Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Suella Braverman calls for ‘further action’ against pro-Palestine marches

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Home secretary’s rhetoric is dividing Conservative MPs, who are frustrated that Rishi Sunak has not sacked her

Suella Braverman has demanded “further action” against pro-Palestine marches, as centrist Conservative MPs expressed despair at Rishi Sunak’s delay in sacking his rogue home secretary.

One senior backbencher predicted “a lot of noise” from angry colleagues when they return to parliament on Monday, with no signs of imminent action from Sunak after a series of controversies involving Braverman.

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Gulf states fend off call from Iran to arm Palestinians at Riyadh summit

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Iranian president had travelled to Saudi Arabia to try to force a more interventionist approach to Israel-Hamas war

Gulf state leaders have fended off an Iranian-led attempt to call for arming the Palestinians and severing all diplomatic ties with Israel at an extraordinary summit in Riyadh, in a effort to retain control of the region’s diplomatic response to the Israeli assault on Gaza.

Tehran, however, insisted on Sunday that its influence remained through its allied “resistance factions” operating in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. In a further sign that it has no intention of jettisoning a military path, militants near the Israeli border with Lebanon fired anti-tank missiles towards Israel, hitting a number of civilians, according to the Israeli military.

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‘Families want to die together’: relatives count the cost of Gaza airstrikes

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As Israeli missiles rain down on crowded apartment blocks, survivors are left numb as entire family groups are wiped out

The first call informing Fares Alghoul that a relative’s home had been hit by an Israeli airstrike arrived late on a Friday. The internet in Gaza was cut only moments later, forcing him to wait 12 hours to learn the names of the 18 dead. He would have to wait even longer for the confirmation that a further 18 family members stuck under the rubble had also been killed, bringing his family’s death toll to 36.

As a journalist, Alghoul has covered all Gaza’s previous wars but now lives in Canada, where he has had to watch from a distance as generations of his family are wiped out.

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Israeli troops in key battle with Hamas gunmen near Gaza City hospital

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Doctors accuse IDF of attacking people trying to flee al-Shifa, the hospital portrayed by Israel as the main command post for Hamas

Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza appeared to be reaching a key moment, with close-quarter battles raging around the most important hospital in the heart of its biggest city.

Residents said Israeli forces had been fighting Hamas gunmen all night and throughout the day in the neighbourhood in Gaza City where the al-Shifa hospital is located, considered a key strategic area.

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Labour seen as more divided by voters after tension over conflict in Gaza

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The latest Opinium poll shows Keir Starmer’s personal rating has slumped but the Tories are also suffering from internal divisions

Labour is perceived by voters as far more divided in the wake of party splits over the conflict in Israel and Gaza, amid concerns that there may be further frontbench resignations on the issue this week.

Keir Starmer has also taken a hit, with the latest Opinium poll for the Observer showing a slump in the proportion of voters who regard him as a strong leader compared with a month ago.

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London’s pro-Palestine march live: 126 people arrested as police highlight ‘deeply concerning’ rightwing violence – as it happened

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Met assistant commissioner Matt Twist says nine officers were injured while preventing a violent crowd reaching the Cenotaph

Scores of people have gathered in Hyde Park for a “stewards’ meeting” before the march, the PA Media agency reports.

They are all wearing hi-vis jackets, while many have also donned keffiyehs, Palestinian scarves.

Armistice Day is a moment of solemn national reflection in remembrance of those who have given their lives in service of our country. It’s important that people can use our rail network to safely travel, free from intimidation.

That’s why I have granted consent for the British Transport Police to make orders under section 14A of the Public Order Act 1986 prohibiting planned protests at various London stations today, meaning anyone taking part will be subject to arrest.

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Israel-Hamas war: UN calls Gaza fighting ‘reprehensible’ – as it happened

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This blog has now closed. You can read all our coverage of the Israel-Hamas war here

The al-Shifa hospital director, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, has warned “we are minutes away from imminent death” with patients dying “by the minute”.

