Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh has been killed in an Israeli strike in Iran, where he had been attending the inauguration of the country’s new president.
Haniyeh’s killing came after Israel on Tuesday struck a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, killing a senior commander of the Iran-backed group it said was responsible for a weekend rocket attack on the Israel-annexed Golan Heights.
“Brother, leader, mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, died in a Zionist strike on his headquarters in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of the new (Iranian) president,” the Palestinian militant group said in a statement.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also announced the death, saying Haniyeh’s residence in Tehran was “hit” and he was killed along with a bodyguard.
“The residence of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political office of Hamas Islamic Resistance, was hit in Tehran, and as a result of this incident, him and one of his bodyguards were martyred,” said a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Sepah news website.
The Guards said the cause of the incident was not immediately clear but it was “being investigated.”
Haniyeh had travelled to Tehran to attend Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The Israeli army declined to comment on foreign media reports.
Far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, however, celebrated the Hamas leader’s death on social media platform X.
The killing “makes the world a little better,” he wrote in Hebrew.
Israel launched a war in Gaza, promising to eliminate Hamas and kill its leaders after the group attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 others captive.
At least 39,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war, with 90,996 injured
The war has heightened regional tensions drawing in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.
Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in 2017 to succeed Khaled Meshaal.
He was already a well-known figure having become Palestinian prime minister in 2006 following an upset victory by Hamas in that year’s parliamentary election.
Considered a pragmatist, Haniyeh lived in exile and split his time between Turkey and Qatar.
He had travelled on diplomatic missions to Iran and Turkey during the war, meeting both the Turkish and Iranian presidents.
Haniyeh was said to maintain good relations with the heads of the various Palestinian factions, including rivals to Hamas.
He joined Hamas in 1987 when the militant group was founded amid the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation, which lasted until 1993.
Hamas is part of the “axis of resistance”, Tehran-aligned groups such Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Huthis in Yemen arrayed against arch-foe Israel.
Iran has made support for the Palestinian cause a centrepiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
It has hailed Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel but denied any involvement.