David Lammy warns of rising risk of full-scale regional war in Middle East

The UK foreign secretary and his French counterpart write in the Observer about their fears over Israel’s escalating tensions with Iran

• It’s never too late for peace in the Middle East – we must break the cycle of violence

There is a rising risk of “full-scale regional war” in the Middle East, the foreign secretary, David Lammy, has warned, amid frantic international efforts to calm tensions with Iran and reach a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

With the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, flying into Israel this weekend to push for a deal, Lammy has joined forces with his French counterpart, Stéphane Séjourné, to warn that now is a “perilous moment” for the region in the midst of widespread fears of escalation involving Tehran and allied militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

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Both Israel and Hamas’s leaders believe there is more to gain by fighting on

Decision-makers on either side of the conflict are biding their time in order to secure the best ceasefire deal

With the most recent round of talks now over, any hopes of a ceasefire in Gaza in the immediate future appear this weekend to have been dashed. There are further discussions scheduled for this week, but these feel more like a desperate attempt to keep the process alive than offering a real chance of peace.

This is not the first time there has been similar disappointment. A dozen or more rounds of mediated negotiations, a UN resolution, pressure from Washington and other powers, and much else has failed to push either the leaders of Israel or Hamas to make the concessions necessary to stop the 10-month-old war.

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‘A police state’: US universities impose rules to avoid repeat of Gaza protests

Students, faculty and advocates warn of chilling effect on free speech as schools across US introduce restrictions

Universities across the US are planning tougher rules to restrict protests when students return from summer vacation, an effort to avoid the chaos of last semester when demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza led to police crackdowns on campuses nationwide.

Columbia University students, who were at the vanguard of the movement, may encounter the most changes. The university president, Minouche Shafik, resigned this week in the wake of criticism for her handling of the protests, but not before overseeing the installation of fencing around the lawns of the school’s quad – the heart of campus life and the site of large protest encampments.

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Israel-Gaza war: new evacuation orders in Gaza as 15 reported killed in Israeli strike – as it happens

This live blog is now closed, you can read more about the Israel-Gaza war here

The uncle of three of the people killed in the strike in southern Lebanon early Saturday said they were factory workers who were in their housing accomodation when they were hit. He denied that there were weapons at the facility.

“There was nothing at all like that,” Hussein Shahoud told AP. “There was metal for construction, for building, for all kinds of purposes.”

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Melbourne Symphony Orchestra board promises independent review after musicians revolt over Gaza comments controversy

Announcement comes after musicians passed vote of no confidence in senior management over cancellation of Jayson Gillham’s performance

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s policies will undergo an independent review after the decision to cancel a performance by acclaimed pianist Jayson Gillham shortly after he made comments on the killing of journalists in Gaza.

It comes after the orchestra’s musicians passed a vote of no confidence in their senior management on Friday over the cancellation of Gillham’s performance, according to a letter sent by staff to the board seen by Guardian Australia.

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Gaza sees first polio case in 25 years as UN calls for mass vaccinations

Highly infectious disease confirmed in 10-month-old as UN chief urges pauses in fighting to contain spread

Gaza has recorded its first polio case in 25 years, the Palestinian health ministry said on Friday, after the UN chief, António Guterres, called for pauses in the Israel-Hamas war to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children.

Tests in Jordan confirmed the disease in an unvaccinated 10-month-old from the central Gaza Strip, the health ministry in Ramallah said.

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Gaza ceasefire talks to resume next week after no breakthrough in Doha

US, Qatar and Egypt issue optimistic statement that may also be aimed at stalling Iranian retaliation against Israel

The latest round of Gaza ceasefire talks have ended in Doha without a breakthrough, but a new date next week has been set for further negotiations to attempt to end the 10-month-old war.

A White House statement signed by the co-mediators Qatar and Egypt described a fresh proposal that built “on areas of agreement” and bridged remaining gaps in a manner that allowed for “a swift implementation of the deal”.

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Israel-Gaza war: UN calls Israeli settler attack in West Bank ‘horrific’ – as it happened

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.

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Israel-Gaza war: Gaza death toll passing 40,000 is ‘grim milestone’, says UN; UK foreign secretary ‘to meet Netanyahu’ – as it happened

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.

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Gaza rubble likely to conceal untold horrors to swell 40,000 death toll

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.

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Israeli forces in Gaza ‘use civilians as human shields’ against possible booby-traps

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.

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Israel-Gaza war: Israel publishes plan for new West Bank settlement as regional tensions simmer – as it happened

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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.

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Four-day-old twins killed in Gaza by Israeli airstrike as father registered births

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.

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Peter Dutton says Australia should not accept Palestinians from Gaza due to ‘national security risk’

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.

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Iran rejects western plea not to launch retaliatory attack against Israel

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.

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War halts IVF treatment in Gaza as parents mourn ‘miracle’ children

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.”

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Middle East crisis: Only Gaza ceasefire deal would stop Iran from retaliation against Israel, senior officials say – as it happened

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.

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Israel spokesperson accuses BBC’s Mishal Husain of pro-Palestinian bias

Broadcaster defends Radio 4 presenter’s ‘legitimate’ questions to David Mencer, who claimed she was parroting ‘terrorist organisations’

The BBC has defended Mishal Husain, a presenter on its Radio 4 Today programme, after she was accused by an Israeli government spokesperson live on air of “blindly repeating what terrorist organisations … feed you”.

In a tetchy interview on Monday’s programme, David Mencer, said Husain warranted the “pro-Palestinian reporter of the year award”.

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Israel prepares for likely retaliatory attack by Iran as tensions mount

US says it has prepared for significant attacks by Iran or proxies as Tehran stresses right to respond to assassinations

Iran has insisted on its right to an “appropriate and deterrent response” against Israel as the White House said it had prepared for what could be significant attacks by Iran or its proxies as soon as this week.

The comments come as the US announced it had ordered the deployment of the USS Georgia, a nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine, to the Middle East, amid mounting concern over the determination by Iran and its proxies to retaliate for Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, made the comments to his Chinese counterpart on Monday, according to state media.

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Middle East crisis: US accelerates military deployment to region amid reports Iran may attack within days – as it happened

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin orders USS Abraham Lincoln strike group to quicken transit to Middle East and deploys guided missile submarine, says Pentagon

A hospital in southern Gaza has received the bodies of 13 people, including a child, who were killed in Israeli strikes on Khan Younis, the Associated Press reports.

The strikes came as Israel has ordered mass evacuations from Gaza’s second-largest city in recent days, claiming Palestinian militants are firing rockets from the area. Khan Younis suffered heavy destruction earlier this year during a major Israeli air and ground offensive.

An AP journalist counted the bodies at the nearby Nasser hospital and saw funeral prayers being held Monday morning.

The dead include a medic who was killed along with two others in a strike on his house, according to the hospital records.

This footage from Gaza City shows the moment an Israeli airstrike hit a house in the suburb of Sheikh Radwan on Sunday. One person was killed and several others were wounded, according to Palestinian medics. According to Reuters, the cameraman who filmed the video said the Israeli army had notified people of a possible strike in the area.

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