Riyadh: The Palestinian group announced that Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, was assassinated in Iran.
Iran's state television announced the murder on Wednesday morning.
In the statement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, it is stated that Haniyeh and one of the security forces were ambushed in their residence and the investigation is ongoing.
Haniyeh, who was the head of the political bureau of the Islamic resistance of Hamas, traveled to Iran to take the oath of the reformist president Masoud Mezikian.
The 62-year-old Palestinian leader had previously met with doctors and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said: This assassination by Israel, Haniyeh's brother, is a serious escalation aimed at breaking the will of Hamas and the will of our people and achieving fake goals. “We confirm that this escalation will fail to achieve its goals.”
Hamas is a concept and an institution, not a person. Hamas will continue on this path regardless of sacrifices and we are confident of victory.
Muhammad Ali al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen's Houthis, said: targeting Ismail Haniyeh is a heinous terrorist crime and a clear violation of ideal laws and values.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after the group's deadly attack on settlements outside the Gaza Strip on October 7, which killed around 1,200 people and drove hostages back into the besieged Palestinian territory.
Israel has killed more than 40,000 people, mostly civilians, in the immediate aftermath of the devastating military assault on Gaza.
Both sides have been trying to negotiate a hostage release agreement that would include a cessation of hostilities, with the help of the United States and regional negotiators.
The assassination comes amid heightened hostilities between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah, which is responsible for an attack on the Golan Heights that killed 12 children over the weekend.
On Tuesday night, Israel struck a Hezbollah base in southern Lebanon and said it had killed Fawad Shakar, head of Hezbollah's military operations room, which Israel says was responsible for the attack in the Golan Heights, a charge the Lebanese group denies.
Israel, which has yet to comment on Haniyeh's murder, has previously carried out assassinations in Iran of key figures in the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.
In 2021, Israel assassinated Iran's senior nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
But since the war in Gaza, Israel has carried out targeted attacks against key figures in Hamas and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including Saleh al-Arouri, one of the leaders of the Palestinian group.
In April, Iran said its consulate in Damascus was destroyed and a top general was killed in an attack Tehran blamed on Israel.
Immediately after Iran launched a barrage of missiles towards Israel, all of them were shot down. Israel responded by attacking places in Isfahan.
A further escalation of tensions between the two sides had been averted through diplomacy, but Israel has continued its Iranian-backed attacks in Syria.
The scale of Israel's military response to Hamas attacks has been condemned, and the International Court of Justice has agreed that the country may be engaging in acts of genocide.
Israel has also been accused of mass punishment and using starvation as a weapon in the fight against the militant group.
