FACTBOX - Top 10 Hamas leaders assassinated by Israel

By Anadolu staff

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in an airstrike in the Iranian capital Tehran early Wednesday, the Palestinian group confirmed.

The resistance movement blamed Israel for the assassination, but Tel Aviv has not confirmed or denied its involvement.

Israel has vowed to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders following the group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack after which Tel Aviv launched a devastating onslaught that killed more than 39,400 people and left the Gaza Strip in ruins amid a humanitarian catastrophe.

Haniyeh was not the first senior Hamas leader to have been assassinated by Israel since the Palestinian resistance group was founded in 1987.

Here are the top 10 Hamas leaders killed by Israel in recent years:

- Ismail Haniyeh

Haniyeh was a prominent Palestinian political leader and a symbol of Hamas, who served as prime minister between 2006 and 2007.

In May 2017, he was elected for the first time the head of Hamas’ political bureau and reelected for a second term in 2021.

Haniyeh served in the Hamas leadership for 20 years, taking on various roles as the resistance group’s leader in Gaza, deputy leader, and eventually top leader.

- Saleh al-Arouri

Al-Arouri was killed early January in an Israeli drone strike on a Hamas office building in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

Born in the town of Arura near the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank in 1966, Arouri attended local schools for his primary education and graduated from high school in 1984.

He joined the Muslim Brotherhood at an early age and led the Islamic Student Action at Hebron University in 1985. After the establishment of Hamas in 1987 by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, Arouri joined its ranks.

The Israeli army placed Arouri under administrative detention without trial for limited periods between 1990 and 1992 over his role with Hamas.

Arouri was considered one of the founders of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. Between 1991 and 1992, he established the cells of the movement's military apparatus in the West Bank.

Arouri involved in negotiations with Israel through Egyptian mediation that resulted in a prisoner exchange deal in 2011.

As part of the agreement, Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas, was released in exchange for the release of 1,027 Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons.

On July 31, 2021, Arouri was re-elected the deputy chief of Hamas' political bureau for the second time. In addition to this position, he assumed the role of the movement's leader in the West Bank.

- Ayman Nofal

Nofal was one of the main security and intelligence figures within the Hamas group. He was also a member of the group's Qassam Brigades military council.

He was arrested three times as of 1991.

On October 17, 2023, Nofal was killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted him in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

- Jamila al-Shanti

In 2006, al-Shanti became a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council as part of Hamas’ parliamentary Change and Reform bloc.

She was appointed in 2013 as Woman Affairs Minister in the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip.

In 2021, she became the first woman in the Hamas political bureau. She was killed in the early days of the Israeli war on Gaza on October 18, 2023.

- Raed al-Attar

Born in 1974, al-Attar joined the Qassam Brigades in his early youth. Over the years, he gained a reputation for building Hamas' military capacity and became one of the group’s top ranking leaders.

Since 1994, he was on Israel's most wanted list with Tel Aviv accusing him of snapping up Israeli soldiers, teaching Hamas fighters Hebrew and drugging Israeli soldiers during military confrontations.

He was best known within Gaza as the architect behind the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal and kept Shalit in a secret place for five years in Gaza.

Attar was assassinated in August 2014 in Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip.

- Ahmad al-Jabari

In his early political activism, al-Jabari was affiliated with the Fatah Movement but during his imprisonment in Israeli jails, he came closer to Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yasin and since then, he developed ties with the group, and became a Hamas member in 1995.

In 2000, he became one of the main three military leaders of Hamas’ armed wing.

He survived an assassination attempt in 2003, after which he became the de-facto military leader for the Qassam Brigades and held the title of the Hamas military chief of staff.

Jabari was assassinated in November 2012, triggering a major round of fighting with Israel.

- Nizar Rayyan

A prominent political and military leader within Hamas in Gaza, where he served within the group’s political bureau for several terms.

Rayyan was killed in an Israeli airstrike during an Israeli offensive on Gaza in early January, 2009.

- Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi

A doctor and politician who was one of the founders of the Hamas group. He took the leadership of the group in Gaza after the assassination of its founder Sheikh Ahmad Yasin in March 2014.

He was a spokesman for the Palestinian deportees to Marj al-Zouhour area in southern Lebanon for over a year in 1992.

In June 2003, he survived an assassination attempt when Israeli army fired a rocket on his car.

After nearly one month of being appointed as Hamas leader in Gaza, he was assassinated by Israel on April 17, 2004.

- Sheikh Ahmad Yasin

Born in 1938, Yasin joined the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, and became a prominent figure during the Palestinian intifada when he founded the Hamas movement as the first Islamist group to confront the Israeli occupation.

He was arrested several times by Israel, and in 1997, he was released under a deal between Israel and Jordan following the failed assassination attempt of then Hamas leader Khalid Meshal.

In March 2004, Sheikh Yasin was assassinated by Israel while he was on his wheelchair on way to perform the dawn prayer in Gaza City.

- Salah Shehade

Shehade was considered the actual founder of the Hamas group's military wing, the Qassam Brigades, in the early 1990s.

He was arrested by Israel between 1988 and 2000.

After his release, he led the movement's armed wing until he was assassinated on July 2002 in an airstrike on his home in Al-Daraj neighborhood east of Gaza City along with 18 Palestinians, including his wife.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar