AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Zionist war minister Israel Katz has acknowledged that the regime was responsible for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the former political bureau chief of the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas in Tehran.
Katz’s confirmation on Monday about Israel's involvement in the killing of Haniyeh marks the first public admission of responsibility for the assassination drive on Iranian soil.
"We will strike hard at the Huthis... 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," Katz was quoted as saying during an event at the war ministry.
"Anyone who raises a hand against Israel will have his hand cut off, and the long arm of the Israeli military will strike him and hold him accountable," Katz warned Yemen’s Ansarullah by stating that Sana’a and Hudaydah will have a similar fate to Gaza and Lebanon.
Until now Israel had never admitted to killing Haniyeh, but Iran and Hamas had blamed it for the Hamas political leader's assassination.
However, a US media report had broken a story before that Israel while declined to publicly comment on Haniyeh's killing had informed the US administration that it was behind the assassination of the Hamas leader in the Iranian capital n.
Haniyeh, who was seen as leading Hamas's negotiation efforts for a ceasefire in Gaza, was killed along his bodyguard in a guesthouse in Tehran on July 31, reportedly by an explosive device that had been placed by Israeli agents there.
A day before his martyrdom, Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
On September 27, Israel also assassinated Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Nasrallah in a Beirut bombing, which was followed by the assassination of Haniyeh's successor Yahya Sinwar on October 16 in Gaza.
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