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A DEADLY rocket flew through a hotel window and blew up the political leader of Hamas as he slept.
Ismail Haniyeh was traced by Israeli spies as he attended the inauguration for the new Iranian president in Tehran.
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He flashed the peace sign and sat with a crowd chanting “death to Israel” just hours his rival assassinated him and met Iran’s supreme leader.
Now fears of a fresh Middle East war are rising as the hit sparked extreme fury among allies and regional players.
Israel’s secretive Shin Bet intelligence arm discovered exactly which room Haniyeh was sleeping in, with scores of others also in the block.
A guided missile was then fired through the window of his room in a Tehran military veterans building and detonated inside, killing him and his aide instantly at around 2am.
The missile was fired from a nearby building, Sky News Arabia reported.
Other Hamas officials were reportedly staying in the guesthouse on a different floor – including the Secretary-General of Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad.
Mossad assassins could easily have taken the terror chief out as he led ceasefire talks in Qatar.
But Israel chose to watch and wait until he set foot on the territory of arch enemy Iran for an important occasion.
Crowds at the ceremony chanted “death to America” and “death to Israel” as new president Masoud Pezeshkian vowed to never give in to “bullying and pressure”.
Israel is yet to claim responsibility for the killing, but Hamas, Iran, and other regional players all pinned it on the country.
It is also not clear what kind of precision missile was used, but Iran claimed it had not been fired from their territory.
Other reports also say the bomb could have been attached to a drone.
The move was intended to limit political fallout – but sparked vows of Iranian revenge within hours.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed Iran had a “duty to avenge” the death and promised “severely punish the Zionist Entity”.
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AlamyWhile Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard pledged a “harsh and painful response” after the assassination crossed a “red line”.
Haniyeh, who lives in Qatar, has been the tough-talking face of Hamas’ international diplomacy as the group has held on to Israeli hostages in tunnels below Gaza.
His death makes him the latest and highest-ranking Hamas official to be killed by Israel since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks.
The assassination followed a Hezbollah strike on Saturday evening fired from Lebanon that hit a Druze village in Golan Heights, an area occupied by Israel.
Some 12 young people, including children, were killed as the rocket hit a football pitch.
Israel’s foreign minister told Channel 12 then that “Hezbollah has crossed all the red lines here, and the response will reflect that”.
He warned: “We are nearing the moment in which we face an all-out war.”
Then just hours before Hamas leader Haniyeh was killed on Monday, Hezbollah’s most senior military commander Fuad Shukr was taken out by a “targeted” Israeli strike.
Chilling reaction to sons' deaths
Earlier this year, Haniyeh gave a chilling reaction after being told his three sons and four grandchildren were reportedly killed in an airstrike.
Video showed Haniyeh playing with his hands and staring at the floor before carrying on with his day.
He claimed the deaths of his sons Hazem, Amir, and Mohammed were by the Israeli air force.
He also said in an interview with Al Jazeera that four of his grandchildren were killed – three granddaughters and one grandson.
Haniyeh said the death of his family wouldn’t pressure the group into softening its ceasefire negotiations with Israel.
“The enemy believes that by targeting the families of the leaders, it will push them to give up the demands of our people,” he said.
“Anyone who believes that targeting my sons will push Hamas to change its position is delusional…The blood of my sons is not dearer than the blood of our people.”
But Haniyeh said more than 60 of his wider family members had been killed in the war.
Iran warned that any military “adventures” by Israel in Lebanon could spark “unforeseen consequences”.
But Israel appears to have not waited for a reply and brazenly struck their enemies again on their own soil.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the attack escalated the “war in Gaza to a regional level”.
“If the international community does not take action to stop Israel, our region will face much larger conflicts.”
Turkey’s comments come days after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to invade Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the country’s security chiefs at 10am UK time in response to the killing.
Israel has not officially attacked Iran since April when it blew up an air defence system in a tit-for-tat exchange with the Islamic Republic.
That strike followed Iran attacking Israel with more than 300 missiles and drones – the first ever direct attack from Iran to Israel.
Analysts previously told The Sun that Iran’s network of bloodthirsty proxy groups across the region are “primed and ready” to spark a second front in the ongoing conflict.
Some 35,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the months since the October 7 massacre which saw Hamas kill 1,200 people in Israel.
Out of 250 Israelis taken hostage, many are still in Gaza and around a third are presumed dead.
Who was Ismail Haniyeh?
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Haniyeh, one of the founding members of the terror group, unflinchingly represented the bloodthirsty clan for decades, even past the death of his own children.
The 62-year-old was responsible for running Hamas’ political operations from Doha, Qatar’s capital.
Born in a refugee camp in northern Gaza, he lead the group through several wars with Israel and served as a fundamental power player for the cult.
Over the last ten months he had been responsible for conducting ceasefire talks, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US.
He survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 2003, before the IDF took out his mentor – the founder of Hamas itself Sheik Ahmed Yassin – in 2004.
Standing outside a hospital in Gaza at the time, the man who would become one of Hamas’ principal leaders urged people not to cry but to focus on revenge instead.
By 2006 he was working as the leader of Hamas in Gaza, a position now held by Israel’s number one enemy – Yahya Sinwar.
He moved to Qatar in 2017 when he was named as the group’s new political leader.
The group was trying to change its image at the time as it made bids across the international stage for more influence.
Haniyeh represented the Iran-backed terror proxy in Qatar, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and Egypt.
His ruthless approach to furthering the Hamas agenda would overrule even the assassination of his own children and grandchildren years later.
In April this year an Israeli airstrike killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren.
In June, Hamas claimed his sister and her family were also killed by an Israeli strike.
Haniyeh simply said at the time: “We shall not give in, no matter the sacrifices.”
He added that he had lost dozens of family members over years of war between Hamas and Israel.
The terror boss was given news of his children’s deaths while on a hospital visit. After hearing the news, he continued to tour the building as normal.
Haniyeh spent time inside Israeli prisons in the 1980s and 1990s.
By 1988 he was among the founding members of Hamas, working under Yassin.
His assassination serves as a fundamental blow to Hamas – with leaders dubbing it a “treacherous Zionist raid” on Wednesday morning.
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AFP
An airstrike fired from Lebanon hit a football field in Israel-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday killing 12 children
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