Speaking from inside the besieged facility in Gaza City to Al Jazeera, he said:

All I can say is that we’ve started to lose lives. Patients are dying by the minute, victims and wounded are also dying – even babies in the incubators.

We lost a baby in the incubator, we also lost a young man in the intensive care unit.

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Middle East leaders hold emergency summit amid seige on Gaza hospital

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Al-Shifa chief says Israeli troops firing at complex, which has no medical supplies, power or water for thousands trapped inside

Leaders from across the Middle East and surrounding region are meeting in Saudi Arabia for an emergency summit on Gaza, as the territory’s largest hospital remains encircled by Israeli forces, without power, and with strikes “on everything moving inside the complex”, according to staff trapped inside.

“We are totally cut off from the whole world, we are minutes away from imminent death,” Mohammad abu Salmiya, the head of Dar al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera.

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What would Israel look like under a new leader – and who would benefit?

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Israelis are politically divided, but there’s widespread agreement that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government needs to go

For years, the newspaper Israel Hayom has been known as the “Bibiton”. A Hebrew portmanteau, it means “the paper of Bibi”, the nickname for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was founded by the late billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as the mouthpiece for Netanyahu.

Last week, the head of news at the paper, Uri Dagon, signalled a breaking of the ranks, calling on the prime minister to “lead us to victory and then go”, taking aim at the “nonstop political bickering while the war is raging”. In Israel’s fractured and fractious politics, it signalled the cohering of a rare agreement across party lines: the political era of Netanyahu was staggering to its bitter end.

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Israel-Hamas fake news thrives on poorly regulated online platforms

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Claims on X and Telegram include downplaying 7 October Hamas attack and allegations Palestinians are faking scenes of suffering

Disinformation has flourished across a range of online platforms in the month since Hamas launched its bloody attack on Israel, fuelled by weak content regulation on X, formerly Twitter, and Telegram and at times propelled by state actors.

Widely shared faked news and false claims include efforts to downplay the horror of Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October through to distasteful allegations that Palestinians, already under heavy bombardment, are faking scenes of violence.

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Macron calls for end to killing of civilians in Gaza as international pressure on Israel grows

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French president’s comments come as aid agency Doctors Without Borders says situation at main Gaza hospital ‘catastrophic’

French president Emmanuel Macron has called on Israel to stop killing babies, women and elderly people in Gaza as the country comes under mounting international pressure, including from its main ally the US, to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.

Macron’s comments came hours before aid agency Doctors Without Borders said it was “extremely concerned” about the safety of patients and medical staff at al-Shifa hospital – the Gaza Strip’s largest – around which fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas was raging on Saturday.

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UN warns violence against civilians in Sudan ‘verging on pure evil’

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UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan says war between army and paramilitaries is ‘horrific’

Violence against civilians in Sudan is “verging on pure evil,” a senior UNofficial has warned, as fighting escalates seven months into the war between the army and paramilitaries.

“We keep saying that the situation is horrific and grim. But, frankly, we are running out of words to describe the horror of what is happening in Sudan,” said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan.

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Israel kills seven more Hezbollah fighters on border with Lebanon

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Iranian foreign minister says wider regional conflict inevitable as death toll among militant group rises to 78

Israel has killed a further seven Hezbollah fighters on its northern border with Lebanon, taking the total death toll of Hezbollah fighters to 78 since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October.

The rising death toll in Lebanon and the killing of 18 Palestinians by Israeli security forces in the West Bank on Thursday prompted the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, to declare that a wider regional escalation of the conflict was inevitable.

