Israel confirms assassination of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran.
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Ismail Haniyeh speaks into a microphone with a Palestinian flag in the background. Ismail Haniyeh was Hamas leader until the group confirmed his death in Iran in July
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 vowing to target leaders of the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen, which has fired missiles and drones at Israel.
Haniyeh was killed in a building where she was staying in the Iranian capital in an attack widely blamed on Israel.
Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said progress had been made towards a Gaza ceasefire agreement with Hamas, but he could not give a timetable for an agreement. The statement comes after a senior Palestinian official told the BBC that negotiations between Hamas and Israel were 90 percent complete, but key issues remained unresolved.
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In his speech, Katz said Israel was "hitting hard" on the Houthis and would "behead" their leadership.
"As we did with Haniyeh, [Yahya] Sinwar and [Hassan] Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza and Lebanon, we will do it in Hodeida and Sanaa," he said, referring to the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, all of whom have been. . killed this year.
Haniyeh, 62, was widely considered Hamas's supreme leader and played a key role in negotiations to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
After his assassination, Hamas appointed Yahya Sinwar, its leader in Gaza and one of the main architects of the October 7 attacks, as the group's overall leader. Sinwar was killed by the Israeli military during a random encounter in Gaza in October, and the group is still choosing a new leader.
Hassan Nasrallah was the leader of the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah - he was killed in Beirut in September, as Israel sharply escalated its military campaign against Hezbollah, with which it has exchanged almost daily cross-border fire since the attacks on October 7.
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The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group that controls northwestern Yemen, began attacking Israeli and international shipping in the Red Sea shortly after Israel began targeting Hamas in Gaza last October.
The group has vowed to continue until the end of the war in Gaza.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said its efforts to shoot down a projectile fired from Yemen had failed and that the missile had hit a park in Tel Aviv. A Houthi spokesman said the group struck a military target using a hypersonic ballistic missile.
Last week, Israel launched strikes on what it said were Houthi military targets, hitting ports and energy infrastructure in Yemen's capital, Sanaa. The United States and the United Kingdom have also struck Houthi targets in an operation to protect international shipping.
Hamas attacked Israel in October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
In response, Israel launched a military campaign to crush Hamas in Gaza that has continued for more than a year and killed 45,317 people, according to the Hamas Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip. The toll 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 strikes in the al-Mawasi area, which had been designated a "safe zone" by the Israeli military. Israel said it targeted a Hamas fighter.
On Monday, Israel said three of its soldiers had been killed in the northern Gaza Strip.
Humanitarian and human rights groups have warned of a catastrophic situation for civilians in Gaza. On Sunday, Oxfam said that only 12 trucks had delivered food and water to northern Gaza in the past two and a half months and accused the Israeli military of "deliberate delay and systematic obstruction."
"For three of them, after the food and water were delivered to the school where people were taking refuge, it was evacuated and bombed within hours," Oxfam added.
Israeli authorities said the report "deliberately and inaccurately" ignored "Israel's extensive humanitarian efforts in the northern Gaza Strip."
Israel insisted that specific shipments "including food, water and medical supplies" were sent to areas of northern Gaza, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia, where the Israeli military has been conducting a military operation for several months, which it says is aimed at Hamas fighters who have gathered there.
Oxfam's report comes after human rights groups Amnesty accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel of committing "acts of genocide" by deliberately depriving Palestinian civilians in Gaza of proper access to water. The Israeli Foreign Ministry called the Amnesty report "completely false and based on lies," while the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Human Rights Watch was "again spreading its bloody slander... The truth is the complete opposite of HRW's lies."
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