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‘Unusual’ 4am briefing but…: Israel PM's aide on how Hamas blindsided Tel Aviv
Israel-Hamas War: This did not warrant mobilisation, Tzachi Hanegbi said.
Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's national security adviser said that Israel received no concrete warning, including from Egypt, of the October 7 attack by Hamas from Gaza. The chief of Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service was summoned for an unusual 4 am briefing that day - 2.5 hours before the attack began - on new intelligence information, Tzachi Hanegbi said.
This did not warrant mobilisation, he said as per news agency Reuters.
The comments come as Israel’s military ordered hundreds of thousands of civilians living in Gaza City to evacuate ahead of a feared Israel ground offensive. The directive came after the United Nations said that it received a warning from Israel to evacuate 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said that the humanitarian situation in Gaza, already critical, is now “fast becoming untenable.”
The actions and rhetoric by Hamas militants and Israel in the past few days is "extremely alarming, unacceptable," Martin Griffiths said, adding, that civilians and civilian infrastructure must protected.
Read more: Saudi Arabia pauses talks on normalisation with Israel amid Hamas war: Report
This comes after a report claimed that Hamas may have planned their deadly attack in Israel more than a year in advance. Sky News reported quoting documents labelled ‘Top Secret’ that were said to have been found on the bodies of fighters in the battle zone. As the front cover of the document bundle was dated ‘October 2022’, it could mean that plans were already well established at least 12 months in advance of the attacks, the report claimed.
“The documents, written in Arabic, are said to have been recovered by Israeli soldiers and emergency responders. They suggest Hamas militants planned to target civilian populations and take hostages,” it said, adding, “The plan, however, was not successful with militants reportedly pushed back by local security - and it's believed nobody inside the kibbutz was killed.”
