Top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed after his residence was targeted in Tehran early on Wednesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement, Reuters reported. Hamas, a Palestinian outfit engaged in a war with Israel in Gaza, said an “Israeli” raid killed Ismail Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards in his residence in Tehran.
In a statement, Hamas said Haniyeh was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”.
On Tuesday, Haniyeh, who led Hamas’s political operations from exile in Qatar, attended the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian. He also met Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Israel said its military was “fully prepared for any scenario”, The New York Times reported. “We prefer to resolve hostilities without a wider war,” said Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson.
Amid the Israel-Gaza war, Haniyeh acted as a negotiator in the ceasefire talks. Hamas claimed in April that Israeli airstrikes killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren.
The military wing of Hamas is led by Yahya Sinwar, believed to be the mastermind of the October 7 attack on Israel that ignited the war in Gaza.
The development comes a day after the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) claimed to have killed Fuad Shukr, a top commander of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israel had claimed Fuad Shukr was behind a drone strike that killed 12 children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
WHO WAS ISMAIL HANIYEH?
The 62-year-old was born in a refugee camp near Gaza City. He joined Hamas in the late 1980s and swiftly rose through the ranks to become a close associate of Hamas’s founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Haniyeh served several sentences in Israeli prisons. After Hamas’s win in the 2006 legislative election, he became the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority government. However, it was short-lived as the next year he was dismissed from his position by President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.
Ten years later, in 2017, he was elected the head of Hamas’s political wing. The same year, Haniyeh was named a “specially designated global terrorist” by the United States.
