Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned “in the strongest terms the cowardly Israeli attack” on a residential building housing Hamas leaders in the capital Doha, calling the assault a “blatant violation of all international laws and norms”.

“The State of Qatar affirms that it will not tolerate this reckless Israeli behavior and its continued tampering with regional security, as well as any action targeting its security and sovereignty,” ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Investigations are underway at the highest level, and further details will be announced as soon as they become available.”

Qatar’s interior ministry said that the attack resulted in “the martyrdom of Corporal Bader Saad Mohammed Al-Humaidi Al-Dosari, a member of the Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya), while performing his duties at the targeted site”. Several security personnel were also injured in the attack, it said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed in a statement that the Israeli military carried out the attack in Doha against Hamas leaders on Tuesday.

“Today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation,” Netanyahu said in a social media post. “Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility.”

Hamas leadership survives assassination bid

in the first such attack by Israel in Qatar, a key mediator in ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas and home to the region’s largest US military base, Al Udeid airbase, which hosts US troops.

The attack came as negotiators from Hamas were meeting to consider the latest Gaza ceasefire proposal from the United States, a Hamas source told Al Jazeera.

Suhail al-Hindi, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, has told Al Jazeera that the Hamas leadership survived Israel’s “cowardly assassination attempt”.

“Qatar has positioned itself in the middle of all these conflicts, not being a party to any single one of them but rather trying to mend fences,” Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid reported from Doha, adding “and that is precisely what the Qataris were doing”.

“This is not a country at war,” Bin Javaid reported, stressing that Qatar does not “pose a danger to any of those warring sides. This is a country that is trying to establish peace.”

“This came as a surprise for a lot of people here,” Bin Javaid said.

Qatar, along with Egypt, has long acted as a mediator between Israel and Hamas during Israel’s nearly two-year-long war on Gaza. The Hamas office was established in the country at the request of the United States to facilitate peace talks.

Israel’s military released a statement on Tuesday saying it and the Shin Bet intelligence service “carried out a targeted attack on the top leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization”.

Residential area targeted

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Doha, said the area targeted in Doha is full of residential units.

“This is a large residential area containing a lot of foreign embassies. Many civilians live here. There’s a Lebanese school that isn’t far from here, and the echoes of the explosions were heard across the city and farther afield,” he said.

Al Jazeera correspondent Nida Ibrahim said from Doha that the unprecedented attack on the city, which has hosted negotiations for a potential ceasefire in Gaza, reflected how “emboldened” Israel has become “by being able to carry out a genocide and getting away with it”.

Reporting from Amman, Jordan, Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said the strike in a third country was similar to Israel’s assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran last year.

Israel has been bombarding Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria as well as carrying out daily attacks in the occupied West Bank in Palestine. It has killed more than 64,000 people in Gaza since launching its brutal military offensive in October 2023.

Its military actions in Gaza have been termed a genocide by numerous rights groups, and the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for war crimes.