Iran, allies vow revenge after killing of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders

Iran and its regional allies have vowed retaliation for the deaths of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, raising regional tensions as mourners filled Tehran’s city center calling for revenge.

A public funeral was held for Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, where he was killed on Wednesday in an attack that Israel has not commented on.

Haniyeh’s body was then transported to Qatar, where he resided and where he will be buried on Friday, as his group called for a “day of furious fury” in the Palestinian territories and across the region.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, speaking at the funeral of the Lebanese group’s top military commander, said Israel and “those behind this must await our inevitable response” to the murders of Fuad Shukr and Haniyeh just hours apart.

“You don’t know which red lines you have crossed,” Nasrallah said, addressing Israel, a day after Shukr was killed in an attack south of Beirut.

Israel, which said Shukr’s killing was a response to last week’s deadly rocket fire on the annexed Golan Heights, warned its adversaries on Thursday that they would “pay a very high price” for any “aggression.”

“Israel is at a very high level of preparedness for any scenario, both defensive and offensive,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

“Those who attack us, we will attack in return.”

A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that Iranian officials met in Tehran on Wednesday with representatives of the so-called “axis of resistance”, a loose alliance of groups hostile to Israel backed by Tehran, to discuss their next steps.

“Two scenarios were discussed: a simultaneous response from Iran and its allies or a staggered response from each party,” said the source who was briefed on the meeting, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The leader of Yemen’s Huthi rebels, supported by Iran, promised a “military response” to Israel’s “major escalation”.

Analysts told AFP that retaliation would be measured to avoid a wider conflagration.

Iran and the groups it supports “will very likely try to avoid a war, while at the same time strongly dissuading Israel from continuing with this new policy, this targeted shock and amazement,” said Amal Saad, a Hezbollah researcher and professor at Britain’s Cardiff University. .

In Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh, having previously threatened “severe punishment” for his death.

– ‘Thundering marches’ –

Crowds, including women dressed in black, carried Haniyeh posters and Palestinian flags in a procession and ceremony that began at Tehran University, an AFP correspondent reported.

Senior Iranian officials including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guard chief General Hossein Salami attended the ceremony, state television footage showed.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced the day before that Haniyeh and a bodyguard were killed in a pre-dawn attack Wednesday on his accommodation in Tehran.

However, the New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources including two Iranian officials, that the explosion was caused by an explosive device planted several months ago.

When asked about the report, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told journalists that “there was no other Israeli airstrike… in the entire Middle East” on the night of Shukr’s assassination.

Haniyeh, based in Qatar, was visiting Tehran for Pezeshkian’s inauguration on Tuesday.

Pezeshkian said Iran “will continue to support the axis of resistance with greater determination,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

The Qatar-based Al Jazeera network reported that the plane carrying Haniyeh’s body landed in Doha, where the Palestinian leader will be buried after prayers at the largest mosque in the Qatari capital.

Hamas called in a statement for a day of protests on Friday.

“Let thunderous marches of anger begin in every mosque,” ​​he said.

– Regional tensions –

The international community called for calm and focus on securing a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip – which Haniyeh accused Israel of obstructing.

US President Joe Biden said on Thursday he was “very concerned” about rising tensions in the region, adding that Haniyeh’s killing “didn’t help” the situation.

The White House said Biden spoke by phone with Netanyahu on Thursday, promising to defend Israel’s security “against all threats from Iran.”

“We have the basis for a ceasefire. He should move forward and they should move forward now,” Biden told reporters after the call.

Qatar’s prime minister, the main mediator of the ceasefire, said Haniyeh’s murder had thrown into doubt the entire process of mediating the war in Gaza.

“How can mediation be successful when one party murders the other side’s negotiator?” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said on social media site X.

The deaths are the latest in several major incidents that have inflamed regional tensions during the Gaza war, which has drawn Iranian-backed militant groups into Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

Israel promised to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The militants also captured 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 who the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,480 people in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-administered territory, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)