Senior Political Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated, in Tehran.

Updates so far:

• Russia, Turkey, Iran, Hamas among many others condemn the killing of Ismail Haniyeh. | Middle East stability is at stakes.

• Hamas blamed Israel for the assassination. Israel is yet to comment on the incident.

• Turkey foreign minister calls the assassination Ismail Haniyeh ‘heinous’.

Russia called killing of Hamas leader ‘unacceptable political murder’, RIA reports.

Hamas said Ismail Haniyeh was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”.

Iran's IRGC later said, "We are studying the dimensions of the martyrdom of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas' political bureau, and will announce the results of the investigation later."

Retaliations are vowed by Hamas, and Iran is expected to retaliate to this assassination as it took place on its soil. Haniyeh was the guest of Iran.

Ismail Haniyeh was born in the Shati refugee camp, in Gaza. His parents fled the city of Asqalan after Israel was created in 1948. Haniyeh studied at the al-Azhar Institute in Gaza and later at Gaza’s Islamic University, from which he graduated with a degree in Arabic literature.

While at university in 1983, he joined the Islamic Student Bloc, a precursor to Hamas.

He climbed the ranks within Hamas as a close aide and assistant to Hamas’s co-founder, the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Haniyeh was imprisoned multiple times by Israeli authorities and lived in and out of the Gaza Strip after facing deportation and assassination attempts.