Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in attack in Tehran

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas confirmed on Wednesday the death of its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in an attack attributed to Israel in Tehran, where he was on an official visit.

“Brother leader, martyr fighter Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the movement, died as a result of a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran, after participating in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president,” the group confirmed in a statement.

Israeli authorities have not yet confirmed any attack in Tehran, nor the death of Haniyeh, who was in the Iranian capital yesterday for the inauguration of the country’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

“Do not consider as dead those who are killed in the way of Allah, but they are alive with their Lord, receiving sustenance.”the group said about the death of Haniyeh, “number one” of the Hamas political bureau, who lived in self-exile in Qatar.

“It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom”adds the group, responsible for the October 7 attack on Israeli soil, which left some 1,200 dead and more than 250 kidnapped; and which led to the current war in the Gaza Strip, where more than 39,400 Palestinians have died.

The news of Haniyeh’s death comes just hours after Israel confirmed that it had killed the military chief of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr, “the highest-ranking military leader” of the group and a close advisor to the organization’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel has blamed Shukr, considered Hezbollah’s chief of staff, for the deaths of thousands of Israeli civilians over the years, including 12 children killed in a rocket attack on Saturday in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Haniyeh was born in the Al Shati refugee camp in the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip in 1962. He studied at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he first became involved with Hamas, and graduated with a degree in Arabic literature in 1987.

He was appointed to head a Hamas office in 1997, and rose through the ranks of the organization.

Haniyeh headed the Hamas list that won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections and became Palestinian prime minister in a national unity government with President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah, but long-standing rifts between the two parties led to Fatah being expelled from the Strip and the Islamists taking power by force in the enclave, which they have ruled de facto since 2007.

Haniyeh was Hamas’s leader in the Gaza Strip from 2006 until February 2017, when he was replaced by Yahya Sinwar, widely seen as the mastermind behind the Oct. 7 attacks and the group’s true power, who had the final say in recent truce negotiations with Israel.

A few months later, on May 6, 2017, Haniyeh was elected chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, replacing Khaled Mashal; he then moved from the Strip to Qatar, where he was responsible for the leadership and representation of the Islamist group, particularly in the international arena.