RIYADH: Palestinian Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in Iran, the group said.
Iranian state television announced the killings Wednesday morning.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement that Haniya and a security guard were ambushed in their residence and that an investigation was underway.
Haniyeh, who was the head of the political office of the Hamas Islamist resistance group, traveled to Iran to attend the inauguration of reformist President Masoud Pezekian.
The 62-year-old Palestinian leader had earlier met with Pezeshqian and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The assassination of Brother Haniyeh by the Israeli occupation is a major escalation aimed at undermining the will of Hamas and our people and achieving false goals. We are confident that this escalation will not achieve its goals,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official.
“Hamas is a concept, an institution, not a person. Hamas will continue on this path despite the sacrifices, and we are confident that we will win.”
“Targeting Ismail Haniyeh is a heinous terrorist crime and a blatant violation of the law and ideals,” said Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen's Houthi minority.
Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas since it attacked a settlement on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking hostages to Palestinian territory.
Since Israel launched its devastating military offensive in the Gaza Strip, it has killed more than 40,000 people, mostly civilians.
Both sides have been trying to negotiate a hostage release agreement that would include a ceasefire, with help from the United States and local negotiators.
The assassination comes amid rising hostilities between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah, which was blamed for an attack on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights over the weekend that killed 12 children.
On Tuesday night, Israel said it had killed Fuad Shukr, the head of Hezbollah's military operations office, in an airstrike on a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon. Israel has claimed Shukr was responsible for the Golan Heights attack, a claim Hezbollah denies.
Israel, which has yet to comment on Haniya's killing, has previously assassinated key figures in Iran's nuclear program.
In 2021, Israel assassinated Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
But since the war in Gaza, Israel has been carrying out attacks targeting key figures in Hamas and the IRGC, including the Palestinian militant group's leader, Saleh al-Arouri.
In April, Iran said its consulate in Damascus had been destroyed and a senior general killed in an attack that Tehran blamed on Israel.
Iran soon launched a barrage of missiles at Israel, but they were all shot down. Israel retaliated by attacking the base in Isfahan.
Although diplomacy prevented further escalation of the conflict between the two sides, Israel continued its attacks on Iranian-linked targets in Syria.
The International Court of Justice has condemned the scale of Israel's military response to Hamas attacks, agreeing that the country may have been complicit in acts of genocide.
Israel has also been accused of using collective punishment and starvation as weapons in its fight against armed groups.
