Hamas’s top political leader Ismail Haniyeh has been killed in Iran, the group has confirmed.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp said Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were “assassinated” in the capital Tehran, Iranian state media reported.
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In a statement, Hamas said he was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”.
The assassination is a “cowardly act that will not go unpunished”, Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV cited senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk as saying.
Haniyeh was in Iran to attend the swearing-in ceremony for the country’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
The Revolutionary Guards said the cause of his death was under investigation and would be announced soon.
Hamas later said Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike and blamed Israel.
Haniyeh (centre) flashes a victory sign as he is surrounded by Iranian politicians. Pic: AP
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the death, but Israel had vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas after the group attacked Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.
More than 39,360 Palestinians have since been killed and more than 90,900 injured since the war began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
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Moment Hamas leader found out his sons were dead
Earlier this year, an Israeli airstrike killed three of Haniyeh’s sons in an attack on high-profile targets in Gaza, with the Israeli military saying two were Hamas military operatives and the third was a cell commander.
It comes after the Israeli military claimed to have killed a senior commander of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in Beirut.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it targeted Fuad Shukr – who served as the right-hand man to Hezbollah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah – though the head of Hezbollah’s operations centre claimed Shukr survived the attack but was critically injured.
The IDF claimed the senior commander was “responsible for the murder of the children in Majdal Shams” – in a reference to the rocket attack on a football pitch in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed a dozen young people on Saturday.
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