Middle East crisis live: IDF military intelligence head resigns over 7 October failures | Middle East and north Africa

Doctors in Gaza have saved a baby from the womb of her mother as she lay dying from head injuries sustained in an in Israeli airstrike. The girl was delivered via an emergency caesarean section at a hospital in Rafah.

The baby’s mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, was 30 weeks pregnant when her family home was hit by an airstrike. Her husband, Shoukri, and their three-year-old daughter, Malak, also died.

“We managed to save the baby,” Ahmad Fawzi al-Muqayyad, a doctor at the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah, told Sky News. “The mother was in a very critical condition. Her brain was exposed, so we saved one of the two.”

On Sunday the baby lay wriggling and crying in an incubator in the neonatal unit of the nearby Emirati hospital. The tag around her wrist bore her dead mother’s name.

The baby would stay in hospital for three to four weeks, Dr Mohammad Salama, head of the unit, told news agencies on Sunday.

“After that we will see about her leaving, and where this child will go, to the family, to the aunt or uncle or grandparents. Here is the biggest tragedy. Even if this child survives, she was born an orphan,” he said.

The baby’s grandmother Mirvat al-Sakani told Associated Press that she would take care of her.

“She is a memory of her father. I will take care of her,” she said. “My son was also with them. My son became body parts and they have not found him yet. They have nothing to do with anything. Why are they targeting them? We don’t know why, how? We do not know.”

Read more here: Gaza doctors save baby from womb of mother killed in Israeli airstrike

At least 34,151 Palestinians have been killed and 77,084 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, Reuters reports the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Israel says that over the same period 260 of its troops have been killed inside the Gaza Strip during its ground operation. 1,582 have been wounded.

It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.

Palestinian civil defence authorities in the Gaza Strip said on Monday it had now uncovered 210 bodies from a temporary burial ground inside the main hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.

Associated Press reports the burial area in the Nasser hospital was built when Israeli forces were besieging the facility last month. At the time, people were not able to bury the dead in a cemetery and dug graves in the hospital yard, the civil defence group said.

In a statement, the department said a total of 210 bodies have been recovered from the hospital yard since Friday.

It said some of the bodies were of people killed during the hospital siege. Others were killed when Israeli forces raided the hospital, also last month.

After the military withdrew from Khan Younis earlier this month, residents have been returning to the site in search of the bodies of their loved ones with the aim of burying them in permanent graves elsewhere.

In his resignation letter, Aharon Haliva, the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October, has described the Hamas attack inside southern Israel as a “black day” that he has carried with him ever since.

Haliva said he was proud of the way that the men and women of the IDF had responded since that day, but that in failing to prevent the assault his team had not “lived up to the task”.

Describing it as “a murderous surprise attack against the state of Israel, whose consequences are difficult and painful”, Haliva, who has been with the IDF for 38 years, said:

Throughout my positions, I knew that along with authority there was also a heavy responsibility: for the task, for the people, for success and failure. On Saturday 7 October 2023, Hamas carried out a murderous surprise attack against the state of Israel, whose consequences are difficult and painful. The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with. I carry that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night. I will carry the pain with me for ever.

Confiming that he would stay in post until a replacement was appointed, Haliva said:

Until the end of my shift, I will do everything for the defeat of Hamas and those who want to harm us and, the work for the return of the captives and the missing to their homes and land.

He ended the message by saying the loss of many commanders, subordinates and friends during the course of his time in the IDF “burns me”, with an exhortation to always remember those who had paid “the heaviest price” for the protection of Israel.

Aharon Haliva, who was the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October, has resigned over the failure of Israel’s military to prevent the attack inside southern Israel by Hamas that day, according to Israeli media reports.

Haliva had already indicated he would step down after the war was concluded, and looks set to stay in the role until a replacement is appointed, but Hebrew news outlet Ynet has published an image of his resignation letter.

Haliva had already described 7 October as “an intelligence failure”, saying “the IDF under my command failed to warn of the terrorist attack carried out by Hamas.”

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Overnight the Israeli armed forces have said that one of their drones, which was staging an incursion inside Lebanon’s airspace, had been taken down by a surface-to-air missile.

In a statement on its official Telegram channel, the IDF said:

Earlier this evening, a surface-to-air missile was launched toward an IAF UAV that was operating in Lebanese airspace. As a result, the UAV was hit and fell in Lebanese territory. The incident is under review.

Israel said that its fighter jets struck at the site of the launch which had taken down the drone, and claimed that it is “continuing to operate in Lebanese airspace to carry out IDF missions in order to protect the state of Israel.”

Patrick Wintour

Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor

A plan due to be published today to improve the accountability and transparency of Unrwa, the UN relief works agency for Palestinians, is not expected to lead to a snap British decision to restore funding to the agency.

Britain joined 18 other nations in suspending funding for the agency after Israel claimed that 12 of the 30,000 Unrwa staff had participated in the attack on Israel on 7 October. Almost all those countries have restored funding, and the UK government is facing conflicting domestic pressures over whether to do the same. The UK provided £35m last financial year to Unrwa, including £16m extra for humanitarian aid.

Some MPs from the ruling Conservative party and strong supporters of Israel have written to the foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, to warn that it would be a form of moral bankruptcy to resume funding, since they regard the agency as being too close to Hamas.

They claim the task of food distribution can be undertaken by other agencies such as the World Food Programme, but others say Unrwa has an infrastructure that no other agency can replace.

Read more here: UK unlikely to make snap decision over Unrwa funding

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.

At least five rockets were launched from the Iraqi town of Zummar towards a US military base in northeastern Syria on Sunday, the first attack against US forces since early February when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq stopped such strikes.

A post on a Telegram group affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah said armed factions in Iraq had decided to resume attacks after seeing little progress on talks to end the US-led military coalition in the country.

More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.

• Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will fight against any efforts to impose sanctions on Israeli military units, amid reports that an Israel Defense Forces battalion is facing US sanctions over its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. According to reports in the Israeli media, US state department officials have confirmed they are preparing to impose sanctions on the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion, which has been accused of serious human rights violations against Palestinians.

• Israel’s foreign minister has hit out at the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, over his decision to publicise his latest meeting with the head of Hamas’s politburo. Israel Katz shared a photo on X which showed Erdoğan shaking hands with Ismail Haniyeh at a presidential office in Istanbul over the weekend, writing that the Turkish president “should be ashamed”.

• Hamas has condemned the US House of Representatives’ approval of $26.4bn in military support for Israel. “This support, which violates international law, is a licence and a green light for the Zionist extremist government to continue the brutal aggression against our people,” the Palestinian militant group said.

• The Israeli army said that its soldiers killed two Palestinians who tried to shoot and stab them in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, and the Palestinian health ministry said both men had died. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa, quoting local sources, said that Israeli forces shot the two men near the West Bank city of Hebron, and that ambulance crews were prevented from reaching them.

• Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, thanked the country’s armed forces for their 13 April operation against Israel, Iran’s official news agency reported, and he called upon them to “ceaselessly pursue military innovation and learn the enemy’s tactics”.