Israel, which has in recent years carried out a number of high-profile assassinations in Iran and elsewhere, has not yet commented on Haniyeh’s killing. In 2004, Israel carried out an airstrike in Gaza killing Hamas’ then-leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi. The same year, it assassinated one of the militant group’s founders, Ahmed Yassin, in Gaza City.
Haniyeh’s alleged assassination came only hours after the Israel Defense Forces claimed they killed senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur in an airstrike on the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Tuesday. The IDF said it had targeted the commander responsible for a rocket attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday that struck a football pitch, killing 12 people, including children.
Washington and European capitals fear the tensions could quickly snowball into a regional conflict. Leaders and officials in France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. have been reaching out to counterparts in Lebanon, Israel and Iran to forestall a wider regional war.
The stakes are particularly high for Paris and Rome, which have hundreds of troops stationed in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
