GAZA: Palestinian resistance group Hamas named Gaza Strip chief Yahya Sinwar as its new political leader on Tuesday, a week after his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran which has sent regional tensions soaring.
“The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas announces the selection of leader Yahya Sinwar as the head of the political bureau of the movement,” a statement from the Palestinian group said.
Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran last week in an alleged Israeli strike.
Yahya Sinwar has not made any public appearances since the Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel. Haniyeh’s assassination in an alleged Israeli strike has heightened regional tensions with Iran warning of strong retaliation.
Iran on Monday said it has the “legal right” to retaliate to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh. “No one has the right to doubt Iran’s legal right to punish the Zionist regime”, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani told a regular news briefing, referring to Israel.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Israel killed Haniyeh using a short-range projectile launched from outside his residence in Tehran. Haniyeh was in Iran to attend the oath-taking ceremony of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Israel has not directly commented on the assassination, which came just hours after the killing of Hezbollah’s military chief Fuad Shukr in an Israeli strike on Beirut.
Calls for de-escalation have soared after the high-profile killings, with global powers fearing an all-out regional war.
Nasser Kanani on Monday said: “We believe the consolidation of stability and security in the region will be achieved by punishing the aggressor and creating a deterrent against the adventurous behaviour and extraterritorial terrors of the Zionist regime”.
Israeli military has killed at least 39,653 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7, the Health Ministry in Gaza reported on Tuesday.