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Pro-Palestine march will be one of UK’s biggest ever protests, organisers predict

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Police to put tight controls on protesters’ movements with hundreds of thousands expected at event on Armistice Day

The organisers of the pro-Palestine march due to take place in London on Armistice Day believe “hundreds of thousands” of people will turn out for what they say will be one of Britain’s biggest days of mass protest.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan police said the policing of the remembrance weekend would be “far greater and more complex than we’ve delivered before” and that officers would draw on “an extensive set of powers to prevent any disruption whatsoever”, with tight controls put on the movements of protesters.

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‘Our wish is to be martyred’: defiant Hamas fighters count their losses in West Bank

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Hundreds of men, some armed, march with bodies of the dead through Jenin as violence escalates

At 8.30 on Friday morning, Jenin’s morgue was crowded. Outside, dozens of young men in black baseball caps, T-shirts and jeans stood quietly, some with their weapons between their knees, their green Hamas headbands tied tight across their foreheads. Older men sat in front of shuttered shops.

Inside, a metal door was opened and a corpse wrapped in the green flag of Hamas was drawn out on a stretcher. A teenager with an assault rifle in one hand touched the dead man lightly on the forehead, then helped to shoulder the stretcher and with five others set out through the throng, down the rubble-strewn streets to the home of Hamed Fayed, where the women of the family waited.

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Civilian death rate in Israeli airstrikes higher than in past conflicts, study finds

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Monitoring group says increased fatality average in latest Gaza air campaign may indicate shift in strategy

Each recorded fatal Israeli airstrike on Gaza since 7 October has caused an average of 10.1 civilian deaths, a monitoring group has said, amid warnings that reported civilian casualty figures are likely to be an underestimate.

The fatality average is far higher than in the three previous Israeli air campaigns in Gaza, of which the most deadly was Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, where the equivalent figure was 2.5.

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Gaza’s largest hospital being bombarded, WHO says

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Attack comes as Blinken laments Palestinian death toll and Netanyahu says Israel does not seek to govern territory

The largest hospital in Gaza, where up to 50,000 people are sheltering, is facing bombardment, the World Health Organization has said, as the US’s top diplomat said “far too many Palestinians have been killed” in the war.

Palestinian officials said Israel launched airstrikes on or near four hospitals overnight and on Friday morning, as the territory’s precarious health system struggled to cope with thousands of people wounded or displaced in Israel’s war against Hamas militants.

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UK couple on holiday in Egypt died of carbon monoxide poisoning, coroner rules

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Susan and John Cooper, from Burnley, fell ill after hotel room next door was sprayed for bed bug infestation

A woman whose parents were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning during a holiday to Egypt has said her family is “broken without them”.

John and Susan Cooper, aged 69 and 63 respectively, died after falling ill in their hotel room after a pesticide was sprayed in the room next door to kill bed bugs, a coroner ruled on Friday.

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Spanish police investigate possible Iran link to shooting of former politician

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Alejandro Vidal-Quadras told police from hospital bed of his links to exiled Iranian opposition, source says

The Spanish rightwing former politician Alejandro Vidal-Quadras is recovering in hospital after being shot in the face on a central Madrid street.

Police said they were not ruling out any theories for the attack on Thursday afternoon, including a possible link to the former European lawmaker’s ties with the Iranian opposition.

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Israel-Hamas war live: US says ‘far too many’ Palestinians have died as Gaza’s health ministry says toll is over 11,000

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US secretary of state says country has proposed longer ‘humanitarian pauses’ to Israel; Hamas-run health ministry says 11,078 people have been killed

It’s approaching mid-morning in Gaza now. The Guardian and other outlets have been reporting that the White House announced Israel would begin to implement four-hour “humanitarian pauses” in parts of northern Gaza to allow people to leave. However, there is yet to be a clear sign that this is taking place. Here are some scenes from the strip yesterday.

Here is our latest full report on recent developments in the Israel-Hamas war. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he isn’t seeking to govern Gaza, after earlier saying Israel may be responsible for its security indefinitely. It also includes reports of attacks on three hospitals in the territory, including the main Al Shifa hospital.

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