Iran and its regional allies vowed to avenge the deaths of the Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, raising regional tensions and prompting mourners in Tehran’s city centre to call for revenge.
A public funeral was held for Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital where he was killed in an attack early on Wednesday that Israel has not commented on.
Haniyeh’s body was then flown to Qatar, where he was living, and will be buried on Friday, a day his group has called for a “day of fierce outrage” across the Palestinian territories and the region.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, addressing the funeral of the Lebanese group’s top military commander, said Israel and “those behind it should await our inevitable response to the killings of Fuad Shukr and Haniyya,” which occurred 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 in south Beirut.
Israel, which said Shukar’s killing was a response to last week’s deadly rocket attack on the Golan Heights, warned its opponents on Thursday they would “pay a heavy price” for any “aggression”.
“Israel is carrying out a very high level of preparation for any situation, whether defensive or offensive,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
“Whoever attacks us, we will attack them in return.”
Iranian officials met in Tehran on Wednesday with representatives of the so-called “axis of resistance”, a loose coalition of anti-Israel groups backed by Tehran, to discuss their next steps, a source close to Hezbollah told AFP.
“Two scenarios were discussed: a simultaneous response from Iran and its allies or a separate response from each side,” said a source with knowledge of the meeting who requested anonymity.
The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels vowed a “military response” to Israel’s “major aggression”.
Analysts told AFP that retaliation would be necessary to avoid a wider conflict.
Amal Saad, a Hezbollah researcher and lecturer at Cardiff University in Britain, said Iran and the groups it supports “will probably try to avoid war, while also strongly deterring Israel from continuing this new policy, this targeted shock and intimidation.”
In Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh, earlier threatening “harsh punishment” for her killing.
– ‘Roaring March’ –
The crowd, including women dressed in black, carried Haniyeh posters and Palestinian flags at the procession and ceremony that began at Tehran University, an AFP correspondent reported.
Senior Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guards chief General Hossein Salami, attended the ceremony, according to images broadcast on state television.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced a day earlier that Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed in an attack early Wednesday on his residence in Tehran.
However, the New York Times, citing unnamed sources including two Iranian officials, reported that the blast was caused by an explosive device planted several months earlier.
Asked about the report, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagar told reporters that on the night of Shukra’s killing “there were no other Israeli air strikes in the entire Middle East.”
Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, travelled to Tehran on Tuesday for Pezeshkian’s swearing-in ceremony.
Pezeshkian said Iran “will continue to support the axis of resistance with determination,” according to the official news agency IRNA.
The plane carrying Haniyya’s body has landed in Doha, where the Palestinian leader will be buried after prayers at the Qatari capital’s largest mosque, Qatar-based network Al Jazeera reported.
Hamas in a statement called for a day of protests on Friday.
It said, “A strong protest march must start from every mosque.”
– Regional Tension –
The international community has called for calm and focus on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip – a move Haniyeh alleges is being obstructed by Israel.
US President Joe Biden said late Thursday that he was “very concerned” about rising tensions in the region, adding that Haniyeh’s killing “did not help” the situation.
The White House said Biden spoke with Netanyahu by phone on Thursday and pledged to defend Israel’s security “against all threats from Iran.”
“We have the basis for a ceasefire. They should move forward on it and they should move forward on it as well,” Biden told reporters after the call.
The prime minister of Qatar, a key ceasefire mediator, said Haniyeh’s killing had cast the entire Gaza war mediation process into doubt.
“How can mediation succeed when one side kills the other side’s negotiator?” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani said on the social media site X.
The killings are the latest in a series of major incidents that have escalated regional tensions during the Gaza war, which has also involved Iran-backed militant groups from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom the military says are dead.
At least 39,480 people have been killed in Gaza in Israel’s counteroffensive against Hamas, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, though the ministry did not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
