Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas’ politburo, was killed in an Israeli raid in Tehran on Tuesday, Hamas said in a post on its official Telegram account on Tuesday.
According to Aljazeera, Hamas confirmed that the head of its political office, Ismail Haniya, was killed in Tehran early Wednesday morning. “Hamas is saddened to announce to the Palestinian people and the Arab nation that leader Ismail Haniya, head of Hamas’s political office, was killed in an Israeli attack in Tehran, where he was attending the ceremony of the new Iranian president,” it said.
It is noted that after the news of Haniyeh’s murder, veteran Hamas politician Moussa Abu Marzouk said that Haniyeh’s “assassination” was “a cowardly act that will not go unanswered.”
Iran is investigating
Iranian authorities are investigating the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniya and the findings will be announced very soon, the state-run Tasnim news agency reports.
For its part, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced that Ismail Haniya, a top Hamas leader, was killed in Tehran, where he was participating in the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s new president. The statement said he and an Iranian security guard were targeted at their residence and further details would be released.
Who was Ismail Haniya?
On 6 May 2017, Hamas, the Palestinian political movement that rules the Gaza Strip, elected Ismail Abdulsalam Ahmed Haniya, 54, as head of the group’s political bureau, replacing Khaled Meshaal.
Born in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza to parents who fled the city of Asqalan after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Haniya studied at the al-Azhar Institute in Gaza and graduated with a degree in Arabic literature from the Islamic University of Gaza.
While attending university in 1983, Haniya joined the Islamic Student Bloc, a precursor to Hamas. Haniyeh was imprisoned by Israeli authorities several times in the late 1980s and has survived multiple Israeli assassination attempts after rising through the ranks of Hamas.
His role as political leader of the organization was mainly symbolic within the Palestinian faction. The real power, analysts say, still lies with the group’s Gaza-based military leaders, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif.
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