ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday condemned the assassination of the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, expressing shock over the “reckless act” that coincided with the new Iranian president’s oath-taking ceremony. 
Iran’s state television announced the killing of the Palestinian leader early Wednesday. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards said Haniyeh and a security guard had been ambushed in their place of residence and an investigation was underway. 
Haniyeh was in Iran for the swearing-in ceremony of the newly elected reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian.
“Pakistan condemns the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the Chief of Hamas Political Bureau in Tehran today,” the foreign office said in a statement, sending condolences to his family and the people of Palestine.
“We are deeply shocked by the timing of this reckless act, coinciding with the inauguration of the President of Iran, an event attended by several foreign dignitaries, including the Deputy Prime Minister of Pakistan.”
The foreign office expressed “serious concern” over what it described as “growing Israeli adventurism in the region.”
“Its latest acts constitute a dangerous escalation in an already volatile region and undermine efforts for peace,” the statement said. 
Separately, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman, who heads a major Pakistani religious political party, announced funeral prayers in absentia for the “martyred” 62-year-old Hamas leader on Wednesday in Karachi. 
Haniyeh’s assassination comes amid an escalation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which was blamed for an attack on the Israel-annexed Golan Heights that killed 12 children on the weekend. 
On Tuesday night, Israel struck a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, saying that it had killed Fuad Shukr, the head of Hezbollah’s military operations room. 
Israel has promised to wipe out Hamas after the group conducted a deadly raid into settlements outside the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking hostages back to the Palestinian enclave.
Israel soon after launched a devastating military assault in Gaza and has since killed over 40,000 people, mainly civilians. Both sides have been trying to negotiate a hostage release agreement, which would include a cessation of fighting, with the help of the US and regional negotiators.
Haniyeh, normally based in Qatar, has been the face of Hamas’s international diplomacy as the war set off last year. Hamas said in a statement Haniyeh’s killing would “take the battle to new dimensions and have major repercussions,” while Iran also vowed to retaliate.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Israel had provided the grounds for “harsh punishment for itself” and it was Tehran’s duty to avenge the Hamas leader’s death as it had occurred in the Iranian capital. Iranian forces had already made strikes directly on Israel earlier in the Gaza war.
There was no comment nor claim of responsibility from Israel. In 2021, Israel assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist.

HALA, SINDH: Lubna Abbas, 22, skillfully molded a piece of clay into a delicate flower with her hands earlier this month as she sat in the courtyard of her house in the heart of Hala, a town in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province known as a “city of artisans.”
For centuries, the intricate art of kashi gari, which involves hand painting ceramics like pottery and tiles in stunning shades of blue and turquoise, has been a male-dominated profession, but one master of the craft, Ghulam Abbas, wants to change that and has trained the women of his family to enter the profession. 
“All the artisans in Hala are only men, women have no role in this, they neither do the work, nor are they taught,” Abbas told Arab News. “No artisan here teaches his daughters but I decided to teach my daughters and even daughters-in-law to do this work.”
Hala, a historic town with a population of around 65,000, has been a leading center of the Suhrawardi sect of Sufism from the 16th century onwards. It is also famous through the Indian subcontinent for art, woodwork, cloth printing, woven and homespun cloth and glazed colored pottery called kashi, hand painted for centuries by male artisans like 72-year-old Abbas. 
“It has been going on for centuries that the son of a kashi gar will become a kashi gar, but my father said that he will also make his daughters kashi gars,” Lubna told Arab News as she and her sister Rida and sister-in-law Kiran rolled dough for pottery in their yard. 
“So, thank God, we are doing this kashi gari work and Insha’Allah we will continue to do it.”
Lubna, who recently enrolled in a BSc program in biology, said she loved working alongside her father and hoped to follow in his footsteps and become a master of kashi gari. 
“Baba, I want to do this work with you, just like you do,” she told her father as she placed a clay flower she had just made in the sunlight to dry. 
“We’ve been doing this work for five years now and our work is no less important than anyone else’s, and neither are we.”
Abbas, who has exhibited his work in and traveled to the UK and Europe, rebuffed the decline in handmade goods due to the advent of machine-work. 
“People say ‘there’s no profit in this work’ but I believe that respect is its true reward,” Abbas added.
“Profits may be fleeting, but people will remember us for being skilled craftsmen who passed on their craft to their children and others.”