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Palestine urges world not to let Israel ‘drag us all to the abyss’ while Iran pledges to respond decisively to Hamas leader’s death in Tehran.

Countries of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have condemned the assassination of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran and called for stepped-up diplomatic efforts to prevent an all-out war in the Middle East.

The UNSC’s emergency meeting on Wednesday came as Iran and Hamas – the Palestinian group that governs the war-torn Gaza Strip – blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s death and pledged to seek revenge. Israel has not admitted responsibility for the attack in Tehran.

Haniyeh’s assassination occurred less than 24 hours after Israel killed Hezbollah’s most senior military commander Fuad Shukr in an air raid on the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Israel claimed the attack was in retaliation for a rocket assault that killed 12 children and young people from the Arab Druze community in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

At the UNSC meeting, Palestine said the global community must stop Israel from dragging the Middle East into the “abyss”, while China, Russia and Algeria condemned Haniyeh’s assassination. The United States, United Kingdom and France raised what they said was Iranian support for destabilising actors in the region, while Japan said it feared an all-out war in the Middle East.

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