according to a statement from the group that governs Gaza, which blamed Israel for his death.
Haniyeh was also said to have been killed in his home in Tehran after participating in the inauguration of the new Iranian president, according to Hamas.
“The death of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader, in Iran will strengthen the deep and unbreakable bond between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the beloved Palestine and the resistance,” an Iranian state spokesperson said.
“The pure blood of Martyr Haniyeh will never be wasted,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said, according to Iranian state media.
Adding that Iranian authorities are currently investigating the assassination as no group has claimed responsiblity for the attack.
However, Kanaani praised Haniyeh for spending his life in the “honorable struggle against the usurping Zionist regime” and for seeking the “the liberation of the oppressed Palestinian nation.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in its statement of confirmation, said, Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were “assassinated” in the capital Tehran.
It was gathered that Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed after the building where they were staying was struck, according to the statement issued by the group governing Gaza.
The group said that Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday.
“The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas mourns to our great Palestinian people, to the Arab and Islamic nation, and to all the free people of the world: brother, leader, martyr, Mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, who was killed in a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran,” Hamas said on Wednesday early morning.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also announced Haniyeh’s death.
“Early this morning, the residence of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was struck, resulting in his and one of his bodyguards’ martyrdom. The cause is under investigation and will be announced soon,” the IRGC said in a statement, adding that the attack was under investigation.
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 (22:30 GMT on Tuesday, according to Al-Jazeera.
Israel has not issued any statement concerning the attack with Al-Jazeera citing media outlets in Israel reporting that the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered cabinet ministers not to comment.
Far-right Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu, however, made a statement about the Hamas leader’s death on social media platform X.
The killing “makes the world a little better,” he wrote in Hebrew as translated and reported by Al-Jazeera.
It would be recalled that Israel launched a retaliatory war on Gaza, vowing to eliminate Hamas and kill its leaders after the group attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 others captive.
Report had indicated that about 39,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war, with 90,996 injured.
“Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank also view Ismail Haniyeh as a moderate leader who is much more pragmatic compared to other leaders who head the military side of the movement,” Al-Jazeera reported.
Adding, “He is very popular here(Gaza). He grew up in a refugee camp. He represents the vast majority of the people who are the descendants of the refugee families who were displaced from the Palestinian territories in 1948.”
There are concerns by many that Haniyeh’s killing could lead to a further escalation of the conflict in the Middle east.
Tensions were already high after Israel said it targeted a senior Hezbollah commander in a “precision strike” on Beirut on Tuesday.
“This is a huge escalation – what happened yesterday in Lebanon, what’s happening today in Tehran. It’s an escalation by [Israel] and that’s going to have significant ramifications,” Sami al-Arian, the director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, told Al-Jazeera.
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