'Genuinely hard to imagine': Internet stunned over report that top Hamas leader killed

A top Hamas leader was reportedly killed Tuesday in Tehran.

Ismail Haniyeh was in the city for the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new president, The New York Times reported.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that he and an Iranian security guard were the target of an attack at their residence, the Times reported.

Haniyeh was the leader of Hamas’s political office and was reportedly killed in an Israeli raid.

Israel vowed to kill Haniyeh and other leaders of the group following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage.

Read also: Hamas says pulling out of Gaza truce talks after Israeli strike targeting Deif

Reaction to the news was swift on social media.

John Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, wrote on the social media app X: "If all true (reports pointing that way) Hamas #1 leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah #2 Fuad Shukr 'Sayyid Muhsan' killed in the same day. Huge."

"It's one thing to assassinate Haniyeh; it's another to do it specifically in Tehran," remarked political analyst Omar Baddar. "It's genuinely hard to imagine, let alone put into words, the seriousness of what comes next."