The attack, which has been widely condemned, left a Palestinian man dead and about a dozen injured
To Australia now and a row between an independent MP and the leader of the opposition.
Liberal party leader Peter Dutton has insisted he is not racist after Zali Steggall, the independent MP, defended calling Dutton so in parliament and accused him of fuelling division with his political attacks over visa-holders from Gaza.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: Israel’s reluctance to compromise is under mounting pressure – will Tehran’s intentions change the prospect of peace?
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Good morning. Ten months after Israel’s invasion of Gaza began, the death toll compiled by health officials there has reached 40,000 – one in 50 of the territory’s prewar population. There are thousands more killed by Israeli forces whose bodies have not yet been recovered. Among those known to have died recently are Ayssel and Asser, four-day-old twins killed in an Israeli airstrike along with their mother and grandmother while their father, Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan, was out registering their births.
While a ceasefire is catastrophically overdue for Palestinians in Gaza, there is still no sign that one will soon be agreed. A new round of talks yesterday in Doha with Israel and mediators from the US, Egypt, and Qatar were said to have got off to a “promising start”. They are expected to continue today. But Hamas is not participating.
Contaminated blood | Victims of the contaminated blood scandal will begin receiving compensation before the end of the year, with some entitled to more than £2.5m, the government has confirmed. About 3,000 people who contracted HIV or hepatitis C as a result of the infusions have already registered as potential recipients.
Ukraine | Volodymyr Zelenskiy has claimed Kyiv’s troops have full control over the Russian town of Sudzha, which had a prewar population of 5,000 people and contains infrastructure pumping Russian gas towards Europe. Both Ukraine and Russia claimed advances elsewhere in Kursk region on Thursday.
Education | Pupils achieved the best A-level results in a generation on Thursday, with marks that highlighted the growing gap between the strongest and weakest-performing parts of the country.
Mpox | Sweden confirmed its first case of the more contagious variant of mpox, a viral infection that spreads through close contact, marking the first time it has been found outside Africa. The person was infected while in a part of Africa where there was a large outbreak of the disease.
US news | Five people have been arrested and charged over the death of Matthew Perry, prosecutors said, including the actor’s personal assistant and two doctors. The doctors supplied the Friends actor, who died at his Los Angeles home in October 2023, with a large amount of ketamine, the US attorney Martin Estrada said, and “took advantage of Mr Perry’s addiction issues to enrich themselves”.
Continue reading...Assault condemned by Israeli authorities, with Netanyahu’s office pledging trial for perpetrators
• Middle East crisis live – latest updates
Dozens of Israeli settlers have attacked a Palestinian village near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, killing at least one person, in the latest deadly incident of settler violence amid surging tensions in the Palestinian territory.
The Palestinian health ministry said one man was killed and another critically wounded by Israeli settlers who opened fire during the Thursday night attack in the village of Jit, in the north of the West Bank, which is surrounded by Israeli settlements.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. For more on the Israel-Gaza war, read our full report:
The president of New York’s Columbia University resigned yesterday, citing the toll taken by a “period of turmoil” after she faced scrutiny for her handling of demonstrations at the institution over the Israel-Hamas war, AFP reports.
British-American economist Minouche Shafik is the fourth president of an Ivy League university to step down in the wake of the bitter divisions and anti-war protests that swept campuses across the US.
Continue reading...US, Qatar, Egypt and Israel meet in Doha in effort to prevent fighting spiralling into region-wide Middle East conflict
A new round of negotiations aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the war in Gaza and preventing the fighting from escalating into a region-wide conflict got under way in Doha, as the death toll in the Palestinian territory reached a grim milestone of 40,000 people, according to local health authorities.
Mediators from the US, Qatar and Egypt met an Israeli delegation in the Qatari capital on Thursday afternoon, with talks expected to continue into the next day. Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, is not directly participating in the talks, meaning expectations of a breakthrough are low.
Continue reading...UK foreign secretary will reportedly meet Benjamin Netanyahu amid increasing tensions with Iran
David Lammy is reportedly planning an imminent trip to Israel amid high tensions with Iran, in an attempt to help avert an escalation of war in the Middle East.
The foreign secretary will meet Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Israel Katz, the foreign minister, along with Stéphane Séjourné, the French foreign minister, Sky News reported.
Continue reading...The figure given by the strip’s health officials does not tell the full story of Palestinian losses, excluding those missing or buried in rubble
Dalia Hawas was 24 years old when an Israeli airstrike flattened the apartment building where she lived in February, burying the young mother with her 10-month-old daughter, Mona. They are not listed among Gaza’s war dead, because their bodies were trapped too deep beneath the rubble for rescue teams to reach them.
Ten months into Israel’s war on Gaza, the death toll has passed 40,000, according to health authorities there. Most of the dead are civilians and the total represents nearly 2% of Gaza’s prewar population, or one in every 50 residents.
Continue reading...Meta has system for evaluating the effectiveness of its own moderation for Arabic language content but not Hebrew
Meta is struggling with moderating content related to the Israel-Palestine war, particularly in Hebrew, despite recent changes to internal policies, new documents have revealed.
Internal policy guidelines shared with the Guardian by a former Meta employee who worked on content moderation outline a multilayered process for moderating content related to the conflict. But the documents indicate Meta, which owns the platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, does not have the same processes in place to gauge the accuracy of moderation of Hebrew content and Arabic content.
Continue reading...Syrian government denies claims that Tice, who vanished while reporting in Daraya 12 years ago, is being held captive
Joe Biden has called for the immediate release of Austin Tice, the American journalist and former marine who disappeared in Syria in 2012, and who US authorities believe is being held by the Syrian government.
