Tehran: The political chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated early Wednesday in Iran’s capital, Tehran, claimed media reports.
The assassination was reportedly confirmed by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Hamas, a Palestinian outfit engaged in a war with Israel in Gaza, blamed Israel for the attack. One of his bodyguards was also killed after the building they were staying in was struck.
Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, on Tuesday, according to an Aljazeera report claimed.
Earlier, Israel had pledged to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In the attack, 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others were taken hostage.
“Hamas declares to the great Palestinian people and the people of the Arab and Islamic nations and all the free people of the world, brother leader Ismail Ismail Haniyeh a martyr,” a statement from Hamas read.
Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip in 2019. He had lived in exile in Qatar.
Who was Haniyeh?
The 62-year-old slain leader was born in a refugee camp near Gaza. In late 1980s, he joined Hamas and swiftly rose through the ranks. He became a close associate of Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Haniyeh served several jail terms in Israel. After Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative election, he became the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority government. The next year he was dismissed from his position by President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.
In 2017, he was elected the head of Hamas’s political wing. The United States had named him as ‘specially designated global terrorist.’
What’s Hamas?
It is an Islamist militant movement. Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip for about two decades. In October 2023, Hamas infiltrated southern Israel. It attacked Israel and killed some 1,200 people and took dozens more hostage. The Israeli military attempted to eradicate the group. This led to the killing of around 30,000 Palestinians as of mid-April 2024, reports claimed.
