KUALA LUMPUR – The political chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has reportedly been assassinated in Iran.
According to news reports, Ismail, along with one of his bodyguards, were killed after the building they were residing in Tehran was attacked.
Citing a statement from Hamas, Reuters said both were killed “in a treacherous Zionist raid.”
Iran’s state media had announced the killings early this morning, with the nation’s Revolutionary Guard issuing a statement expressing its condolences over the incident.
Ismail, who has been living in Qatar, was in Iran for the swearing-in of the Islamic republic’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who had stated his support of Hamas in Gaza.
After the ongoing eruption of violence between Israel and Hamas began on October 7 of last year, Ismail was reported as saying in an interview that the blood of Palestinian civilians is needed to “ignite the spirit of revolution” and “arouse within us persistence.”
In April, he lost three of his sons and four grandchildren to Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
As of press time, Israel has not commented on Ismail’s death.
Ismail was said to have insisted that the deaths of his family members would not affect ongoing hostage negotiations, labelling those who believed otherwise as “delusional”.
The veteran Hamas leader was born in a refugee camp near Gaza City and went on to join the militant group in the late 1980s during its first uprising.
Ismail’s rise in the group’s ranks saw him being appointed part of a secret “collective leadership” in 2005 before he was named Palestinian Authority prime minister in 2006.
He was then made chief of the group in 2017, following which the US designated Hamas as a global terrorist organisation.
In October last year, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim spoke with Ismail to express Malaysia’s unwavering support for the Palestinian people at the time when the armed conflict between Israel and Gaza entered its second week.
In a post on X, Anwar had advocated for the immediate cessation of bombings while calling for the establishment of a humanitarian corridor in Rafah.
Anwar’s engagement with Ismail came after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had also contacted the Hamas leader. – July 31, 2024