SOURCE: AP
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by an airstrike in the Iranian capital, Iran and the militant group said early Wednesday, blaming Israel for a shock assassination that risks escalating the regional conflict on multiple fronts.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The strike came just after Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran, Iran said.
The killing could trigger retaliation against Israel from Iran or its powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah and prompt Hamas to pull out of months of negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hours earlier, Israel carried out a rare strike in the Lebanese capital Beirut that it said killed a top Hezbollah commander who was allegedly behind a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Hezbollah said Wednesday that it was still searching for the body of Fouad Shukur in the rubble of the building that was struck.
The U.S. and other nations had already been scrambling to prevent the Golan Heights strike from spiraling into an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah when word came of the dramatic assassination of Hamas’ top political leader Haniyeh in Tehran.
There was no immediate reaction from the White House to the killing of Haniyeh.
An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment. Israel often doesn’t comment on assassinations carried out by its Mossad intelligence agency or strikes on other countries. It has repeatedly vowed to eliminate Hamas leaders wherever they are for the Oct. 7 attack in which Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage.
Hamas said Haniyeh was killed “in a Zionist airstrike on his residence in Tehran” after he attended the swearing-in of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday, along with other Hamas officials and officials from Hezbollah and allied groups.
“Hamas declares to the great Palestinian people and the people of the Arab and Islamic nations and all the free people of the world, brother leader Ismail Ismail Haniyeh a martyr,” Hamas said in its terse statement.