Hamas leader killed

BEIRUT (AP) — Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has been killed in Tehran, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said early this morning, and Hamas blamed Israel for the attack.

Israel has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and left 250 others held hostage.

An Israeli military spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel does not typically do so when it comes to assassinations carried out by its intelligence agency, the Mossad.

Hamas said Haniyeh was killed “in a Zionist airstrike on his residence in Tehran after participating in the inauguration of Iran’s new president.”

“Hamas declares to the great Palestinian people and to the people of the Arab and Islamic nations and to all the free peoples of the world that the brother leader Ismail Ismail Haniyeh is a martyr,” the brief statement said.

In another statement, the group quoted Haniyeh as saying that the Palestinian cause has “costs” and “we are ready for those costs: martyrdom for the sake of Palestine, for the sake of God Almighty and for the sake of the dignity of this nation.”

Hamas officials did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment.

Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and lived in exile in Qatar. Hamas’ top leader in Gaza is Yehya Sinwar, who planned the October 7 attack.

In April, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren.

In an interview with Al Jazeera satellite channel at the time, Haniyeh said the killings would not pressure Hamas to soften its positions amid ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Israel.

Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian yesterday, along with other officials from Hamas and Hezbollah and allied groups. Iran gave no details on how Haniyeh was killed, and the Guard said the attack was under investigation.

Iranian state television analysts immediately began blaming Israel for the attack.

Haniyeh’s killing came after Israel carried out a rare strike in Beirut in which it said Fouad Shukur, a senior Hezbollah military commander, was killed. Hezbollah has not confirmed Shukur’s death in the attack, which also killed at least one woman and two children and wounded dozens of others.