New Delhi: Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said early today that the man considered Palestinian group Hamas’ chief political leader Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in Tehran. Haniyeh led the group’s diplomatic negotiations.
“The residence of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political office of Hamas Islamic Resistance, was hit in Tehran,” said a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Sepah news website.
One of his bodyguards was also killed, it added. “The cause is under investigation and will be announced soon.”
In a separate statement, Hamas said Haniyeh was killed after he attended the inauguration of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
According to Al Jazeera, Hamas has said that Haniyeh was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”.
Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Hamas will wage “open war to liberate Jerusalem” and the group is “ready to pay various prices” to do so, the Al Jazeera report said, quoting local media.
“This news is resonating very negatively here,” Al Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud wrote from Deir el-Balah in Gaza.
Among foreign leaders, Mikhail Bogdanov, deputy foreign minister of Russia, Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of Yemen’s Houthi Supreme Revolutionary Committee have condemned the murder.
This is a breaking news copy and is being updated.
