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Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in Iran, group says

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Ismail Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were "assassinated" in the capital Tehran, Iranian state media reported.

Samuel Osborne

News reporter

Wednesday 31 July 2024 15:14, UK

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Hamas's top political leader Ismail Haniyeh has been killed in Iran, the group has confirmed.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were "assassinated" in the capital Tehran at around 2am local time, 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 left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and had lived in exile in Qatar since then.

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.

Analysis: Why this is such a major blow to Hamas

Haniyeh's death will put any remote chance of a ceasefire on hold

By Nicole Johnston, Sky correspondent formerly based in Gaza

At the start of the war in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear Israel would go after the leaders of Hamas wherever they were, both inside Gaza and out.

Though Israel has not claimed responsibility, the killing of the leader of the political wing of Hamas - Ismail Haniyeh - is a major blow to the group.

Haniyeh was the pragmatic face of Hamas. He was less hardline and militaristic than Yayha Sinwar, who is the head of Hamas inside Gaza and is leading the battle.

Ismail Haniyeh was the public face of Hamas diplomacy in Arab capitals. He was leading efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. In recent years he'd been based in Qatar which hosts the political wing of the group, but had shuttled between Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and Egypt.

Aside from the regional implications, this will necessitate a change of leadership at the top of Hamas. But the group is adept at this. Its structure allows for a smooth transition of power.

The assassination of Hamas leaders is not unusual. Hamas founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yasin was assassinated in 2004. A month later another senior leader Abdel Aziz al Rantisi was also killed by Israel.

Within the Palestinian national movement, Haniyeh was a popular figure, even among those who were adamantly opposed to its ideology.

He was born in the refugee camps of Gaza, in al Shati, or beach camp. He joined the group as a young man and rose through its ranks. Haniyeh led Hamas's brief foray into politics. The group beat its political rival Fatah in Palestinian national elections in 2006 but the international community did not accept the result.

A brief civil war in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah followed. Fatah was kicked out of the enclave and Hamas took over. Haniyeh's short-lived term as Palestinian prime minister was over and Hamas and Fatah have been bitter rivals ever since, despite a few attempts at reconciliation.

I last interviewed Haniyeh in 2016, he said then: "It is difficult to break the will of the people of Gaza, they can handle the siege." Asked about building tunnels, he said: "We are preparing to defend the Palestinian people with all our resistance."

Many Gazans blame Hamas for leading them into this devastating war, but they also know Haniyeh's death will put any remote chance of a ceasefire on hold, while the ramifications of this assassination play out.

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.

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.

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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 group later said they were still searching for the commander's body.

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.

Haniyeh's assassination comes at a precarious time, as US President Joe Biden's administration has tried to push Hamas and Israel to agree to at least a temporary ceasefire and hostage release deal.

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