Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in raid on Iran residence, says Palestinian group

 

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in raid on Iran residence, says Palestinian group

 

The death of the political leader of the Palestinian militant group came hours after Israel claimed it killed Hezbollah’s top military commander in Beirut

 

Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem

Wed 31 Jul 2024 06.43 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/31/hamas-leader-ismail-haniyeh-death-raid-iran-home-israel-gaza-war

 

Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, has been killed by an airstrike in Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the group said, just hours after Israel claimed it had killed a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut.

 

Hamas blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s death, which one official described as a “grave escalation”. It said he was targeted at “his residence in Tehran, after participating in the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president”.

 

The dual assassinations are heavy blows to Hamas and Hezbollah, but also raise the stakes for Iran, which backs both groups. They will fuel growing fears that the war in Gaza could spiral into a broader regional conflict.

 

Iran’s top security council met early on Wednesday to discuss the country’s response to the killing, Reuters reported.

 

The Israeli military declined to comment on Haniyeh’s death. Israel has vowed to kill all Hamas leaders after the 7 October attacks and its intelligence services have a history of covert attacks inside Iran, mostly targeting scientists from the Iranian nuclear programme.

 

Haniyeh’s killing was “a grave escalation that will not achieve its goals”, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

 

Hamas has survived past assassinations of its top leaders, including Haniyeh’s mentor Ahmed Yassin in 2004, and Haniyeh did not command operations on the ground in Gaza, after leaving for exile in 2019.

 

Hamas fighters inside Gaza are led by Yahya Sinwar, thought to be the mastermind of the 7 October attacks that killed about 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage.

 

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday morning he did not think a wider war in the Middle East was “inevitable” after the assassinations.

 

“I don’t think war is inevitable. I maintain that. I think there’s always room and opportunities for diplomacy,” he told reporters on a visit to the Philippines.

 

US officials have for months been leading a global diplomatic effort to prevent the war in Gaza escalating into a broader and even more dangerous regional conflict.

 

Recently they had been pushing for at least a temporary ceasefire and hostage-release deal in Gaza, where Israel’s war since 7 October has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians and wounded over 90,000 according to health authorities in Gaza.

 

CIA Director Bill Burns was in Rome on Sunday for a round of talks with officials from Israel, Qatar and Egypt, negotiations likely have been thrown into disarray by the overnight attacks.

 

Haniyeh’s death came just hours after Israel claimed it killed Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukur, in an airstrike on a south Beirut suburb launched in retaliation for a rocket attack that killed 12 children at the weekend.

 

Lebanon’s foreign minister said the strike in Beirut was a shock, after assurances from Israel’s allies that the country was planning a “limited response” that “would not produce a war”.

 

“That’s what we’re afraid of, and hopefully this will not produce a war,” Abdallah Bou Habib told the Guardian. “We did not expect to be hit in Beirut. We thought these were red lines that the Israelis would respect.”

 

On Wednesday morning Russia and Turkey condemned Haniyeh’s assassination, with Moscow describing it as a “completely unacceptable political killing”, the Tass news agency reported.

 

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas also condemned Haniyeh’s assassination, calling it a “cowardly act and dangerous development”, according to AP, and Palestinian national and Islamic factions called for a general strike and mass demonstrations.

 

Haniyeh had repeatedly urged Palestinians to be “steadfast” after Israel killed his mentor and members of his family; his own death is likely to elicit a similar response from other Hamas leaders.

 

In April when an airstrike killed three of his sons and four grandchildren he insisted in an interview with Al Jazeera that his personal loss would not pressure Hamas to shift its position in negotiations.

 

Inside Israel, the military said it was assessing the situation, but the home defence policy – which calls on citizens to prepare for potential attacks – had not been changed. The country’s northern airspace was completely closed apart from emergency flights, local media reported.