Tag: Ismail Haniyeh

DUBAI – A ship in the Red Sea came under attack at least three times Tuesday in an assault that included the use of a bomb-carrying drone boat, likely the latest in a campaign by Yemen’s Houthi rebels over the Israel-Hamas war, officials said.

The attacks come as the rebels’ main sponsor, Iran, weighs possible retaliation against Israel over the assassination of Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh in July, which has renewed fears of a wider regional war in the Middle East.

Already, the Houthi assaults have disrupted the $1 trillion annual flow of goods through the maritime route crucial to trade among Asia, Europe and the Middle East, while also sparking the most intense combat for the U.S. Navy since World War II.

The ship was first attacked as an explosive was detonated near it, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said. Then a small vessel “acting suspiciously” flashed a light near the ship and came close, actions that were followed by a second blast, the UKMTO said.

The private security firm Ambrey similarly reported the attacks, saying the ship saw “two ‘close-proximity’ explosions.”

The third attack happened hours later Tuesday, some 180 kilometers (110 miles) northwest of the Houthi-held port city Hodeida, the UKMTO said. A drone boat attacked the vessel but “was successfully disabled,” it added. Armed private security forces on vessels have begun opening fire on the drones to detonate the explosives onboard.

Ambrey said the same ship was targeted in all three attacks.

The Houthis have not claimed the assault, though sometimes they wait days to do so, and other times have claimed attacks that don’t appear to have happened.

The Houthis have targeted more than 70 vessels with missiles and drones since the start of the war in Gaza in October. They have seized one vessel and sunk two in the campaign that has killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have been either intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets.

The rebels maintain that they have targeted ships linked to Israel, the United States or the U.K. to force an end to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.

The Houthis have also launched drones and missiles toward Israel, including an attack on July 19 that killed one person and wounded 10 others in Tel Aviv. Israel responded the next day with airstrikes on the Houthi-held port city of Hodeida that hit fuel depots and electrical stations, killing and wounding a number of people, the rebels say.

After the strikes, the Houthis paused their attacks until Aug. 3, when they hit a Liberian-flagged container ship traveling through the Gulf of Aden. A Liberian-flagged oil tanker came under a particularly intense series of attacks beginning Aug. 8 likely carried out by the rebels.

As Iran threatens to retaliate over Haniyeh, the U.S. military has told the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to sail more quickly to the area. America also has ordered the the USS Georgia guided missile submarine into the Mideast, while the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier strike group had been in the Gulf of Oman. Additional F-22 fighter jets have flown into the region, while the USS Wasp, a large amphibious assault ship carrying F-35 fighter jets, is in the Mediterranean Sea.

TEHRAN – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday vowed revenge on Israel over the killing of Hamas’ political chief.

Khamenei said Israel “prepared a harsh punishment for itself” after Ismail Haniyeh was killed in a predawn airstrike in the Iranian capital Tehran.

“We consider his revenge as our duty,” Khamenei said in a statement on his official website, saying Haniyeh was ”a dear guest in our home.”

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by a predawn airstrike in the Iranian capital Wednesday, Iran and the militant group said, blaming Israel for a shock assassination that risks escalating the conflict even as the U.S. and other nations were scrambling to prevent an all-out regional war.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The strike came just after Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran, Iran said.

The dramatic predawn killing of Hamas’s top political leader threatened to reverberate on multiple fronts. The blow of striking Haniyeh in Tehran could trigger direct retaliation against Israel by Iran. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed his country would “defend its territory” and make the attackers “regret their cowardly action.”

The two bitter regional rivals had an unprecedented exchange of strikes on each other’s soil in April after Israel hit Iran’s embassy in Damascus, but international efforts succeeded in containing that cycle of retaliation before it spun out of control. An influential Iranian parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy was to hold an emergency meeting on the strike later Wednesday.

Hamas could pull out of negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal in the 10-month-old war in Gaza, which U.S. mediators had said were making progress.

