Hamas’s top political leader Ismail Haniyeh has been killed in Iran, the group has confirmed.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were “assassinated” in the capital Tehran, Iranian state media reported.
In a statement, Hamas said he was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”.
The assassination is a “cowardly act that will not go unpunished”, Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV cited senior Hamas official
Moussa Abu Marzouk as saying.
Haniyeh was in Iran to attend the swearing-in ceremony for the country’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
The Revolutionary Guards said the cause of his death was under investigation and would be announced soon.
Hamas later said Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike and blamed Israel.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the death, but Israel had vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of Hamas after the group attacked Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.
More than 39,360 Palestinians have since been killed and more than 90,900 injured since the war began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
