Hamas observes first anniversary of Haniyeh’s killing in Tehran

Hamas observed the first anniversary of the killing of its leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was targeted on July 31 in an Israeli strike on Tehran, just hours after attending the oath-taking ceremony of Iran's new President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Palestinian group described the killing as a “treacherous and cowardly Zionist crime” in the form of a cross-border assassination last year. 

“It is a matter of loyalty to the martyr leader Ismail Haniyeh that we continue to affirm his call to our people, our nation, and free people around the world, to make the third of August of each year a global national day to support Gaza, Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa, and the prisoners, and to continue the movement until the war of extermination and starvation against our people in the Gaza Strip stops, until the occupation is expelled from all our land, and until our people achieve their freedom,” the long statement published on Telegram said.

Read: Israel pubilcly admits for first time to killing Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran

Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in 2017 as a successor to Khaled Meshal. Besides this, he had a background experience of serving as the Prime Minister of Palestine in 2006.

Haniyeh was considered a pragmatist, as he’d maintained good diplomatic relations with Iran, Turkiye, Qatar, and even with various Palestinian factions, including rivals to Hamas.

He joined Hamas in 1987 when the militant group was founded amid the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation, which lasted until 1993.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed to eliminate the Palestinian resistance group and bring back all Israeli hostages that had been captured by Hamas after its October 7 attack.