Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in attack blamed on Israel in Tehran

The armed Islamist group Hamas confirmed on Wednesday the death of its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in an attack attributed to Israel in Tehran, where he was on an official visit.

Israeli authorities have not yet confirmed any attack in Tehran, nor the death of Haniyeh, who was in the Iranian capital yesterday for the inauguration of the country’s new president, Masud Pezeshkian.

“Do not consider those killed in the path of Allah as dead, but consider them alive with their Lord, receiving sustenance,” the group said of the death of Haniyeh, “number one” in Hamas’s political bureau, who was living in self-exile in Qatar.

“It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom,” added the group, which was responsible for the October 7 attack on Israeli soil, which left some 1,200 dead and more than 250 kidnapped, and which led to the current war in the Gaza Strip, where more than 39,400 Palestinians have died.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has confirmed that its commander, Fuad Shukr, was in the building bombed last night by Israel on the outskirts of Beirut, but has not yet been able to provide information on his whereabouts while search efforts are still underway in the area.

“At that time, the jihadist Big Brother Fuad Shukr (‘Hajj Mohsen’) was in this building,” the armed group acknowledged in its first statement on the subject since the attack on the outskirts of the capital, Dahye, one of its main strongholds in Lebanon.