The head of Israeli Army Intelligence, Aharon Haliva, became this Monday the first senior official in the armed forces to resign due to the errors that allowed the Hamas attack on October 7, which left some 1,200 dead and 253 kidnapped in Israel.
“The Intelligence Directorate, under my orders, did not carry out its work,” said the official in a letter addressed to the Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Herzi Halevi, and shared by the Army.
The head of Military Intelligence was on vacation on October 7 and, according to Israeli media, he could not be reached by phone. when the Army began to notice signs that there could be an attack from the Gaza Strip.
“I have carried that black day since then, every day, every night. I will always carry the terrible pain of war,” the person responsible said in his letter.
38 years of service
In a message, the Israeli Army said that Halevi thanked Haliva for his 38 years of service, “during which he contributed significantly to the security of the State of Israel both as a soldier and as a commander.”
The head of Military Intelligence will remain in his position until the Army appoints his replacement.
Haliva is not the only senior Israeli official to have admitted responsibility for the Hamas attacks, which followed an Israeli offensive in Gaza that has now lasted more than six months.
The head of the Israeli internal intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, and Herzi Halevi himself have said that they share responsibility for what happened and it is expected that both will resign once “the security situation” is stabilized, according to the Israeli media today. The Times of Israel.
The Israeli military launched an internal investigation in late February into the Hamas attack, the conclusions of which are expected to be presented in early June.
More than 280 bodies in the Naser common grave
Meanwhile, the war continues in the Gaza Strip, where 34,151 people have already died, most of them women and children.
This Monday, Hamas authorities in the Palestinian enclave reported that 73 new bodies have been recovered from the mass grave found on Friday at the Naser hospital in Khan Younis, in the south of the Strip, where 283 bodies have already been exhumed.
In a statement, authorities said they have only identified 42 of the bodies. Among the corpses are women and elderly people and some had their hands cuffed and were naked, suggesting they were executed.
Furthermore, the whereabouts of some 2,000 people who were present in the complex when it was besieged by Israeli forces more than two months ago are still unknown. The Army withdrew from Khan Yunis on April 7.
The episode is reminiscent of what happened at the Al Shifa hospital, the most important in the Strip and located in the north of the enclave, which was completely out of service after an Israeli siege that lasted two weeks at the end of March.
After the departure of Israeli troops from the hospital on April 1, Gazan authorities discovered a mass grave with a dozen buried bodies, among which were patients, women and the elderly. In total, about 400 bodies were recovered in and around the hospital in the days after the troops left.
The Gaza Ministry of Health reported today that 54 deaths and more than one hundred injuries have been recorded in the last 24 hours in Gaza, bringing the total number of deaths since October 7 to 34,151 and the number of injuries to 77,084.
Gazan authorities also estimate that between 7,000 and 8,000 victims remain under the rubble and on the roads.places where emergency teams cannot reach due to the incessant bombings and the difficulty in locating the bodies.
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2024-04-28 18:31:55
