The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas claimed on Wednesday, July 31, that an Israeli strike in Tehran (Iran) had killed its leader, Ismail Haniyeh. “[Notre] brother, the leader, the mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, died in a Zionist raid on his headquarters in Tehran after his participation in the inauguration of the new president” Iranian, Hamas wrote in a statement. “The residence of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of the Islamic resistance of Hamas, was hit in Tehran, and as a result of this incident, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred”the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Iranian Islamic Republic, said earlier on their Sepah website. Follow our live coverage.
Visiting Tehran. Ismail Haniyeh had traveled to Tehran to attend the swearing-in of new Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian before parliament on Tuesday. Iran, an ally of Hamas, does not recognize the Israeli state and has made support for the Palestinian cause a central part of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Already several reactions. A Hamas political bureau official said that “murder” Ismail Haniyeh was “a cowardly act, which will not go unanswered”Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, for his part, condemned the “cowardly assassination” Hamas leader said in a statement.
Head of the political bureau. Elected head of Hamas’ political bureau in 2017, Ismail Haniyeh became known to the world in 2006 by becoming Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority after his movement’s surprise victory in the legislative elections. The sixty-year-old lived so far in voluntary exile between Qatar and Turkey, two countries allied with Hamas, and has long advocated reconciling armed resistance and political combat within the movement.