Top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in Iran, group says
Hamas top leader Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in his home in the Iranian capital of Tehran, the group said.
In a statement on Wednesday, Hamas claimed that Haniyeh was killed "in a Zionist airstrike on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of Iran's new president".
"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 Haniyeh a martyr," the statement added.
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard also reported the assassination.
Haniyeh's death comes after Israel said it had killed a top Hezbollah military commander in a missile strike in Beirut.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for Haniyeh's assassination, but suspicion quickly fell on Israel, which has vowed to kill him and other leaders of Hamas over the group's October 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage.
Israel has not commented directly on the assassination, nor claimed responsibility for it.
An air and ground offensive by Israel into the Gaza Strip since the events of October 7 has currently killed more than 39,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
China and Iran are among the countries that have condemned Haniyeh's assassination, with the former saying it is "deeply concerned that this incident may lead to escalation and turbulence in the region".
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Analysis from ITV News Senior International Correspondent John Irvine
Ismail Haniyeh, the face of Hamas internationally, has been killed in an apparent missile strike in Tehran. He is the most senior Hamas figure to die since the current war began on October 7.
Soon after the massacre perpetrated by Hamas in southern Israel, Israel's government vowed to kill Hamas' leaders. So far, there has been no claim of responsibility for the overnight assassination in the Iranian capital.
Haniyeh had been in Iran to attend yesterday's swearing in of the new president. A frequent visitor to Tehran, in recent years he based himself in Doha, Qatar.
His assassination is a major victory for Israel and another huge blow for Hamas.
Hamas aren't in a position to respond that forcefully given how depleted they are in Gaza after almost 10 months of war.
But Hezbollah are a different matter and the strikes in Beirut and Tehran last night beg the question - what will Hezbollah and the Iranians do next?
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In May, Haniyeh was among the names listed by the chief prosecutor of the world's top war crimes court, seeking arrest warrants over actions taken during the Israel-Hamas war.
Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday.
He had left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and lived in exile ever since. The top Hamas leader in Gaza is Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the October 7 attack.
A senior Palestinian official in the West Bank has condemned Haniyeh's assassination as a "cowardly act".
"We strongly denounce and condemn the assassination of the head of the Political Bureau, the national leader, Ismail Haniyeh," Hussein al-Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority's civil affairs chief, wrote on X.
"We consider it a cowardly act, this pushes us to remain more steadfast in the face of the occupation, and the necessity of achieving the unity of the Palestinian forces and factions.”
In April, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed three of Haniyeh's sons and four of his grandchildren.
Speaking with the Al Jazeera satellite channel at the time, Haniyeh said the killings would not pressure Hamas into softening its positions, amid ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Israel.
He said Israel was acting in "the spirit of revenge and murder".
Lebanese group Hezbollah, meanwhile, said it was still searching for the body of Fouad Shukur, who Israel claimed to have killed on Tuesday.
Shukur, a top Hezbollah commander, was targeted by Israel in response to a missile strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children.
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