The 52-year-old said it had been “the very best job in the world” but that she believed part of “serving well would be to know almost instinctively when the time is right” to step down.
The longest serving and first woman first minister confirmed she would stay in post until somebody else takes over and remain as an MSP until at least the next Holyrood election.
The attention now turns to who will become Ms Sturgeon’s successor as leader of the SNP, which she has been at the helm of since 2014.
The SNP’s National Executive Committee will be meeting later today to work out a timetable for the leadership race.
In her resignation speech, Ms Sturgeon said her party has an “array of talent” ready to follow her.
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Early possible contenders to become her successor include current deputy leader of the SNP Keith Brown, the SNP’s finance and economy secretary Kate Forbes, the party’s current constitution, culture and external affairs secretary Angus Robertson, the SNP’s health secretary Humza Yousaf and Scotland’s current deputy first minister John Swinney.
The time for the SNP’s national executive committee meeting is 6.30pm.
After it, we should get some sort of statement or press release giving details of the terms or timetable of the leadership contest.
It does seem though that the start of this contest will be slow as Holyrood is on recess – no-one is actually here because it is half-term.
And I understand one potential contender isn’t even in the country as they are abroad on holiday.
Perhaps they will be hot-footing it back to the UK, as of course Boris Johnson after Liz Truss’ exit from Number 10.
The expectation is the contest will take six weeks, but the last contested leadership contest – which was almost 20 years ago in 2004 – took two-and-a-half months.
So, it may not be until April, possibly early May, when we get a new leader of the SNP and new first minister.
The SNP’s newly elected Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, who replaced Ian Blackford following his resignation in December, ruled himself out of the contest when speaking to Sky News.
As an MP and not a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP), Mr Flynn could currently only replace Ms Sturgeon as SNP leader – and not as Scotland’s first minister.
He told Kay Burley on Thursday: “I’ll indeed not be standing. Of course the next leader of the Scottish National Party needs to have the ability to be first minister – no MP has the ability to be first minister for obvious reasons that we are located in London and not Edinburgh.”
There is precedent for an MP to lead a Scottish party after Douglas Ross took over as head of the Scottish Tories in 2020.
Mr Ross’s predecessor, Ruth Davidson, deputised for him at First Minister’s Questions before he was able to take a seat in the Scottish Parliament himself at the 2021 election.
But Mr Flynn was not tempted to enter the race. Asked who he would be backing in the contest, he kept his cards close to his chest.
Image: Stephen Flynn MP
“In terms of who I’m backing, I’ve not seen anyone throw their name into the ring yet,” he said.
“Once names start going into that ring I’ll have conversations with my colleagues, see what their policy priorities are in terms of the immediate challenges that we face, how they intend to overcome some of the issues in relation to the economy, in relation to the health service, in relation to the cost of living crisis, and indeed our energy future, and of course how they set out their pathway to an independent future.
“I’m looking forward to that positive discussion once my colleagues decide whether they want to put themselves forward or not.”
But the Westminster leader did say an SNP conference, set to take place next month about the party’s approach to fighting for independence going forward, should be delayed.
“I think the new leader should have the opportunity and indeed the space to set out their position, their values and their intentions going forward,” he said.
“I think it’s sensible that we do hit the pause button on that conference and allow the new leader the opportunity to set out their vision.”
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4:58
A look back at Nicola Sturgeon’s career
Time for ‘healing’
Although the SNP continued to lead the polls in Scotland, Ms Sturgeon’s resignation followed a series of political challenges in recent months.
Her government has sought to push through gender reforms, only for them to be blocked by Westminster.
SNP MP Joanna Cherry, a long-standing critic of the gender recognition reforms, called for “reform and healing” in her party, and asked for it to react to the resignation of Ms Sturgeon in “a way that is beneficial to the country and the cause of independence”.
Rishi Sunak put aside his political differences with Ms Sturgeon to thank her for her service following the news of her departure.
One of his ministers, Neil O’Brien, told Sky News, however, that her departure offered the Tories “an opportunity… to do better in Scotland”, adding: “I think it is apparent to people in Scotland now that the SNP are a bit played out in public services. Things are not working.”
Labour’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, also paid tribute to the departing first minister, but told Kay Burley: “It’s an opportunity for the people of Scotland to come together, rather than some of the division that we’ve seen, and also for the focus to be on issues like the cost of living crisis, the issues in the National Health Service.
