Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh killed in Tehran attack, IRGC blame Israeli forces for his death
Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in "a treacherous Zionist attack on his residence in Tehran" yesterday. The group said an investigation is on to find out more details about the attack.
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FollowTop 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, media reported. Hamas, a Palestinian outfit engaged in a war with Israel in Gaza, said an "Israeli" raid killed Ismail Haniyeh in his residence in Tehran. Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital to attend the swearing-in of Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian.
"Brother, leader, mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, died in a Zionist strike on his headquarters in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of the new (Iranian) president," the statement read.
The IRGC statement offered condolences to the people of Palestine, the Muslim world, and the Resistance Front’s fighters over the Hamas leader’s death.
Haniyeh was the exiled political chief of the militant group and had spent much of his time in recent years in Qatar. During the Israel-Gaza war he had acted as a negotiator in the ceasefire talks and liased with Hamas’s main ally, Iran.
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.
Israel had vowed to kill Ismail Haniyeh and destroy the Hamas group after October 7 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians. Israel's retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,400 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
