DUBAI, August 3. /TASS/. Tehran blames Israel for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of the Palestinian movement Hamas, and plans to take revenge "at the appropriate time," Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement following an investigation.
"The reckless and terrorist Zionist regime (the State of Israel - TASS) will answer for this crime and will be severely punished at the appropriate time and place, and in the appropriate way," the Tasnim news agency quoted the statement as saying.
The Hamas leader was killed by a short-range projectile with a 7-kilogram warhead, which caused a powerful blast outside the guesthouse where he was staying, the IRGC said, adding that Israel had organized Haniyeh’s assassination with support from the US government.
On July 31, the Palestinian movement Hamas reported Haniyeh's death in an Israeli strike on his residence in Tehran, where he had attended the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The Al Hadath TV channel reported that Haniyeh had been killed in a direct missile strike. Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau, vowed that Haniyeh’s killing would not go unanswered.