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Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh killed in Iran, says Palestinian militant group

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh killed in Iran, says Palestinian militant group

Palestinian group Hamas' top leader, Ismail Haniyeh speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Iran, Mar 26, 2024. (File photo: Reuters/WANA/Majid Asgaripour)

CAIRO: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran's capital Tehran, the Palestinian militant group said on Wednesday (Jul 31).

In a statement, the faction mourned the death of Haniyeh, who it said was killed in "a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran".

Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian’s swear-in ceremony on Tuesday.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Haniyeh was killed along with one of his bodyguards."

The residence of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political office of Hamas Islamic Resistance, was hit in Tehran, and as a result of this incident, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred," said a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Sepah news website.


Iran gave no details on how Haniyeh was killed and it said the attack was under investigation.

Hamas described the strike as a "severe escalation" that would not achieve its goals.

Senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzuk said on Wednesday that the killing of Haniyeh "will not go unanswered".

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called the strike a "cowardly act and a serious escalation" and urged Palestinians to remain united against Israel.

The Israeli military told CNN they "don’t respond to reports in the foreign media", after Iranian state media reported Haniyeh's death.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Haniyeh.

The news, which came less than 24 hours after Israel claimed to have killed the Hezbollah commander it said was behind a deadly strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, appears to set back chances of any imminent ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

"This assassination by the Israeli occupation of Brother Haniyeh is a grave escalation that aims to break the will of Hamas," senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

He said Hamas would continue the path it was following, adding: "We are confident of victory."

HAMAS HAS NO CAPACITY TO ESCALATE WAR: EXPERT

While Haniyeh's death is a "very big deal", Hamas likely does not have the capacity to escalate the war further, said political analyst Simon Frankel Pratt.

"The war has devastated Gaza, no mistake, but this also devastated Hamas as an organisation," added the political science lecturer from the University of Melbourne.

"Its most experienced fighters are killed. Its arsenals are depleted. And while it hasn't gone down yet and it is still fighting, I don't think that there's much more that it can do.

"The bigger question is whether Iran will treat this as a sufficient provocation to, say, make another strike on Israeli territory, or whether Hezbollah will retaliate, especially coming on the heels of the (supposed) assassination of its military commander Fuad Shukr last night. That's where the greater retaliation risk comes," Pratt told CNA's Asia Now programme.

Israel has claimed it killed Shukr, Hezbollah's top military commander, in an airstrike in Beirut. Hezbollah has not confirmed this.

Pratt said the supposed killing of Shukr is a bigger deal for Iran and could lead to "some escalation" in the region, but reiterated that Iran and Hezbollah "don't have much of a desire to escalate".

HANIYEH WAS CENTRAL FIGURE IN CEASEFIRE TALKS

Pratt noted that Haniyeh was one of the senior figures responsible for the Oct 7 attack on southern Israel that started the Gaza war.

He was also central to Hamas' high-stakes negotiations and diplomacy, including the stalled ceasefire talks with Israel.

Pratt said his assassination may turn out to be "one of those sorts of instrumental criteria" in moving forward with a ceasefire.

"In other words, by killing one of the senior figures responsible for Oct 7, the Israeli public might feel as though some justice has been done and that one of the key war aims has been achieved," Pratt added.

In terms of what Haniyeh's death means for the Gaza war, Pratt said he does not think it will have any significant impact on locating hostages or their bodies, but reiterated that it could help Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "navigate the difficult tensions of his current governing coalition" in seeking a ceasefire.

While Hamas will want to make their anger over Haniyeh's death clear, it has a strong incentive to continue negotiations, Pratt noted.

"The war has not been good for the Hamas organisation, and as time goes on, it comes under significant military pressure," he said.

"So I think that pragmatically, Hamas will likely not allow this to significantly derail negotiations in even the medium term, although as I said, the short term is another matter."

HAMAS' LEADER

Haniyeh, a Sunni Muslim, had a major hand in building up Hamas' fighting capacity, partly by nurturing ties with Shi'ite Muslim Iran, which makes no secret of its support for the group.

As a young man, Haniyeh was a student activist at the Islamic University in Gaza City. He joined Hamas when it was created in the First Palestinian intifada (uprising) in 1987. He was arrested and briefly deported.

Haniyeh became a protege of Hamas' founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who like Haniyeh's family, was a refugee from the village of Al Jura near Ashkelon.

By 2003, he was a trusted Yassin aide, photographed in Yassin's Gaza home holding a phone to the almost completely paralysed Hamas founder's ear so that he could take part in a conversation. Yassin was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

Haniyeh was an early advocate of Hamas entering politics. In 1994, he said that forming a political party "would enable Hamas to deal with emerging developments".

Initially overruled by the Hamas leadership, it was later approved. Haniyeh became Palestinian prime minister after the group won parliamentary elections in 2006, a year after Israel's military withdrew from Gaza.

The group took control of the enclave in 2007.

Source: Agencies/zl
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