Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in Iran, militant group says

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ top leader in exile who landed on Israel’s hit list after the militant group staged its surprise Oct. 7 attacks, was killed in an airstrike in the Iranian capital early Wednesday. He was 62.

Hamas said Haniyeh was killed at his residence in Tehran in an Israeli airstrike after he attended the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s new president. Israel has not commented on the accusation.

Haniyeh’s death would make him the latest Hamas official to be killed by Israel since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, when militants killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages.

The devastating Israel-Hamas conflict the attacks set off has become the deadliest and longest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health officials in Gaza.

While Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar is believed to have been the mastermind of the attacks, Haniyeh, head of the group’s political bureau who was seen as a more moderate force in Hamas, lauded them as a humiliating blow to Israel’s aura of invincibility.

“The Al-Aqsa flood was an earthquake that struck the heart of the Zionist entity and has made major changes at the world level,” Haniyeh said in a speech in Iran during the funeral of late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in May.

“We will continue the resistance against this enemy until we liberate our land, all our land,” Haniyeh said.

Hours after the Oct. 7 attacks, Haniyeh appeared in a video released by Hamas leading prayers with other top Hamas officials. They thanked God for the success of the attack, which blasted through Israel’s vaunted defenses and resulted in the deadliest assault in Israel’s history.

Michael Milshtein, a Hamas expert at Tel Aviv University, said Haniyeh had a