Top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran, the group said

Top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has been killed in Iran, the group said.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Hamas said Haniyeh was killed during an Israeli raid on his residence in Tehran.

According to the group, Haniyeh died after participating in the inauguration ceremony of the new President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, who was sworn in on Tuesday.

No one will want responsibility anymore.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said the cause of the incident was not yet clear but was “under investigation,” AFP news agency reported.

The Palestinian group that controls Gaza said Haniyeh was “killed in a cunning Zionist attack”.

Israel is yet to respond or issue a statement.

Haniyeh, 62, was a prominent member of the Hamas movement in the late 1980s.

Israel imprisoned Haniyeh for three years in 1989 as it put down the first Palestinian uprising.

He was then deported in 1992 to the no-man's land between Israel and Lebanon, along with a number of Hamas leaders.

Haniyeh was appointed Palestinian prime minister in 2006 by President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas won a majority of seats in national elections, but was ousted a year after the group drove Mr Abbas's Fatah party out of the Gaza Strip in a week of deadly violence.

Haniyeh dismissed his expulsion as “unconstitutional”, insisting that his government “will not abandon its national obligations to the Palestinian people”, and continued to rule in Gaza.

He was who was chosen as the head of the political office of Hamas in 2017.

In 2018, the The US State Department has designated Haniyeh as a terrorist. He had been living in Qatar for the past several years.