“Those are the issues that Scottish Labour are going to be focusing on.“
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1:18
Rishi Sunak thanks Nicola Sturgeon
But further afield, a former US president said “good riddance” in reaction to her resignation.
Donald Trump said in a statement: “Good riddance to failed woke extremist Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland!
“This crazed leftist symbolizes everything wrong with identity politics.
“Sturgeon thought it was okay to put a biological man in a women’s prison, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Sturgeon fought for a ‘Gender Recognition Reform Bill’ that would have allowed 16-year-old children to change their gender without medical advice.
“I built the greatest golf properties in the world in Scotland, but she fought me all the way, making my job much more difficult.
“The wonderful people of Scotland are much better off without Sturgeon in office!”
Ukrainians say they are in danger of losing the drone arms race with Russia and need more help.
And that is worrying not just for Ukraine, because the drone is becoming the likely weapon of choice in other future conflicts.
Sky News has been given exclusive access to a Ukrainian drone factory to watch its start up ingenuity at work. Ukrainians have turned the drone into their most effective weapon against the invaders.
But they are now, we are told, losing the upper hand in the skies over Ukraine.
General Cherry Drones was started by volunteers at the beginning of the war, making a 100 a month, but is now producing 1,000 times that. The company’s Andriy Lavrenovych said it is never enough.
Image: Andriy Lavrenovych
“The Russians have a lot of troops, a lot of vehicles and our soldiers every day tell us we need more, we need more weapons, we need better, we need faster, we need higher.”
The comments echo the words of Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who told reporters this week “the Russians have increased the number of drones, while due to a lack of funding, we have not yet been able to scale up.”
The factory’s location is a closely-guarded secret, moved often. Russia strikes weapons factories when it can.
In a nondescript office building we watched drones being assembled and stacked in their thousands. Put together like toys, they are hand assembled and customised.
The quadcopters vary in size, some carry explosives to attack the enemy. Others fly as high as six kilometres to ambush Russian surveillance drones.
Image: A combat drone is prepared by a Ukrainian soldier in the frontline town of Chasiv Yar. Pic:24th King Danylo Separate Brigade/Reuters
A $1,000 (£743) Ukrainian drone can bring down an enemy aircraft worth 300 times as much.
Downstairs each drone is tested before it’s sent to the front. Nineteen-year-old Dima – not his real name – used to play with drones at home before it was occupied in Kherson Oblast.
Now he works here using his skills to check the drones are fit for battle.
But Russia is catching up. Sinister propaganda released this week filmed at one of its vast new drone factories shows hundreds of Geranium delta wing attack drones lined up ready to be launched at Ukraine.
Russia has refined the technology provided by Iranians to produce faster, more lethal versions of their Shahed drones. They have wreaked havoc and carnage, coming in their hundreds every night and killing scores of civilians. Ukraine expects 1,000 a night in the months ahead.
Russia is using scale and quantity to turn the tables on Ukrainians. And it is mastering drones controlled by fibre optic thread, trailing in their wake, that cannot be jammed.
Image: Oleksandr “Drakar”, head of new product development
Oleksandr “Drakar”, head of new product development, showed us his company’s prototype fibre optic model. It is more effective than the Russians, he told us, but added: “The Russians began using the technology earlier and have scaled up production.
“They’ve had considerable help from the Chinese – entire factories there are under contract to supply fibre exclusively to Russia, producing it in vast quantities.”
Russia’s Chinese allies, who claim to be neutral in this conflict, are also throttling the supply of microchips and other parts vital to drone production. The West is not doing enough, say Ukrainians, to counterbalance the threat.
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16:01
Is NATO ready for drone war?
It is a constant race to beat the other side, innovation met by more innovation. This conflict is revolutionising warfare into a sci-fi battle of machines.
Ukrainians say 80% of battlefield strikes are now carried out by drones.
Whoever has the upper hand with them in this conflict is likely to have the edge in future wars. If the West wants to be on the winning side, it will need to give Zelenskyy and his drone start-up companies more help to maintain their edge.
Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza have killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, according to the Gaza health ministry and the media organisations the journalists worked for.
Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis was struck twice on Monday in what has been described as a “double-tap” attack.
