The Israeli Army has confirmed its elite intelligence unit chief (Brigadier General) Yossi Sariel will resign after he failed to prevent a Hamas attack on October 7 last year.
According to reports, he notified his seniors on Thursday that he intends to resign from the position.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sariel is due to be replaced ‘in the coming period’, reported The Times of Israel.
After his long military career in intelligence, he joined Unit 8200 as its chief in 2021.
Sariel said Thursday that he was resigning over his role in the failures leading up to the massacre, although the move comes a full 11 months following the assault, in which thousands of Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s borders and killed around 1,200 people, taking 251 captive to Gaza, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, the UN chief on Thursday described the continued lack of effective protection for civilians in Gaza during the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas as “unconscionable”.
In a statement released via his Spokesperson, Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the latest Israeli attack on a school serving as a shelter in Nuseirat on Wednesday, which killed six staffers from the UN Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA, along with at least 12 others, including women and children.
“This incident raises the number of UNRWA staff killed in this conflict to 220,” UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told correspondents at UN Headquarters in New York.
“The Israeli Defense Forces stated that they had targeted a command-and-control centre in the compound,” he said. “This incident must be independently and thoroughly investigated to ensure accountability.”
‘Horrific violence must end’
The UN chief demanded that all combatants protect the lives and “essential needs” of civilians throughout the Gaza Strip, urging them to stop using schools and shelters – or the areas around them – for military purposes.
All parties are obliged to always comply with international humanitarian law, Dujarric underscored.
“The Secretary-General reiterates his call for an immediate ceasefire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages being held in Gaza. This horrific violence must stop.”
Polio vaccination continues
Despite numerous challenges, the UN-administered polio vaccination campaign aiming to inoculate some 640,000 children in Gaza with two doses of vaccine type 2 is continuing, Mr. Dujarric told journalists.
“UNRWA tells us that, as of yesterday, nearly 530,000 children have now received the vaccine across the Gaza Strip.”
