Hamas leader Haniyeh killed in Tehran
TEHRAN, July 31, 2024
Palestinian group Hamas has said its leader Ismail Haniyeh has been killed at his home in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in an Israeli raid.
Israel is yet to respond but has previously vowed to "crush" the group following the October 7 attacks that killed 1,200 Israelis, according to a BBC report.
Haniyeh's death comes hours after Israel said it killed a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
The attacks on two senior Iran-backed militant leaders in the space of 24 hours has raised fears that the region could soon be engulfed in further conflict, the report said.
Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday morning that Haniyeh had been martyred by the Zionists in the Iranian capital Tehran.
The Hamas statement said: "Mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the movement, was martyred after attending the inauguration ceremony of the new president of Iran as a result of a treacherous raid by the Zionists on his residence in Tehran."
Earlier, the Public Relations Department of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced in a statement that Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were martyred as a result of an attack at their residence in Tehran.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called the assassination of Haniyeh "a cowardly act and a dangerous development".
He also called on Palestinians "to unite, be patient and steadfast in the face of the Israeli occupation" in a statement carried by state news agency Wafa.
Abbas's Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank with limited self-rule, and Israel has overall control.
The killing of Haniyeh has brought the region closer to an all-out war than any time before, Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Georgetown University, told BBC.
"This is a major development," he said. "I think it also impacts events in Lebanon because just a few hours earlier Israel tried to assassinate a senior Hezbollah leader in southern Beirut and the working assumption was that Iran and Hezbollah were not interested in escalation."
But Haniyeh's assassination has upended those calculations, he added.