The initial strike hit the top floor of a building at Nasser Hospital. Minutes later, as journalists and rescue workers rushed to the scene, a second missile struck the same location, according to Dr Ahmed al Farra, head of the hospital’s paediatrics department.
Al Jazeera, the Associated Press (AP), and Reuters said their journalists were among those killed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he “deeply regrets” the incident, calling it a “tragic mishap”.
“Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff, and all civilians,” he added. “The military authorities are conducting a thorough investigation.”
Image: A man holds the equipment used by Palestinian cameraman Hussam al Masri. Pic: Reuters
Image: Rescuers work to recover the body of Palestinian cameraman Hussam al Masri. Pic: Reuters
A British consultant surgeon, who worked at the Nasser Hospital earlier this summer, described the attack on Monday morning as “barbarism in the extreme”.
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Consultant surgeon Professor Nick Maynard told Sky News it was a “typical double strike that the Israelis use frequently”. It targets an area, then hits it shortly afterwards, often when emergency services respond, he explained.
The Israeli military said its troops carried out a strike in the area of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and that it would conduct an investigation into the incident. The military said it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such”.
In a further statement, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Effie Defrin said: “We are aware of reports that harm was caused to civilians, including journalists. I would like to be clear from the start – the IDF does not intentionally target civilians.
“The IDF makes every effort to mitigate harm to civilians, while ensuring the safety of our troops.”
He said forces were “operating in an extremely complex reality” and that Hamas “deliberately use civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, as shields”.
He said the findings of Israel’s investigation will be presented “as transparently as possible”.
Who are the journalists?
Image: Mariam Dagga
Mariam Dagga, 33, a visual journalist who freelanced for AP during the war, as well as other news outlets, was killed in Monday’s strike.
AP said in a statement that it was shocked and saddened by the death of Dagga and the loss of other journalists.
Dagga, a mother of a 12-year-old son who was evacuated from Gaza earlier in the war, frequently based herself at Nasser, the news agency said. Most recently, she reported on the hospital’s doctors struggling to save starving and malnourished children.
“We are doing everything we can to keep our journalists in Gaza safe as they continue to provide crucial eyewitness reporting in difficult and dangerous conditions,” AP said.
Independent Arabia, the Arabic-language edition of The Independent, said it also collaborated with Dagga.
Image: Mohammed Salama
Al Jazeera confirmed cameraman Mohammed Salama was among those killed.
Mohamed Moawad, managing editor of Al Jazeera, spoke to Sky News from Doha, Qatar, after Mr Salama was killed.
“They were reporting closer to the hospital, knowing that was somehow safer than the frontline,” he said. “We’re talking about a crime against journalism.”
Image: Hussam al Masri
Reuters said in a statement that it was “devastated” after two of its journalists were killed at the Nasser Hospital, and one was injured.
Image: Moaz Abu Taha
Contractor cameraman Hussam al Masri was also killed in the strikes on Nasser Hospital, Reuters said.
Moaz Abu Taha, a freelance journalist whose work had been occasionally published by Reuters, was also killed. Photographer Hatem Khaled, a Reuters contractor, was wounded.
Image: Ahmed Abu Aziz
A fifth journalist, Ahmed Abu Aziz, who worked as a freelance reporter, succumbed to his wounds following the strikes at the Nasser Hospital.
One of the bloodiest conflicts for media workers
The Israel-Hamas war has been among the deadliest conflicts for journalists, with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reporting at least 192 media workers killed in Gaza during the 22-month-long conflict.
The CPJ says that 18 journalists have died so far in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders, said press freedom advocates have never witnessed such a significant decline in journalist safety. He said journalists had been killed in both indiscriminate bombings and deliberate attacks.
“They are doing everything they can to silence independent voices that are trying to report on Gaza,” said Mr Bruttin.
Israel has accused journalists in Gaza of ties to militant groups, as in the case of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al Sharif, who was targeted and killed by Israeli forces earlier this month.
The Israeli military claimed Sharif led a Hamas cell, a charge both Al Jazeera and Sharif rejected as unfounded.
In the absence of direct access, news organisations largely depend on Palestinian journalists and local residents in Gaza to document and provide first-hand accounts of the events unfolding on the ground.
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6:17
Israel faces a decision after it kills at least 20 at hospital
Many journalists reporting from Gaza are enduring the same hardships as those they cover, including the daily struggle to secure food for themselves and their families.
