Victor Ezeja
Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, has been killed in an airstrike in Tehran, the capital of Iran.
A missile reportedly hit his bedroom at night, killing him and his bodyguard.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelHaniyeh’s death has been confirmed in separate statements by the Palestinian group that runs the Gaza Strip and Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Hamas, the group that has been waging war against Israel since the October 7 massacre, blamed Israel for it. However, Israel has yet to respond at the time of filing this report.
Haniyeh had travelled to Tehran for the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian.
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“This assassination by the Israeli occupation of Brother Haniyeh is a grave escalation that aims to break the will of Hamas and the will of our people and achieve fake goals. We confirm that this escalation will fail to achieve its objectives,” said senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri.
The 62-year-old is the most senior Hamas leader to be killed since the 7th October attacks.
The attack came hours after Israel claimed it killed a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon.
The two attacks cast doubt on the ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas as Haniyeh was a key participant in the negotiations, thereby raising concerns about further regional conflict.
Meanwhile, Iran has vowed to revenge the killing. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will defend its territorial integrity, honour, pride and dignity, and make the terrorist invaders regret their cowardly action,” President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose inauguration Haniyeh was in Tehran to celebrate, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.\
Haniyeh has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007 and has since 2017 until his killing, been living mostly in Qatar.
He was born in the al-Shati refugee camp in the then Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip in 1963, to parents who were said to have fled from Ashkelon during the 1948 Palestine war.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with seven years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication.
