Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the assassination but suspicion immediately fell on Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage.
Iran’s statement gave no details on how Haniyeh was killed. The New York Times was the first to report the incident.
Iranian Presidency Office via AP
Iranian state television reported on his death early Wednesday, and analysts immediately began blaming Israel for the attack.
Israel itself did not immediately comment but it often doesn’t when it comes to assassination carried out by their Mossad intelligence agency.
Israel is suspected of running a yearslong assassination campaign targeting Iranian nuclear scientists and others associated with its atomic program.
Haniyeh, the overall political leader of Hamas, had not been in Gaza in years and spends most of his time in Qatar, where Hamas has its primary political office outside of Gaza. But some of Hamas’ most senior leaders are still believed to be in Gaza, and they remain on Israel’s wanted list.
At the top of that list is Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ top leader in the Gaza Strip and one of the founders of the group’s military wing of the terrorist organization, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
In its campaign since, Israel has killed more than 39,360 Palestinians and wounded more than 90,900, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.