Haniyeh\u2019s death announced day before by Iran\u2019s Revolutionary guards after he and his bodyguard killed in strike
\nTehran
\nIran held funeral processions on Thursday amidst calls for revenge after the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in a strike in Tehran blamed on Israel.
\nThe Islamic Republic\u2019s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh ahead of his burial in Qatar, having earlier threatened a \u201charsh punishment\u201d for his killing.
\nIn Tehran\u2019s city centre, thousands of mourning crowds carrying posters of Haniyeh and Palestinian flags gathered for the ceremony at Tehran University before a procession, according to an AFP correspondent.
\nHaniyeh\u2019s death was announced the day before by Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards, who said he and his bodyguard were killed in a strike on their accommodation in the Iranian capital at 2:00am on Wednesday.
\nIt came just hours after Israel targeted and killed top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in a retaliatory strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut, sending fears of a wider regional conflict soaring in the fallout from the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.
\nIsrael has declined to comment on the Tehran strike.
\nIran\u2019s state TV showed the coffins of Haniyeh and his bodyguards covered in Palestinian flags during the ceremony attended by senior Iranian officials. President Masoud Pezeshkian and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief, General Hossein Salami, were present.
\nHaniyeh had been visiting Tehran for Pezeshkian\u2019s inauguration ceremony on Tuesday.
\nSenior Hamas figure Khalil al-Hayya, the movement\u2019s foreign relations chief, vowed during the funeral ceremony that \u201cIsmail Haniyeh\u2019s slogan, \u2018We will not recognise Israel,\u2019 will remain an immortal slogan\u201d and \u201cwe will pursue Israel until it is uprooted from the land of Palestine.\u201d
\nIran\u2019s conservative parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran \u201cwill certainly carry out the supreme leader\u2019s order (to avenge Haniyeh.)\u201d \u201cIt is our duty to respond at the right time and in the right place,\u201d he said in a speech with crowds chanting \u201cDeath to Israel, Death to America!\u201d
\n\u2018Our duty\u2019
\nThe caskets, with a black-and-white pattern resembling a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, were borne on a flower-bedecked truck through leafy streets where cooling water mists sprayed the flag-waving crowds.
\nKhamenei, who has the final say in Iran\u2019s political affairs, said after Haniyeh\u2019s death that it was \u201cour duty to seek revenge for his blood as he was martyred in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran\u201d.
\nThe Islamic Republic has not yet officially published any information on the exact location of the strike.
\nPezeshkian said on Wednesday that \u201cthe Zionists (Israel) will soon see the consequences of their cowardly and terrorist act\u201d.
\nThe international community, however, called for de-escalation and a focus on securing a ceasefire in Gaza \u2014 which Haniyeh had, according to a Hamas official previously, accused Israel of obstructing.
\nUN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the strikes in Tehran and Beirut represented a \u201cdangerous escalation\u201d. All efforts, he said, should be \u201cleading to a ceasefire\u201d in Gaza and the release of hostages taken during Hamas\u2019s October 7 attack on southern Israel which began nearly 10 months of fighting.
\nThe prime minister of key ceasefire broker Qatar said Haniyeh\u2019s killing had thrown the whole mediation process into doubt. \u201cHow can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?\u201d Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said in a post on the social media site X.
\nUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday called on \u201call parties\u201d in the Middle East to \u201cstop escalatory actions.\u201d Earlier he said a ceasefire in Gaza was still the \u201cimperative\u201d, though White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the twin killings of Haniyeh and Shukr \u201cdon\u2019t help\u201d regional tensions.
\nTensions inflamed
\nWhile Iran has blamed the attack on its arch-foe, Israel has declined to comment on Haniyeh\u2019s death. It did, however, claim the killing of Shukr, whom it blamed for a weekend rocket strike that killed 12 youths in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
\nThe killings come with regional tensions already inflamed by fighting in Gaza, a conflict that has drawn in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.
\nOne of those groups, Yemen\u2019s Houthi rebels, \u201cdeclared three days of mourning\u201d for Haniyeh, with political leader Mahdi al-Mashat expressing \u201ccondolences to the Palestinian people and Hamas\u201d over his killing, according to the group\u2019s Saba news agency.
\nThe United Nations Security Council also convened an emergency meeting Wednesday at Iran\u2019s request to discuss the strike.
\nHamas has for months been indirectly negotiating a truce and hostage-prisoner exchange deal with Israel, in talks facilitated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States.
\nAnalysts told AFP that Haniyeh was a moderating influence within the Islamist group, and that while he would be replaced, the dynamics within Hamas could change.
\nIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack that ignited conflict in Gaza.
\nThat attack resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Hamas also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
\nConcern grew among Israelis over the fate of those still held in Gaza. Haniyeh\u2019s killing \u201cwas a mistake as it threatens the possibility of having a hostage deal,\u201d said Anat Noy, a resident of the coastal city of Haifa.
\nIsrael\u2019s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,445 people in Gaza, according to the territory\u2019s health ministry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haniyeh\u2019s death announced day before by Iran\u2019s Revolutionary guards after he and his bodyguard killed in strike Tehran Iran held funeral processions on Thursday amidst calls for revenge after the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in a strike in Tehran blamed on Israel. The Islamic Republic\u2019s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-422168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n