“It is a particular burden that they carry, as well as living in a war zone,” Sky Middle East correspondent Adam Parsons said.
Additional casualties on Monday
In addition to the casualties at Nasser Hospital, medical officials in northern Gaza reported further fatalities resulting from strikes and gunfire along routes leading to aid distribution sites.
According to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, an airstrike on a neighbourhood claimed the lives of three Palestinians, including a child.
Al Awda Hospital in Deir al Balah reported six people attempting to reach a central Gaza aid distribution point were shot and killed in Israeli gunfire. The hospital said 15 others were wounded in the incident.
The IDF has previously “strongly rejected” accusations it targets civilians – and maintained its forces operate near aid sites to stop supplies from falling into the hands of militants.
It is an innocuous term for a horrible tactic. A “double tap” sounds so innocent and unthreatening. In fact, it is a term saved for a particularly brutal kind of attack.
And so it seems was the fate of those who died in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. First one strike hit the building, ripping away a chunk of the wall and injuring the people inside.
Fifteen minutes later, as rescuers and journalists rushed in, and as the scene was being broadcast live, a second explosion ripped through the courtyard, killing those who had come to help.
Image: Nasser hospital in Gaza was damaged by an Israeli strike. Pic: AP
So the first tap causes harm and brings people to the scene; the second inflicts yet more devastation upon the people who came to help.
It’s a tactic that’s been used by a variety of countries over the years, most recently by Russia in Ukraine and, enthusiastically, by Bashar al Assad while he was president of Syria.
This time, it left more than 20 people dead, among them medics, patients, and five journalists. The scenes of carnage were horrendous – we saw images of death and destruction. One man, a journalist who survived the explosions, was filmed sitting in the hospital, his head and body soaked in blood, utterly dazed.
Nasser is the last fully functioning hospital in southern Gaza. To see it struck again was, in the words of British surgeon Professor Nick Maynard, “barbarism in the extreme”.
He told Sky News: “This hospital has been bombed several times over the last 22 months. It is murder. These are war crimes killing innocent civilians. As barbaric as anything I have seen in Gaza.”
Image: Relatives and friends pray over the body of journalist Mariam Dagga. Pic: AP
Among the dead was photographer Mariam Daqqa. Hours before her death, her name appeared on the front page of a leading Israeli newspaper, a credit for a haunting photo she had taken of an emaciated child.
Her press vest, recovered from the rubble, was later laid across her coffin while her camera, still marked by her own blood, was held aloft.
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1:57
Who were the journalists killed by Israel?
Amanda Nasser, an American emergency nurse who had been working inside the hospital, survived by chance. “We were told to leave for [a] training session,” she said. “Thirty minutes later, the hospital was hit twice. Mariam was a dear friend. Getting that news broke me down.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the attack as “a tragic mishap” and an investigation has been opened. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) insists it does not deliberately target civilians; Mr Netanyahu says that Israel values the work of “journalists, health workers and all citizens”.
But it’s also a fact that Nasser hospital is a popular place for media workers to gather, to use the internet and to chase and trade stories. And if we know that, so does the Israeli military.
It would be naive to think that the chance of killing journalists, as well as, obviously, health workers, was not obvious to those who launched this attack. “We do not intentionally target civilians,” says the IDF’s spokesperson Effie Defrin. “We regret any harm to uninvolved individuals.”
And yet, somehow, it happened. Not just one explosion, but two.
There are at least five different groups who try to keep track of how many journalists have been killed in Gaza. They all come up with different figures, but they agree that the total is above 200, and may even be more than 300.
And remember – foreign journalists are barred from entering Gaza, so the ability of the world to scrutinise what is actually happening on the ground in Gaza is largely dependent upon the work of these people, hundreds of whom are now dead.
Israel may not be targeting them, but it is certainly killing a lot of journalists along the way.
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This is a crucial moment in this conflict. Parts of Gaza have been designated as suffering from famine, just as Israel’s military might is readied for a huge operation to encircle and overwhelm Gaza City.
A ceasefire proposal is on the table, but Netanyahu seems reluctant to negotiate. On Tuesday, once again, Israel will face protests and strikes from those, including the families of hostages, demanding that their prime minister stop the war.
It is a volatile time, and Israel is a volatile country.