Netanyahu declares it is ‘time for war’ as Israel hails hostage release

Prime minister rejects ceasefire calls, saying army’s advance in Gaza puts pressure on Hamas ‘monsters’

Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a ceasefire in Gaza, declaring “this is a time for war”, as he hailed the rescue of a hostage as evidence that Israel’s military offensive can free Israeli captives while delivering crushing blows to Hamas.

The Israeli prime minister congratulated the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and security agency Shin Bet for freeing Ori Megidish, an army private, but Israeli joy was tempered by a Hamas video of three other captives that remain in captivity.

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Counter-terror chiefs on alert for Iranian activity in UK exploiting Gaza war

Israel-Hamas conflict raises fears Iran might seek to encourage radical groups or terrorist activities in Britain

British counter-terrorism officers are monitoring closely if Iran will try to exploit the Israel-Hamas war for its own ends in the UK, amid wider anxieties that Tehran is an increasing security menace to dissidents and critics.

Concerns about Russia and China are well established, but Iran’s campaign of intimidation and harassment has been the most visible development in the domestic threat picture over the last 12 months.

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Russia blames Ukraine for antisemitic riot at airport in Dagestan

Foreign ministry says Kyiv played ‘direct and key role’ after mob stormed planes in search of Israeli passengers

Russia has blamed Ukraine for the antisemitic riot in the mostly Muslim region of Dagestan on Sunday in which an angry mob stormed the airport in Makhachkala in search of Jewish passengers arriving from Israel.

Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Monday that the riot was the result of a “provocation” orchestrated from outside Russia, with Ukraine playing a “direct and key role”.

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Hostage soldier rescued in Gaza, says Israel

Ori Megidish said to have been freed as Hamas issues video of three others still in captivity

Israeli forces have announced the liberation of a hostage in Gaza hours after Hamas released a video of three other hostages who remain in captivity.

Ori Megidish, an Israel Defence Forces soldier, was freed during an escalating offensive in Gaza, the IDF and the internal security agency Shin Bet said in a joint statement on Monday night. It said she had undergone medical checks and was doing well.

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Israel-Hamas war live: women and children make up nearly 70% of people reported killed in Gaza, says UN

UNRWA chief says ‘human tragedy unfolding under our watch is unbearable’; Netanyahu says ‘this is a time for war’ as he says no to ceasefire

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has urged Israel to “listen” when its friends ask it to protect innocent lives in Gaza and warned that the world “will not accept continuing civilian deaths”.

Wong’s comments reflect a strengthening of the Labor government’s calls for Israel to minimise civilian deaths in Gaza. The foreign minister said civilians on both sides had been “murdered” in the “dreadful, tragic conflict”.

“It is a dreadful, tragic conflict. We are seeing loss of life. We are seeing civilians on both sides [who] have been murdered,” Wong told Radio National.

“We have seen civilians up on both sides in a lot of pain, and obviously, we still have Israeli hostages who have been taken, that Hamas is still holding.”

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Israeli forces appear to be advancing on Gaza City from two sides

Witnesses report Salah al-Din Road cut as Israel expands assault, in apparent effort to divide strip in two

Israeli tanks and infantry have advanced on Gaza City from two directions, with tanks reported to be on the main north-south road, in an apparent effort to cut the strip into two.

Reports in the Hebrew media, statements from Hamas and Palestinian witness accounts, described Israeli armour operating close to the Mediterranean coast in the north of Gaza in an area where Hamas said it was engaged in heavy fighting.

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Israeli forces advance in northern Gaza, as aid trickles in from the south

Reports of fierce clashes inside Gaza as the ‘second phase’ of the Israeli military’s war against Hamas continues

Israeli troops backed by tanks have expanded their operations inside Gaza amid reports of fierce air and and artillery strikes in the enclave’s north, as nearly three dozen trucks entered through the territory’s southern border on Sunday.

