Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by a guided missile that tracked his cellphone, his son Abdussalam Haniyeh said on Friday in an interview with Saudi state media Al Arabiya from Doha, Qatar.
Haniyeh was killed in Tehran on July 31. The New York Times and independently confirmed by the JerusalemPost that an explosive device was placed in his room months before his murder.
The bomb was hidden in June and used advanced remote control technology that was also used in the killing of Iran’s nuclear chief Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, according to the report and the post‘s sources.
Haniyeh’s son told Al Arabiya that this was not the case. “I think the story about the bomb is completely baseless,” he said. “A few meters from his room were bodyguards and other advisers, so it is clear that if there had been a bomb, the whole place would have been blown up,” he added.
“It was a guided missile that tracked his mobile phone, which he had placed near his head in his room at night, and it was hit directly,” Haniyeh told Al Arabiya.
Haniyeh stated that his father used his phone constantly and even used it at 10:15 p.m. on the night he was killed.
Attending a ceremony in Tehran
“My father was attending an official ceremony and had his mobile phone with him, so the operation was not very complicated,” Haniyeh said, explaining why his father was an easy target.
“He was in a country to attend the inauguration of the president (Massoud Pezeshkian) along with other delegations, so the security measures are not comparable to those in a hidden area without cell phones,” he explained.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) initially reported that a short-range projectile containing about seven kilograms of explosives had been fired from outside the building.
Haniyeh ended the interview by saying he believed the airstrike was carried out under American “protection,” Al Arabiya reported.
Iran has blamed Israel for the attack and threatened retaliation, but Israel has not taken responsibility. The United States has also neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the attack.
Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.