And the killing could enflame already heightening tensions between Israel and Iran’s powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah — which international diplomats were trying to contain after a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Hours before the Tehran strike, Israel carried out a rare strike in the Lebanese capital on Tuesday that it said killed a top Hezbollah commander allegedly behind the rocket strike. Hezbollah, which denied any role in the Golan strike, said Wednesday that it was still searching for the body of Fouad Shukur in the rubble of the building that was hit in a Beirut suburb that is the group’s stronghold.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House to the killing of Haniyeh.

Asked by reporters in Manila about the Tehran strike, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he had no “additional information to provide.” But he expressed hope for a diplomatic solution on the Israeli-Lebanon border.

“I don’t think that war is inevitable,” he said. “I maintain that. I think there’s always room and opportunity for diplomacy, and I’d like to see parties pursue those opportunities.”

An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment. Israel often doesn’t comment on assassinations carried out by its Mossad intelligence agency or strikes on other countries. It has repeatedly vowed to eliminate Hamas leaders wherever they are for the Oct. 7 attack in which Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage.

Iranian media showed videos of Haniyeh and the Iranian president hugging after Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony Tuesday. Hours later, the strike hit a residence Haniyeh uses in Tehran, killing him, Hamas said in a statement.

It quoted a past speech by Haniyeh in which he said the Palestinian cause has “costs” and “we are ready for these costs: martyrdom for the sake of Palestine, and for the sake of God Almighty, and for the sake of the dignity of this nation.”

Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, said Haniyeh’s killing won’t impact the group, saying Israel was “spreading chaos and evil” in the region.

“The occupation will not succeed in achieving its goals,” he told The Associated Press, adding that Hamas emerged stronger after past crises and assassinations of its leaders.

Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and had lived in exile in Qatar. The top Hamas leader in Gaza is Yehya Sinwar, who masterminded the Oct. 7 attack.

Taher al-Nounou, Haniyeh’s press adviser, told Al-Jazeera TV, “This is a turning point for the conflict.” He said Israel and “those who stand with it — and by this we mean the United States” will bear responsibility.

In the West Bank, the internationally backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Haniyeh’s killing, calling it a “cowardly act and dangerous development.” Political factions in the occupied territory called for strikes in protest at the killing.

In April, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren.

In an interview with the Al Jazeera satellite channel at the time, Haniyeh said the killings would not pressure Hamas into softening its positions amid ongoing cease-fire negotiations with Israel.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of Iranian-backed militias, said that a strike Tuesday night on a base southwest of Baghdad killed four members of the Kataib Hezbollah militia.

The group accused the United States of being behind the strike. Kataib Hezbollah, along with some of the other militias, has in recent months carried out attacks against bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. U.S. officials did not immediately comment.

Israel is suspected of running a yearslong assassination campaign targeting Iranian nuclear scientists and others associated with its atomic program. In 2020, a top Iranian military nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun while traveling in a car outside Tehran.

In Israel’s war against Hamas since the October attack, more than 39,360 Palestinians have been killed and more than 90,900 wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

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Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, David Rising in Bangkok, and Jon Gambrell in Ubud, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

Hamas says its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, has left Egypt after holding talks with Egyptian officials about a possible cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and an exchange of hostages held by the militants for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

During Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, militants killed about 1,200 people and took some 250 hostages. Roughly half of the hostages were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November. About 100 hostages remain in captivity, in addition to the bodies of 30 others who were killed on Oct. 7 or died in captivity.

European diplomats have ramped up calls for a cease-fire as alarm grows over the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Currently:

— Mideast cease-fire efforts gain steam as a U.S. envoy visits. Mediators report ‘encouraging’ signs.

— Denmark records its highest number of antisemitic incidents since WWII, part of a grim European trend.

— A Houthi rebel attack sets a cargo ship ablaze and forces Israel to intercept another attack near Eilat.

— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

Here’s the latest:

ISRAEL AIMS TO BUILD 3,300 NEW HOUSES IN SETTLEMENTS IN THE OCCUPIED WEST BANK

JERUSALEM — Israel plans to approve the construction of more than 3,300 new homes in settlements in the occupied West Bank, a senior Cabinet minister from the far-right wing of the government announced.

Approval of new construction is bound to elicit condemnation from the United States at a time when the relationship between the allies is fraught because of disagreements over the course of Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a statement late Thursday that the new construction is meant as a response to a fatal Palestinian shooting attack near Jerusalem earlier in the day. He said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant participated in the discussion leading to the decision.

