• Hamas says its political chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli missile attack in Iran’s capital, Tehran.
• The strike drew threats of revenge and stoked further fears of a wider escalation in Israel’s war on Gaza.
• Hezbollah has confirmed the death of its military commander Fouad Shukr, targeted by Israel yesterday in a strike on Beirut.
• Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and camera operator Rami al-Refee have been killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza.
• At least 39,445 people have been killed and 91,073 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 and more than 200 were taken captive.

“We promise you that we will not cede a single part of Palestine, we will not cede Jerusalem, we will continue to fight and we will not lay down our arms”.

Ismail Haniyeh

‘Decades of assassinations unable to thwart Palestinian resistance’

Failed 2003 Israeli assassination attempt

In 2001, as the second Intifada erupted, Haniyeh consolidated his position as one of Hamas’s political leaders, along with Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, who was among the co-founders of Hamas.

In 2003, Haniyeh and Yassin escaped an assassination attempt when Israeli jets bombed an apartment block in downtown Gaza where the two men were meeting. Only six months later, Yassin, who was a quadriplegic, was targeted and killed by Israeli helicopters as he left a mosque after the early morning prayer.

In 2006, at the age of 44, Haniyeh led Hamas to a legislative election victory over the fatah movement, which had been in power for more than a decade.

“Don’t be afraid,” Haniyeh told the BBC in 2006. “Hamas is a Palestinian movement, it is an aware and mature movement, one which is politically open in the Palestinian arena, and to its Arab and Islamic hinterland, and similarly open to the international arena.”