US reacts to martyrdom of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was not involved in or made aware of the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

“This is something we were not aware of or involved in. It’s very hard to speculate,” Blinken said in an interview with Channel News Asia during a visit to Singapore.

Supreme Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in a missile attack in Tehran on Wednesday. His funeral prayer is set to take place on August 02 in Doha.

In a statement, the group said their leader was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”.

The Hamas chief and one of his bodyguards were killed when the building they were staying in was attacked, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said.

His funeral prayers will be held in Doha and will be laid to rest at a cemetery in Qatar’s capital on Friday.

Ismail Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Haniyeh was the tough-talking face of the Palestinian group’s international diplomacy as war raged back in Gaza, where three of his sons were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

But despite the rhetoric, he was seen by many diplomats as a moderate compared to the more hardline members of the group inside Gaza.

Appointed to the Hamas top job in 2017, Haniyeh moved between Turkey and Qatar’s capital Doha, escaping the travel curbs of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to act as a negotiator in ceasefire talks or to talk to Hamas’ ally Iran.