Hamas said Wednesday its political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli strike in Iran, where he was attending the inauguration of the country's new president, and vowed the act "will not go unanswered".
Haniyeh's killing came after Israel on Tuesday struck a Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut, killing a senior commander of the Iran-backed group it said was responsible for a weekend rocket attack on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
"Brother leader, mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, died in a Zionist strike on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of the new (Iranian) president," the Palestinian militant group said in a statement.
Hamas political bureau member Musa Abu Marzuk vowed: "The assassination of leader Ismail Haniyeh is a cowardly act and will not go unanswered."
Iran's Revolutionary Guards also announced the death, saying Haniyeh's residence in Tehran was "hit" and he was killed along with a bodyguard.
"The residence of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political office of Hamas-Islamic Resistance, was hit in Tehran, and as a result of this incident, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred," said a statement by the Guards' Sepah news website.
Haniyeh had travelled to Tehran to attend Tuesday's swearing-in of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The Israeli army declined to comment.
Abbas condemns killing
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas condemned Haniyeh's killing as a "cowardly act" and urged Palestinians to remain united against Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and bring back all hostages taken during the October 7 attacks, which sparked the war in Gaza.
The attacks launched by Hamas resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Hamas also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,400 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
Regional tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, drawing in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
Who was Ismail Haniyeh?
Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in 2017 to succeed Khaled Meshaal.
He was already a well-known figure having become Palestinian prime minister in 2006 following an upset victory by Hamas in that year's parliamentary election.
Considered a pragmatist, Haniyeh lived in exile and split his time between Turkey and Qatar.
He had travelled on diplomatic missions to Iran and Turkey during the war, meeting both the Turkish and Iranian presidents.
Haniyeh was said to maintain good relations with the heads of the various Palestinian factions, including rivals to Hamas.
He joined Hamas in 1987 when the militant group was founded amid the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation, which lasted until 1993.
Hamas is part of the "axis of resistance" of Iran-backed armed groups arrayed against arch-foe Israel around the Middle East.
Iran has made support for the Palestinian cause a centrepiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
It has hailed Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel but denied any involvement.
New York Times adds: Ismail Haniyeh was one of the most senior leaders of Hamas for the past two decades, in recent years running the militant group’s political operations from exile in Qatar.
On Tuesday, Haniyeh was in Iran with other senior members of Iran’s “axis of resistance” — which includes Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen — to attend the inauguration of Iran’s newly elected president.
As Hamas’s political leader, he was central to the group’s high-stakes negotiations and diplomacy, including the stalled cease-fire deal negotiations with Israel.
Leader of Hamas in Gaza
Haniyeh was named the leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2006. That year, he briefly served as prime minister of a Palestinian unity government, which was dissolved after months of tension that included armed conflict between Palestinian factions.
In 2017, he was named the leader of Hamas’s political bureau at a time when it was trying to soften its public image as it jockeyed for influence among Palestinians and internationally.
Haniyeh led Hamas from Qatar and Turkey in recent years. He was among the negotiators in ongoing talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, to end the war in Gaza in exchange for hostages captured in the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Ascent to Power
Haniyeh was born in 1962 in the Shati refugee camp north of Gaza City, to Palestinian parents who in 1948 had been displaced from their home in what is now Israel, in Ashkelon. He studied at schools run by the main United Nations agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, and went on to study Arabic literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.
He was arrested by the Israeli military and served several sentences in Israeli jails in the 1980s and 1990s.
His rise to power in Gaza was aided by his mentor, the spiritual leader and a founder of Hamas, Sheik Yassin, for whom he served as personal secretary. The two were targets of an attempted Israeli assassination attempt in 2003; the next year, Mr. Yassin was killed by the Israeli military.
“You don’t have to cry,” Haniyeh told a crowd gathered outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City at the time. “You have to be steadfast, and you have to be ready for revenge.”
Wanted by the International Criminal Court
In May, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said he would seek an arrest warrant for Mr. Haniyeh. The prosecutor accused him and other Hamas leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, including “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.”
In June, Hamas said that Haniyeh’s sister and her family were killed in a strike by the Israeli military on the Haniyeh family home in Gaza, an assertion the military did not confirm. In April, three of Mr. Haniyeh’s 13 sons were killed by Israeli forces in another military operation in Gaza.
He was defiant in the face of the loss, a common theme in Mr. Haniyeh’s life. “We shall not give in, no matter the sacrifices,” Haniyeh said at the time, noting that he’d already lost dozens of family members in the war.
Source: AFP, New York Times