Iranians turned out to mourn Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh yesterday, a day after he was assassinated in Iran’s capital in an attack that has heightened fears of a direct conflict between Tehran and Israel.
Iranian state TV broadcast live images of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leading prayers at Haniyeh’s funeral at Tehran University, where thousands of mourners dressed in black chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
His body would be flown to Qatar, where Haniyeh was usually based, for burial today.
Photo: West Asia News Agency via Reuters
“Rest in peace, Abu al-Abed Ismail Haniyeh. Our nation, Iran, the Axis of Resistance, your people, your fighters ... are united in the choice of resistance to end the Zionist occupation,” Hamas deputy chief in Gaza Khalil al-Hayya said in a televised speech.
The Axis of Resistance is an alliance built over four decades of Iranian support to resist Israeli and US influence in the Middle East.
Iran and the Palestinian militant group have accused Israel of carrying out the strike that killed Haniyeh hours after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran on Wednesday.
However, Israeli officials have not claimed responsibility for the attack that drew threats of revenge on Israel and fueled further concern that the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza was turning into an all-out war in the Middle East.
Hamas’ armed wing in a statement said that Haniyeh’s killing would “take the battle to new dimensions and have major repercussions.”
Vowing to retaliate, Iran declared three days of national mourning on Wednesday and said the US bore responsibility because of its support for Israel.
The Axis includes Hamas, the Palestinian group that ignited the war in Gaza by attacking Israel on Oct. 7 last year, the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, the Houthi movement in Yemen, and various Shiite armed groups in Iraq and Syria.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said that the US was “not aware of or involved in” the killing of Haniyeh.
“This is something we were not aware of or involved in,” Blinken said, according to a transcript shared by his staff from an interview with Channel News Asia in Singapore.
The Israeli military yesterday said that it has confirmed that the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, was killed in an airstrike in Gaza last month.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
Meanwhile, two al-Jazeera journalists were killed on Wednesday in an Israeli strike in Gaza, the Qatar-based channel reported as war rages in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas.
“Al-Jazeera Arabic journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Refee have been killed in an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip,” the network reported, adding that the strike “targeted a car near the Aidia area, west of Gaza City.”
Al-Jazeera has been the focus of months of criticism from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.
In January, Israel said an al-Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer killed in an airstrike in Gaza were “terror operatives.”
The following month, it accused another journalist with the channel who was wounded in a separate strike of being a “deputy company commander” with Hamas.
Al-Jazeera has fiercely denied Israel’s allegations and accused it of systematically targeting al-Jazeera employees in the Gaza Strip.
Its bureau chief in Gaza, Wael al-Dahdouh, was wounded in an Israeli strike in December last year that killed the network’s cameraman.
His wife, two of their children and a grandson were killed in the bombardment of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp in October last year.
His eldest son was the al-Jazeera staff journalist killed in January when a strike targeted a car in Rafah.
Additional reporting by AP
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
RSS