Hamas confirmed it was engaged in “heavy fighting” with Israeli troops inside northern Gaza on Sunday, as besieged residents were again warned by Israel to flee southward.

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Palestinian PM: we will not run Gaza without solution for West Bank

Exclusive: Mohammad Shtayyeh calls for a ‘comprehensive, peaceful vision’ and ceasefire in Gaza

The Palestinian Authority will not return to governing Gaza after the Israel-Hamas conflict without a comprehensive agreement that includes the West Bank in a Palestinian state, the authority’s prime minister has said.

Israeli civilian and military officials have said their plan for the end of the Gaza war is to have some form of transitional authority rule the territory, perhaps involving Arab states, leading to the restoration of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was ousted from Gaza in a 2007 Hamas coup.

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Further air and artillery strikes reported in northern Gaza – as it happened

This blog is closed.

The UN security council scheduled an emergency meeting on Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza on Monday afternoon at the request of the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council, according to a report by Associated Press.

Israeli airstrikes have hit areas around Gaza’s largest hospital, destroying roads leading to the facility, which is a major shelter for Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment, residents have told Associated Press.

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Humza Yousaf says parents-in-law are alive in Gaza but have run out of water

Scottish first minister expresses relief after communications were cut off during Israeli bombardment

Scotland’s first minister has expressed relief after discovering his parents-in-law in Gaza are alive, although they have run out of clean drinking water.

Humza Yousaf said the welcome news had come through on Sunday morning, hours after describing his worries about whether they were alive or dead following the imposition by Israel of a communication blackout in Gaza on Friday.

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Labour will not punish calls for Israel-Hamas ceasefire, shadow minister suggests

Keir Starmer has ‘listened’ to rebels and will ‘continue engaging’, says Peter Kyle, amid mounting pressure from senior party figures

Members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet will not be punished if they break party ranks by demanding a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, because Labour is a “diverse party”, Peter Kyle has suggested.

The shadow science, innovation and technology minister also rejected claims that Labour was taking Muslim votes for granted, and said the party was not basing its policy on the conflict around what might win votes.

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Civil order ‘starting to break down’ in Gaza as people raid UN warehouses

Head of refugee agency says wheat, flour and hygiene supplies taken as Israel continues its bombardment

Order is beginning to collapse in the besieged Gaza Strip after thousands of desperate people raided UN warehouses in search of food, as the international criminal court’s top prosecutor said impeding relief supplies to the population may constitute a crime under the court’s jurisdiction.

Wheat, flour and hygiene supplies were taken from on Saturday from four UN-run centres across the blockaded 25- by 7-mile strip, home to more than 2 million trapped people, Thomas White, Gaza director for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said on Sunday.

A UN peacekeeper on the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon was injured in cross-border fire, the world body said.

Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron “stressed the importance of getting urgent humanitarian support” into Gaza.

Jack Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said the US believed “there should be humanitarian pauses to get hostages out, potentially to get aid in”.

A delegation of families of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas urged President Isaac Herzog to keep their plight at the top of the political agenda.

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‘I don’t know if they are alive or dead’: father’s anxious wait in West Bank as Gaza is bombed

Mahmoud Abu Amir is among thousands of Palestinians frantically trying to locate their loved ones from afar

For Mahmoud Abu Amir, the war in his native Gaza began on Monday 9 October. An Israeli airstrike flattened a large area in the Jabalia refugee camp where he spent most of his life, demolishing the apartment block that was sheltering most of his family including his wife, Mayar, and their two young children.

Two days earlier, Hamas militants had stormed towns and kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip, killing 1,400 Israelis and taking at least 200 more hostage. When Abu Amir called his family that day to check on them, “it was a shock”, he said. “No one expected this to happen. But my wife, and my entire family were dead scared. They knew something would happen to them. They live near the border and they knew they would pay the price.”

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Does Biden’s unwavering support for Israel risk his chance for re-election?

