PARIS: The killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a strike in Iran on Wednesday was the latest in a succession of killings of Hamas leaders blamed by the militant group on Israel.
1996: BOOBY-TRAPPED PHONE — Yehya Ayash, Hamas’s bomb-making expert, is killed on January 5 by a booby-trapped telephone in the Gaza Strip.
1997: POISONING ATTEMPT — Israeli intelligence agents poison Khaled Meshaal, a key Hamas leader, in the Jordanian capital Amman on September 25. But Jordanian officials capture the assailants and demand an antidote in exchange for their release, saving Meshaal’s life.
2002: BUILDING BOMBED — Salah Shehadeh, head of the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, is killed along with 15 other people, nine of them children, on July 22 when an Israeli warplane drops a one-tonne bomb on a building in Gaza.
2003-STRIKE ON CAR: On August 22, senior Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab is killed in an Israeli strike on his car in Gaza.
2004: FOUNDER KILLED: On March 22, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound founder of Hamas, is killed along with seven others in a helicopter strike as they leave dawn prayers at a Gaza City mosque.
On April 17, Abdelaziz Rantissi, who had taken over from the assassinated leader, is killed in a helicopter strike on his car in Gaza City.
On September 26, a car bomb kills top Hamas official Ezzeddine Sheikh Khalil in the Syrian capital Damascus. Israel unofficially admits responsibility.
2009: GAZA OFFENSIVE — On January 1, Nizar Rayan, a leading proponent of the use of suicide bombers by Hamas, is killed along with his four wives, 10 of his 12 children and two neighbours during Israel’s December 27-January 18 offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Two weeks later a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, interior minister Said Siam, is killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza.
2010: ‘ASSASSINATION’ IN DUBAI — On January 29, Hamas accuses Israel of the “assassination” in Dubai of Mahmud Abdel Rauf Al Mabhuh, a founder of its military wing, Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, who died on January 20.
2012: TARGETED KILLING IN GAZA — On November 14, Israel’s biggest military campaign against Gaza in nearly four years, Operation Pillar of Defence, begins with the targeted killing of top Hamas commander Ahmed Jaabari in an air strike on his car, triggering a major flare-up.
2014: THREE COMMANDERS KILLED — On August 21, 2014, six weeks into a war between Israel and Hamas, a pre-dawn air strike kills three senior commanders of the Hamas armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades: Mohammed Abu Shamala, Raed Al Atar and Mohammed Barhum.
2024: DEPUTY LEADER KILLED IN BEIRUT — January 2: Nearly three months after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza, Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri is killed in a strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs blamed on Israel.
Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif and Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar have topped Israel’s hit list throughout the war but have remained elusive.
