A crowd of mourners attended the funeral in Tehran on Thursday for the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in the Iranian capital in a strike blamed on Israel, a ceremony marked by calls to avenge his death.
Nearly three weeks after carrying out an airstrike on July 13 against the head of Hamas’s armed wing, Mohammed Deif, in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army claimed, after “intelligence analysis,” that he had been killed in the operation.
Deif “led, planned and executed,” according to the army, the unprecedented October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel that sparked a devastating war in the Palestinian territory. Hamas had claimed after the raid that Deif was alive.
At Tehran University, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recited the prayer for the dead in front of the coffins of Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard draped in the Palestinian flag. The Hamas leader is to be buried Friday in Qatar, where he lived in exile.
Carrying portraits of Haniyeh, thousands of people attended the ceremony, as well as senior officials including Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian and the head of the country’s ideological army, the Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami.
The coffins were transported in a flower-decorated truck through the streets of Tehran, where a water sprayer installed on the vehicle cooled the crowd gathered in the scorching heat.
Before dawn on Wednesday, Ismail Haniyeh, 61, was killed in one of the special residences for veterans in northern Tehran after attending Mr. Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony. He was killed by an “air projectile,” according to local media.
Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel, their sworn enemy, and vowed to avenge his death, which came hours after that of Lebanese Hezbollah commander Fouad Chokr, who was killed in a strike claimed by Israel on Tuesday evening in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
” At the right time “
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel had dealt “severe blows” to its “enemies,” explicitly mentioning the killing of Fouad Shokr but without commenting on the attack in Tehran.
Immediately after the attack in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader threatened Israel with “severe punishment.” “It is our duty to avenge (Haniyeh’s) blood shed on (Iranian) territory.”
“We will certainly implement the order of the supreme leader,” “at the right place and at the right time,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said at the funeral.
Also present, Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said the Palestinians “will pursue Israel until it is uprooted from the land of Palestine.”
According to New York Times Citing three unidentified Iranian officials, Ayatollah Khamenei, at an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council on Wednesday morning, ordered direct strikes on Israel in response to Haniyeh’s assassination.
On April 13, Iran launched an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israeli territory in retaliation for a strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, attributed to Israel. Most of the Iranian projectiles were intercepted with the help of the United States and other countries.
39,480 dead in Gaza according to Hamas
Faced with fears of a regional conflagration fueled by a cycle of violence between the Israeli army and Iran’s allies in Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on “all parties” to de-escalate.
“The Middle East is on the path to increasing conflicts […] “It is essential to break this cycle, and that starts with a ceasefire in Gaza,” he said.
But hopes of a truce linked to the release of hostages held in Gaza remain distant, with Israel having vowed to destroy Hamas after the October 7 attack on Israeli soil, which resulted in the death of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people abducted, 111 are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom have died, according to the army.
In response, Israel launched a major offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip that left 39,480 people dead, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry, which did not give details on the number of civilian and combatant deaths.
Deadly Israeli bombings continued Thursday in the Palestinian territory, where Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union, seized power in 2007.
Nasrallah’s speech
In Lebanon, the leader of the Lebanese Islamist movement Hassan Nasrallah is due to deliver a speech at 5pm local time (2pm GMT), after the funeral of Fouad Chokr, accused by Israel of being responsible for a strike that killed 12 young people last Saturday on the Syrian Golan occupied by Israel.
Faced with fears of a full-scale war, several airlines have suspended flights to Beirut and several countries have advised their nationals to avoid Lebanon.