Half of young Americans are skeptical of US support for Israel, and campus protesters demand a ceasefire in Gaza

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

On Wednesday night, Joe Biden basked in the pageantry of a state dinner – white-jacketed violinists, golden chandeliers dotted with pink roses, a vivid wall display of 3D paper flowers. But soon after toasting the Australian prime minister in a pavilion on the White House south lawn, the US president had to step away to be briefed on a deadly mass shooting in Maine.

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‘Lord, where do we go?’ Gaza’s social media voices begin to fall silent

Communications blackout cuts off stream of Snapchat updates from residents about life in the conflict
Israel and Hamas at war – live updates

Communications went dark in Gaza on Friday, but the few voices that emerged described a night of intense airstrikes and panic among a population fearing that the outage signified a new stage in the violence.

The social media platform Snapchat has been used since the war began by some Gazans to post images from their lives, with videos showing people in long queues at bakeries or for water, or gathered in crowds at hospitals and schools.

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Netanyahu declares a ‘second war of independence’ as fears for Gazans grow

As Israel’s ground operation intensifies, World Health Organization issues an urgent statement saying it is unable to cope with a total blackout

Gaza was plunged into darkness, isolation and violence on Saturday night, its communications with the outside world almost entirely cut, as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced his country was entering “the second stage” of what was likely to be a long and difficult war against Hamas.

In a televised press conference Netanyahu told Israelis: “We have unanimously approved the widening of the ground invasion … Our objective is singular: to defeat the murderous enemy. We declared ‘never again’, and we reiterate: ‘never again, now’.”

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Whatever happens next, Gaza is what Netanyahu will be remembered for | Bethan McKernan

Polls suggest that four in five people blame the Israeli government for the 7 October massacres and over half want the PM to resign

In October 2011 Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted by the Palestinian group Hamas and held for five years in the blockaded Gaza Strip, walked through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, accompanied by militants wearing suicide vests.

His release was widely celebrated across Israel; in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, so too was the agreed exchange of 1,027 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Foremost among them was Yahya Sinwar, who returned home to Gaza, eventually becoming Hamas’s most important leader in the territory. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, then in his second term, did face some criticism for the starkly asymmetric deal. The daily Jerusalem Post said at the time that “any such exchange, however humane to Shalit and his family, would imperil thousands of other Israelis”.

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UK politicians lack humanity, says son of doctor trapped in Gaza

People with families in Gaza call on British government to help get them out and to join calls for ceasefire

On Friday evening, as Israeli air and ground forces ramped up their operations in the Gaza Strip and a communications blackout fell across the embattled territory, Salim Hammad received a text from the UK Foreign Office notifying him of a possible increase in attacks and violence.

“What are we supposed to do with that information?” said Salim, a 34-year-old doctor in Oxford whose father, Abdel, is stuck at the Rafah border crossing.

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Al Jazeera journalist who lost his family in Gaza airstrike returns to work

Wael al-Dahdouh’s wife, children and grandson were killed in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza on Tuesday

Israel and Hamas at war – live updates

An Al Jazeera correspondent has returned to work just days after his entire immediate family were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

Wael al-Dahdouh’s wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in the strike late on Tuesday. They had moved to a house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza following Israel’s warning on 13 October.

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Qatar’s peacemaking ambitions face ultimate test in crucible of Israel-Hamas war

Doha positions itself as region’s lead mediator but balancing relations with Hamas and the west has become diplomatically precarious

A two-sentence tweet by Israel’s national security adviser has revealed the acute dilemma Israel and the west face in dealing with Qatar, the energy-rich state that has positioned itself as a mediator of conflicts around the world, from Khartoum to Kabul.

“I’m pleased to say that Qatar is becoming an essential party and stakeholder in the facilitation of humanitarian solutions,” Tzachi Hanegbi wrote. “Qatar’s diplomatic efforts are crucial at this time.”

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