TEHRAN.- The Palestinian Islamist terrorist movement Hamas said on Wednesday that an Israeli strike in Tehran killed its leader Ismail Haniyeh.
“The brother, the leader, the mujahideen Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the movement, was killed in a Zionist attack on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of the new Iranian president,” said in a statement this terrorist movement that maintains terror in Gaza.
The militant group, which sparked a war by attacking 22 Israeli civilian communities near the Gaza border on October 7, accused Israel of the killing and threatened to escalate the regional conflict as the United States and other countries sought to avoid an open regional war. Iran’s supreme leader has vowed revenge against Israel.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which had vowed to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The attack came after Haniyeh attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran and just hours after Israel struck a commander of the Iran-allied Hezbollah militia in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
The high-profile assassination of Hamas’s political leader threatened to have repercussions on the region’s intertwined conflicts because of its target, timing and the decision to execute him in Tehran. The biggest risk was a direct conflict between Iran and Israel if Iran retaliates.
“We consider this revenge to be our duty,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said in a statement on his official website. Israel, he said, had “prepared a harsh punishment for itself” by killing “a beloved guest in our home.”
Iran and Israel, bitter regional rivals, came close to war in April.
Haniyeh’s death could also prompt Hamas to abandon 10-month-old talks on a ceasefire in Gaza, where U.S. mediators had said progress was being made.
The killing could also exacerbate already existing tensions between Israel and its powerful rival Hezbollah, which international diplomats were trying to contain after a rocket killed 12 young men in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights over the weekend.
On Tuesday night, Israel carried out a rare raid in Beirut in which it said it killed a senior Hezbollah commander believed to be responsible for the Golan Heights attack. Hezbollah said Wednesday it was still searching for the body of Fouad Shukur in the rubble of the building.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was visiting Singapore, responded to a question about Haniyeh’s killing by saying that “this is something that we were not aware of or involved in.”
Speaking to Channel News Asia, Blinken said he would not speculate on its impact on ceasefire efforts, “but I can tell you that the imperative to achieve a ceasefire, the importance of that for everyone, remains.”
In Manila, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he still held out hope for a diplomatic solution on the Lebanese-Israeli border.
“I don’t think war is inevitable,” he said. “I think there is always room and opportunity for diplomacy, and I would like to see the parties take advantage of those opportunities.”
Source: With information from AP