“This week marks 12 long, terrible years since American Austin Tice was abducted in Syria,” the US president said on Wednesday. “We have repeatedly pressed the government of Syria to work with us so that we can, at last, bring Austin home. Today, I once again call for his immediate release.”
Continue reading...Newspaper and campaign group allege Palestinians are sent ahead of troops into buildings or tunnels that need clearing
Israeli soldiers are using Palestinian civilians as human shields in Gaza to enter and clear tunnels and buildings they suspect may have been booby-trapped, a leading Israeli NGO and newspaper have reported.
The practice was so widespread across different units fighting in Gaza that it could in effect be considered a “protocol”, said Nadav Weiman, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, a group founded by Israeli combat veterans to document military abuses.
Continue reading...Islamist group says it won’t ‘negotiate just to negotiate’, raising fears of Iranian attacks on Israel if no deal is agreed
Hamas appears unlikely to participate in a new round of talks on a Gaza ceasefire deal on Thursday, further eroding hopes of an agreement that might stave off expected retaliatory strikes by Iran against Israel for the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran last month.
Most observers already had low expectations of the ceasefire talks, with Israel hardening its position in recent weeks and fears that Hamas, now led by its most hardline faction, would offer few concessions.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Israel-Gaza war coverage here
Palestinian newborn twins, their mother and grandmother were killed by an Israeli strike on their Gaza apartment as their father picked up their birth certificates.
Mohammed Abu Al-Qumsan had just picked up the certificates when he found out the twins had been killed, along with his wife and her mother, by a strike on the building where they were sheltering, according to Reuters.
My wife is gone, my two babies and my mother-in-law. I was told it’s a tank shell on the apartment they were in, in a house we were displaced to.
Today, it was registered in history that the occupation army targets newborn children who are barely four days old, twins along with their mother and grandmother.
Continue reading...About 27,000 people displaced by heaviest rainfall since 2019 in country already hit by civil war and famine
Heavy rains in Sudan have killed dozens of people, compounding hardship in a country that is already facing multiple crises.
At least 68 people have been killed in Sudan as a result of rains that have plagued different parts of the country this year, the interior ministry said.
Continue reading...Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan’s wife and mother-in-law also killed in strike that hit home where they were sheltering
Four-day-old twins have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza while their father went to register their birth, he has said, as Israel continued its bombardment of the territory.
Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan said his wife, Joumana Arafa, a pharmacist, had given birth by caesarean section four days earlier and announced the twins’ arrival on Facebook, the Associated Press reported.
Continue reading...Coalition leader’s escalated rhetoric immediately rejected by senior Albanese government figures
Peter Dutton has escalated the Coalition’s rhetoric against Palestinians fleeing the Gaza war zone, claiming that none should be allowed to Australia “at the moment” due to an unspecified “national security risk”.
The comments from the opposition leader on Wednesday contradict the assessment by the Asio spy chief, Mike Burgess, that rhetorical support for Hamas should not be an automatic bar to Palestinians receiving visas.
Continue reading...Arezoo Badri was shot as police attempted to pull her over in the northern city of Noor
A woman is reported to have been left paralysed after being shot by Iranian police who were attempting to stop her car over alleged violations of Iran’s draconian hijab laws.
According to human rights groups and sources inside Iran, Arezoo Badri was driving home in the northern city of Noor on 22 July when the police attempted to pull her over after her car was identified as being on an impoundment list.
Continue reading...Tehran blames the country for killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iranian capital
Iran has rejected western calls not to retaliate against Israel for the killing in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, late last month.
“Such demands lack political logic, are entirely contrary to the principles and rules of international law, and represent an excessive request,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanani, said.
Continue reading...Tom Perriello condemns tactics of Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese military before peace talks in Geneva
The US special envoy for Sudan has accused the two factions in the country’s civil war of “cowardice” before crucial peace talks that are due to start on Wednesday.
Tom Perriello told the Guardian that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese military “lacked courage and honour” because of their continued use of starvation as a weapon.
Continue reading...Airstrikes have killed children born from IVF, while shelling of fertility clinic’s lab has shattered other families’ dreams
It took surgery and five years of IVF treatment for Amal to fall pregnant for the first and only time. That struggle against infertility lasted almost as long as her son Khaled’s short life. He was just seven years old when on 17 October an Israeli airstrike on Rafah, one of the first of the war, hit the family home.
Khaled was killed and Amal was plunged into a grief heightened by memories of her long battle to become a mother. Sometimes she struggles to keep going. “Death, in all its finality, seems less daunting than the relentless pain of living without Khaled,” she said. “He was the most precious thing in my life.”
Continue reading...Iran has vowed severe response to assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. This live blog is closed
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 39,929 Palestinians and wounded 92,240 since 7 October the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said on Tuesday. A total of 32 Palestinians have been killed and 88 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry said in a statement.
The Associated Press reports that Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 16 Palestinians, including four women and seven children, and orphaned another four children, Palestinian medical officials said Tuesday.
Ten people were killed in a strike late Monday on a house near the southern city of Khan Younis, where Israel ordered mass evacuations in recent days, saying it must act against Palestinian militants.
Nasser hospital, where the bodies were brought, said another four children, including a 5-month-old infant, were wounded. The infant’s parents and their other five children were among those killed. The parents of the other three wounded children were also killed, according to the hospital’s list of casualties. An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies.
A separate strike near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza killed a woman and her twin babies, who were four days old, and their grandmother. Another strike in central Gaza killed a man and his nephew.
An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies at the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital and spoke to the father of the twins, who had planned to register their birth on Tuesday.
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because its fighters operate in residential areas. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.