Silence from Israel and the US // A bodyguard was also killed // They warn that his death will not go unpunished
▲ Palestinian leader Ismail Haniyeh, in the Rafah refugee camp, in a 2006 photo.Afp Photo
AFP, AP, Reuters and Sputnik
The newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, July 31, 2024, p. 27
Tehran. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed today in Tehran along with one of his bodyguards, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the Palestinian Islamist movement reported, which blamed Israel for the attack.
Hamas said Haniyeh was killed “in a Zionist airstrike on his residence in Tehran, after he participated in the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
Hamas declares brother leader Ismail Haniyeh a martyr before the great Palestinian people and the peoples of the Arab and Islamic nations and all the free peoples of the worlda statement said.
Another leader of the Islamist group warned that the murder will not go unpunished.
The residence of Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Hamas, was attacked in Tehran and as a result of this incident he and one of his bodyguards were martyred.the Revolutionary Guard detailed.
Haniyeh, 62, took part in talks to reach a ceasefire with Israel and end the war that began after Hamas’s incursion into Israeli territory on October 7 that left 1,200 dead and 250 hostages. Tel Aviv responded with an offensive that has so far caused the deaths of 39,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians.
At the time of writing, Israel had not commented on Haniyeh’s killing.
The US government also made no comment on the death of the Palestinian leader.
Iran launched some 300 drones and ballistic missiles at Israel on April 13 in retaliation for an attack on its consulate in Syria that killed 16 people.
Haniyeh was elected head of Hamas’ political bureau in 2017; he served as Palestinian prime minister in 2006 after the Islamist movement won an election.
He left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and lived in exile between Turkey and Qatar, maintaining good relations with leaders of other Palestinian factions.
He joined the Islamist movement in 1987, when it was founded during the first intifada against the Israeli occupation, which lasted until 1993.
Iran has made support for the Palestinian cause a central focus of its foreign policy since the Islamic revolution in 1979.
In April, Israeli airstrikes killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren, with Haniyeh insisting their deaths would not affect the ongoing ceasefire or hostage negotiations.
Thousands return to Khan Yunis
Thousands of Palestinians returned to their homes in the ruins of Khan Younis, the main city in southern Gaza, on Tuesday after Israeli forces ended an incursion they said was aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping.
Palestinian health authorities said rescue teams had so far recovered 42 Palestinian bodies following the week-long Israeli incursion into eastern Khan Younis.
On the other hand, since the beginning of this war, the number of hepatitis sufferers in the Gaza Strip has increased from 85 to almost 40 thousand, with children being the most vulnerable population, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA).
That is not the only health challenge. Doctors are battling more than 103,000 cases of lice and scabies and 65,000 cases of skin rashes, according to the World Health Organization. In Gaza – home to some 2.3 million people – more than a million cases of acute respiratory infections have been reported since the conflict began on October 7, along with more than half a million cases of acute diarrhea and more than 100,000 cases of jaundice, according to the United Nations Development Program.