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The chief of an intelligence unit will resign over the failure to thwart the Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli army said Thursday.
“The commander of the 8200 unit, (Brigadier General) Yossi Sariel, has informed his commanders and subordinates of his intention to end his position,” the army said in a statement.
“The officer will conclude his role in the near future.”
The prestigious and secretive Unit 8200 is in charge of decoding and analyzing intercepts and other signal intelligence.
In the wake of Oct. 7, Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate was thrown into a crisis that led to its commander, Major General Aharon Haliva, announcing his resignation in April 2024.
The army said then that Haliva had asked to be relieved of his duties for the directorate’s failure to foil the Oct. 7 attack.
Israeli media on Thursday broadcast a copy of Sariel’s resignation letter in which he asked for “forgiveness” for “not fulfilling the mission we were entrusted with” on Oct. 7.
In June, public broadcaster Kan disclosed the existence of an intelligence brief prepared by Unit 8200 in September 2023 that warned military officials of Hamas’s preparations for the attack.
Kan said the Unit 8200 document included details of elite Hamas fighters training for hostage-taking and plans for raids on military positions and Israeli communities in southern Israel.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza killed at least 41,118 people in Gaza, mostly women and children. The U.N. rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to open an official inquiry into Oct. 7 until the war in Gaza is over.
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