Israel’s defense minister has admitted for the first time that Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.
Israel Katz made the comments in a speech in which he vowed to target the leaders of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement, which has fired rockets and drones at Israel.
Haniyeh was killed in an attack widely attributed to Israel at a building where he was staying in the Iranian capital.
Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said some progress had been made toward agreeing a ceasefire in Gaza with Hamas, but he could not provide a timeline for when an agreement would be reached.
This came after a senior Palestinian official told the BBC Talks between Hamas and Israel were 90% completebut the core questions remained.
In his speech, Katz said Israel would “take tough action against the Houthis” and “decapitate” their leadership.
“Just as we did with Haniyeh, (Yahya) Sinwar and (Hassan) Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon, we will do so in Hodeida and Sanaa,” he said, referring to Hezbollah and Hamas groups. Leaders who were all killed this year.
Haniyeh, 62, was widely seen as Hamas’ top leader and played a key role in negotiating a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
After his killing, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, its leader in Gaza and a key architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, as the group’s overall leader.
Sinwar was killed by the Israeli military in a random clash in Gaza in October and the group is still in the process of selecting a new leader.
Hassan Nasrallah was now the leader of the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah – it was him murdered in Beirut in September as Israel dramatically escalated its military campaign against Hezbollah, which has engaged in almost daily cross-border shelling since the day after the October 7 attacks.
The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group that controls northwest Yemen, began attacks on Israeli and international ships in the Red Sea shortly after Israel began targeting Hamas in Gaza last October.
The group has vowed to continue until the war in Gaza ends.
On Saturday, the Israeli military announced its attempt to shoot down the bomb a projectile fired from Yemen were unsuccessful and the rocket hit a park in Tel Aviv. A Houthi spokesman said the group hit a military target with a hypersonic missile.
Last week, Israel launched attacks against what it said were Houthi military targets. Impact on ports and energy infrastructure in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The US and Britain have also struck Houthi targets as part of an operation to protect international shipping.
In October last year, Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
In response, Israel launched a military campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza that lasted more than a year and killed 45,317 people in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health.
That figure includes 58 people killed by Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, Hamas officials said. Local medical officials said at least 11 people were killed in three separate attacks on the al-Mawasi area, which had been designated a “safe zone” by the Israeli military. Israel said it was targeting a Hamas militant.
On Monday, Israel said three of its soldiers had been killed in the northern Gaza Strip.
Humanitarian organizations and human rights groups have warned of a catastrophic situation for the civilian population in Gaza.
On Sunday, Oxfam said only 12 trucks had distributed food and water in northern Gaza over the past two and a half months, blaming the Israeli military for “deliberate delays and systematic obstructions.”
“In three of these, the school where the people were staying was evacuated and shelled within hours of the delivery of food and water,” Oxfam added.
Israeli authorities said the report “deliberately and inaccurately ignores” Israel’s “extensive humanitarian efforts in the northern Gaza Strip.”
Israel insisted that certain shipments “including food, water and medical supplies” had been sent to northern areas of the Gaza Strip, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia, where the Israeli military has reportedly been conducting a military operation for several months, targeting Hamas. Apart from fighters who had regrouped there.
The Oxfam report follows human rights groups Amnesty accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza And Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel of committing “genocide.” by deliberately denying Palestinian civilians in Gaza access to water.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry described the Amnesty report as “completely false and based on lies,” while Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Human Rights Watch was “once again spreading its blood libels…The truth is the complete opposite of HRW’s lies.” .
