Ismail Haniyeh – the head of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas – was assassinated in Tehran along with one of his bodyguards today (Wednesday, July 31).
According to the media reports, Iran Islamic Revolutionary Guards said that the residence of Ismail Haniyeh was hit in Tehran and as a result of this incident, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred. Hamas announced that Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli raid on his residence in Tehran. Hamas said in a statement, “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.”
Although no one immediately took credit for the murder, suspicion quickly focused on Israel, which has pledged to assassinate Hamas officials including Haniyeh in retaliation for the organization’s attack on Israel on October 7. Haniyeh traveled to Tehran on Tuesday to witness the swearing-in of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian. The moment the strike occurred, pundits on Iranian official television started accusing Israel.
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Although it frequently stays silent about assassinations carried out by its Mossad intelligence service, Israel did not respond right away. It is believed that Israel has been conducting a multi-year murder operation against Iranian nuclear scientists and other individuals connected to the country’s atomic program. Top Iranian military nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in 2020 while driving outside of Tehran by a remote-controlled machine rifle.
In an incident in the western part of Gaza City, Haniyeh’s sister and many other family members were killed; this was also orchestrated by Israel. Medical sources claim that an Israeli attack on the Haniyeh family’s residence in the Beach refugee camp in western Gaza City killed at least ten members of the family. Three of Haniyeh’s boys were killed in an Israeli attack on their car on April 10 near the Beach camp.
It is pertinent to mention here that since the October attack, Israel has been fighting Hamas, and since then, more than 39,360 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have died and more than 90,900 have been injured.