The homes are to be built in the settlements of Maale Adumim, Efrat and Kedar, Smotrich said.

Consecutive Israeli governments have expanded settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank — war-won territories the Palestinians seek for a future state. Construction has accelerated under Netanyahu’s current right-wing government, which includes settlers such as Smotrich in key positions.

2 HEZBOLLAH MEMBERS ARE KILLED IN AN ISRAELI STRIKE ON A SOUTHERN BORDER VILLAGE IN LEBANON

BEIRUT — The paramedics arm of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group says two of its members were killed in an Israeli strike on a southern border village early Friday.

The Islamic Health Society identified the two as Hussein Khalil and Mohammed Ismail, saying they were killed when the group’s office in the village of Blida was directly hit.

The strike came a day after an Israeli airstrike on the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Rumman killed two members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, including a local official who was identified as Hassan Saleh

Since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, the Lebanon-Israel border has been witnessing daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli troops. Since then, nearly 200 Hezbollah fighters and at least 40 civilians have been killed.

ISRAEL SAYS THE MAN IT KILLED IN THE WEST BANK WAS ABOUT TO CARRY OUT AN ATTACK

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says a Palestinian killed by a drone strike in the occupied West Bank was a member of the militant group Islamic Jihad and was about to carry out a shooting attack.

The strike late Thursday hit a car driven by Yasser Hanoun, a resident of the Jenin refugee camp, the army said. It alleged that Hanoun was previously involved in several shooting attacks targeting Israeli settlements and army posts.

Violence has escalated in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, triggered by a deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7.

Since then, about 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank, most as part of near-daily arrest raids by troops searching for suspected militants.

NETANYAHU PUBLISHES DETAILS OF HIS PLAN FOR POSTWAR GAZA

JERUSALEM — Israel will control security in a demilitarized Gaza Strip and play a role in civilian affairs after its war on Hamas ends, according to a plan Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu submitted to his Cabinet for approval.

While lacking specifics, the plan marks the first time he has presented a formal postwar vision. Netanyahu’s insistence on an open-ended Israeli role in running Gaza runs counter to key U.S. proposals for a revitalized Palestinian autonomous government eventually governing both Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a precursor to statehood.

The plan, published by the prime minister’s office, was presented to Cabinet ministers late Thursday. It reiterates that Israel is determined to crush Hamas, the militant group that overran the Gaza Strip in 2007. Polls have indicated that a majority of Palestinians don’t support Hamas, but that the group has deep roots in Palestinian society. Critics say Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas is unattainable.

It calls for freedom of action for Israel’s military across Gaza after the war to thwart any security threat and says Israel would establish a buffer zone inside Gaza — likely to provoke U.S. objections.

The plan also envisions Gaza being governed by local officials who it says would “not be identified with countries or entities that support terrorism and will not receive payment from them.”

It’s not clear if any Palestinians would agree to fill such sub-contractor roles. Over the past decades, Israel has repeatedly tried and failed to set up hand-picked local Palestinian governing bodies.

HAMAS LEADER LEAVES EGYPT AFTER HOLDING TALKS WITH EGYPTIAN OFFICIALS OVER A POSSIBLE CEASE-FIRE

BEIRUT — Hamas says its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, has left Egypt after holding talks with Egyptian officials about a possible cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and an exchange of hostages held by the militants for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

The statement released early Friday by Hamas did not say whether Haniyeh’s talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel about ways of ending the war, a hostage deal and the flow of aid to Gaza were successful or led to a breakthrough.

The talks in Cairo came ahead of a high-level meeting expected over the weekend in Paris, where international mediators will present a new proposal. The United States, Egypt and Qatar have been struggling for weeks to find a formula that could halt Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza, but now face an unofficial deadline as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches.

Israel seeks a phased deal, including a temporary pause in fighting in exchange for the release of some of the roughly 100 hostages still held by militants since the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel. Israel has vowed to keep fighting until Hamas is crushed.

Hamas initially demanded to end the war, now in its fifth month, before hostages can be released. Hamas has said that it would release the Israeli hostages in return for the all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel rejected that demand, and mediators have been working on a new deal.