At least 34.151 Palestinians have been killed and 77.084 wounded in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza Health Ministry said, Reuters reports.
The head of Israel's Military Intelligence Agency (Amman), General Aharon Haliva, has resigned due to his failure to prevent an attack by the Islamist Palestinian Hamas on October 7, 2023, the army announced today.
This made Haliva the first leading figure in Israel to resign over the terrorist attack.
In his written resignation, which was circulated to journalists, Haliva wrote that "the intelligence agency that was under my command did not fulfill the task entrusted to us."
The army added in a statement that the Chief of the General Staff accepted his resignation and thanked him for his service.
Shortly after the start of the war, Haliva publicly said that he shared the blame, because as the head of the military department in charge of providing intelligence information and daily warnings to the government and the army, he did not prevent the attack by Hamas.
Haliva, along with other military and security officials, had been expected to resign in response to the failures that led to the October 7 attack and the scale of death and destruction.
But the timing of the resignations is unexpected, with Israel still at war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and battling the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the north. Tensions with Iran are also high after mutual attacks.
While Haliva and others have accepted blame for the failure to stop the attack, others have not yet, most notably the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he would once answer tough questions about his role but did not fully admit direct responsibility for allowing for the attack to take place. He also gave no indication that he would retire.
(Beta)
State media in Lebanon reports that Israel "occasionally fires artillery shells on the outskirts of the city of Ter Harf," the Guardian reports.
Ter Harfa is in southern Lebanon, about six kilometers (3,7 miles) from the UN-drawn blue line that has separated Israel and Lebanon since 2000.
Conflict between Israel and Hamas - 199th day.
An Israeli drone crashed in Lebanon after being hit by a missile, the Israeli army announced this morning, while the Lebanese movement Hezbollah claims to have shot it down.
"A surface-to-air missile was launched against an Israeli Air Force drone operating in Lebanese airspace," the army said, adding that the drone was hit and crashed in Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah, for its part, announced that it shot down an Israeli Hermes 450 drone that was flying over the southern part of Lebanon, in the Al-Aishia region.
The pro-Iranian Islamist group specified that it shot down the drone "in support of the Palestinian people."
Since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7, there has been a daily exchange of fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, which claims to support the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which has an arsenal of rockets and precision missiles, targets Israeli military positions and locations near the border, and Israel responds by bombing targets on Lebanese territory, mostly in the south, including targeted attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas officials.
(BETA)
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