PM Shehbaz, Others Offer Funeral Prayers in Absentia for Martyred Hamas Chief

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, parliamentarians, and hundreds of thousands of people offered funeral prayers in absentia for the martyred Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Islamabad on Friday. The funeral prayers were held nationwide as part of the government’s decision, which also included the observance of a day of mourning.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar, and leaders from both ruling and opposition parties attended the prayers.

“An incident of worst brutality has come to the fore, which the entire world, including Pakistan, Turkiye, Malaysia, China, and Russia, has condemned in the strongest words,” Sharif stated during an earlier press talk on Friday, referring to Haniyeh’s assassination. Sharif also affirmed Pakistan’s commitment to providing relief goods and medical assistance to Palestinians. In Qatar, funeral prayers for Haniyeh were held at the Imam Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab mosque. Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief, had been residing in Doha along with other Hamas political office members. He will be buried in Lusail, north of the Qatari capital.

Haniyeh and his bodyguard were killed in a pre-dawn attack on their accommodation in Tehran early Wednesday, according to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The attack occurred shortly after Haniyeh had attended the swearing-in ceremony of President Masoud Pezeshkian in Iran. Israel, accused by Hamas, Iran, and others of the attack, has not directly commented on the incident.

The assassination came just hours after Israel struck a southern suburb of Beirut, killing Fuad Shukr, a military commander of the Hamas-allied Lebanese group Hezbollah. These killings are the latest in a series of incidents escalating regional tensions during the Gaza conflict, which has drawn in Iran-backed militant groups from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.