The leader of the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli attack on his residence in Tehran, the organization announced today, the BBC reports.
According to the Palestinian group that controls Gaza, Haniyeh was killed "in an airstrike on his residence in Tehran" after attending the swearing-in of Iran's new president, Massoud Pezeshkian, along with other Hamas officials on Tuesday.
There is no official comment from Israel yet. Israel generally does not comment on assassinations carried out by its Mossad intelligence agency.
But Israel has previously vowed to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1.200 people and took about 250 others hostage.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said that the cause of the "incident" was not clear, but that the event was "being investigated", the French news agency AFP reported.
In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Hani's killing, calling it a "cowardly act and a dangerous development". Political factions in the occupied territory called for revenge for the murder.
There was no reaction from the USA to the murder of Haniyeh. The assassination comes at a sensitive time, as the Biden administration tries to get Hamas and Israel to agree to a temporary ceasefire and a deal to release hostages.
Haniyeh (62) was a prominent member of the Hamas movement since the late 1980s, and Israel imprisoned him for three years in 1989 during the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993). After that, in 1992, together with numerous Hamas leaders, he was exiled to the no man's land between Israel and Lebanon.
Haniyeh was appointed Palestinian prime minister by President Mahmoud Abbas in 2006 after Hamas won the most votes in elections, but was ousted a year later after the group drove Abbas's Fatah party out of the Gaza Strip after it seized power.
He was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in 2017. In 2018, the US State Department declared him a terrorist. Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and lived in exile in Qatar.
The killing of Haniyeh followed Israel's attack on Beirut, which reportedly killed Fouad Shukur, a senior Hezbollah military commander.
Hezbollah has not confirmed Shukur's death in the attack, which killed at least one woman and two children and wounded dozens of people.
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