Hamas’ top leader, Ismail Haniya, has been killed in Iran, his own organization reported.
In a statement released Wednesday, Hamas said the group’s top political leader was killed in an Israeli strike on his residence in Tehran.
Haniya, who was also known as “Abu Al-Abd,” had arrived in the Iranian capital on Tuesday to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who won the election earlier this month.
According to Iranian state media, he was killed in an airstrike at around 2 a.m. local time.
Hamas has blamed Israel for the death of its leader, calling the incident in Iran a “treacherous Zionist attack,” but Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has yet to make an official statement.
Israel had promised to eliminate Hamas leaders following the military incursion into its territory on October 7.
Haniya’s death comes hours after Israel said it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
Strikes against two senior Iranian-backed militant leaders in the space of 24 hours fears of further regional conflict have grown.
Reactions
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Haniya’s “martyrdom” “will strengthen the deep and unbreakable bond between Tehran, Palestine and resistance,” state media reported.
And a former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rezaie, warned on Wednesday that Israel “would pay a high price” for assassinating the Hamas leader in Tehran.
The Russian and Turkish foreign ministries also condemned the attack.
In Gaza, Musa Abu Marzuk, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said it was a “cowardly act” that “will not go unanswered,” while another senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, said the group would “continue on its path.”
“This murder by the Israeli occupation of brother Haniya It is a serious escalation that aims to break the will of Hamas. and the will of our people,” Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters news agency.
In the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president who was at odds with Haniya in the past, also mourned his death.
Who was Haniya?
Ismail Abdel Salam Haniya was considered one of the top leaders of the Palestinian militia Hamas.
Also known as “Abu Al-Abd”, he was 62 years old and Born in one of the Palestinian refugee camps in 1962.
He became involved in the Palestinian cause at a young age. In 1989 he was imprisoned by Israel and after three years in prison, He went into exile with several Hamas leaders in Marj al-Zuhur, a “no man’s land” in Lebanon in 1992.
After that year in exile, he returned to Gaza and in 1997 was appointed head of the office of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin of the Hamas movement, which strengthened his position in the Islamist movement.
In February 2006, Hamas appointed him Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), the political organization that governs the Palestinian territories, in a unity agreement with the Fatah movement.
But a year later, Haniya was removed from office by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, after Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, seized control of Gaza in a violent uprising.
Haniya remained the de facto leader of Hamas in the Strip, a position he would relinquish in 2014.
Years later, on May 6, 2017, He was elected head of the Hamas Political Bureau by the Shura Council of the Islamic Resistance Movement, succeeding Khaled Mishal.
This is considered the highest position in the group structure.
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