Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in attack blamed on Israel in Tehran, Iran

Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard confirm his death and that of one of his bodyguards in his residence in the country’s capital

31 (EUROPA PRESS)

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) announced early Wednesday that the leader of the Islamist group, Ismail Haniyeh, had been assassinated in an attack blamed on Israel against the building where he was staying in Tehran, the capital of Iran, although Israeli authorities have not yet commented.

“Brother, leader, martyr, Ismail Haniye, head of the Movement, killed in a treacherous Zionist attack on his residence in Tehran, after participating in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president,” reads a statement from the organization published by the Palestinian newspaper ‘Filastín’ on its Telegram channel.

This has also been confirmed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which has also reported the death of one of Haniyeh’s bodyguards, and has offered its condolences to “the heroic nation of Palestine,” according to the Iranian news agency Tasnim.

For his part, Musa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, has said that Haniyeh’s murder is “a cowardly act” that “will not go unpunished.”

Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of the new Iranian president, Masud Pezeshkian, with whom he held a meeting on Tuesday along with the leader of Islamic Jihad, Ziyad al-Najala, who had also traveled to the capital of the country. The two Palestinian leaders had also held a meeting with the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.