Reports: Haniyeh bodyguard was in cell that killed 5 IDF troops in 2014 Nahal Oz raid
Palestinian media says Wasim Abu Shaaban, killed alongside Hamas leader, was part of elite unit before being appointed to protect politburo chief
Palestinian media outlets reported Thursday that the bodyguard of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed with him in Tehran the day before, was part of a terror squad that penetrated into Israel through a tunnel in July 2014 and fired an anti-tank missile at IDF forces in Nahal Oz, killing five soldiers.
According to Sama News and the Palestinian Media Center, Wasim Abu Shaaban was a member of the cell that carried out the attack during that year’s Gaza war, known as Operation Protective Edge.
Abu Shaaban was reportedly born in Gaza in 1988, studied sharia law at Gaza’s Islamic University, and was married with four children.
He is said to have begun his career in the terror group as an aide to former Hamas senior member and Palestinian interior minister Said Seyam, killed by Israel in 2009.
He was also reportedly a fighter in Hamas’s military wing, the Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, where he rose to become deputy commander of a company in the Nukhba (elite unit) of Tel al-Hawa, in the southern part of Gaza City.
Abu Shaaban was later appointed to become a permanent member of the delegation accompanying Haniyeh as his bodyguard, after Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip in 2019, the Palestinian outlets said.
A funeral procession for Haniyeh and Abu Shaaban was held in the Iranian capital Tehran on Thursday, attended by the Islamic Republic’s upper echelons. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers, having earlier threatened a “harsh punishment” for the Hamas leader’s killing.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief General Hossein Salami were also present. Haniyeh had been visiting Tehran for Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony on Tuesday.
Senior Hamas figure Khalil al-Hayya, the movement’s foreign relations chief, vowed during the ceremony that “Ismail Haniyeh’s slogan, ‘We will not recognize Israel,’ will remain an immortal slogan” and “we will pursue Israel until it is uprooted from the land of Palestine.”
Iran’s conservative parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran “will certainly carry out the supreme leader’s order” to avenge Haniyeh by carrying out a direct strike on Israel.
“It is our duty to respond at the right time and in the right place,” he said in a speech with crowds chanting “Death to Israel, Death to America!”
The caskets, painted on top with the colors of the Palestinian flag and decorated on the sides with a black-and-white pattern resembling a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, were borne on a flower-bedecked truck through leafy streets where cooling water mists sprayed the flag-waving crowds.
After the procession, the two bodies are expected to be transferred to Qatar. In Doha, another ceremony is to be held after Friday’s Islamic prayers shortly after noon in the country’s largest mosque.
Haniyeh and Abu Shaaban will then be buried in Lusail, north of the capital Doha, in the same cemetery where the founder of the State of Qatar, Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani, is interred.
While Iran has blamed the attack on its arch-foe, Israel has declined to comment on Haniyeh’s death.
