Category Archives: Gaza

Middle East crisis: Lammy to visit Bahrain and Jordan – as it happened

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This blog has now closed. You can see all our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war here, and our latest report on Israel’s attacks on Lebanon here.

Turkey will evacuate its citizens who have applied to leave Lebanon by sea on Wednesday, the Turkish foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Reuters reports it said in a statement that two Turkish navy ships were expected to set off for Beirut on Tuesday with a total capacity of about 2,000 passengers, adding that the evacuation process will continue in the following days if necessary.

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Donald Trump claims to have been to Gaza despite no evidence of visit

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Former president says territory where 41,000 people have been killed ‘could be better than Monaco’ if developed

Donald Trump’s truthfulness as well as his knowledge of Middle East geography has come under fresh scrutiny after the former president claimed to have been to Gaza – although there is no evidence of him ever visiting the war-torn Palestinian territory.

Trump raised eyebrows after the Republican nominee in November’s presidential election told Hugh Hewitt, a rightwing radio host, that he had been in the tiny coastal strip where more than 41,000 people have been killed and the majority of buildings badly damaged or destroyed in blistering Israeli military attacks responding to last year’s 7 October attack by Hamas. The Hamas attack killed 1,200 about Israelis and took about 250 hostage.

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Suddenly, all MPs know where the Chagos Islands are and what’s best for them | John Crace

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Many who last week couldn’t have got within 500 miles of Mauritius on a map now can’t bear it taking the archipelago

What a difference a week makes. Just last Wednesday, you could have put money on most MPs being totally clueless about the exact location of the Chagos Islands. Give them a map and many would have better luck being blindfolded.

Even a hint wouldn’t have made much difference. Are they east, west, south or north of Mauritius? To be in with a shout, you have to know where Mauritius is. And most MPs wouldn’t get within 500 miles. The Indian Ocean is bigger than you think. And don’t get them started on Diego Garcia. Surely he’s the younger brother of the titular character in the 1974 Sam Peckinpah film Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

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Starmer urges all sides in Middle East to ‘step back from the brink’

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UK prime minister tells parliament that the first anniversary of 7 October Hamas attack is a ‘day of grief’ for region

Keir Starmer has urged all sides to pull back from the brink in the Middle East as he addressed the House of Commons on the anniversary of the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.

With Israel yet to decide how to respond to Iran’s unprecedented missile strike last week, the prime minister said he supported “Israel’s right to defend herself against Iran’s aggression, in line with international law”.

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‘The pain will never leave’: Nova massacre survivors return to site one year on

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Low sobs and prayers for those killed by Hamas punctuated by sound of artillery fire towards nearby Gaza

One year ago, nearly 400 young Israelis were massacred at the site of the Nova music festival during the 7 October Hamas attack. As mourners gathered at the site of the festival to commemorate the victims on Monday, their low sobs and murmured prayers were punctuated by the sound of artillery and machine guns being fired by soldiers into nearby Gaza.

Perhaps no single scene across Israel more expressly exhibited the horrific violence meted out against hundreds of civilians by Hamas, and the subsequent ferocity of the Israeli response against that organisation and millions of people inside of Gaza.

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‘They told us a big attack wouldn’t happen’: the intelligence failures before 7 October

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A year on, there are still bitter recriminations over warnings missed by Israeli military and intelligence services

In the late afternoon on 7 October, an Israeli software engineer in his mid-30s found himself driving down a deserted road parallel to the perimeter fence that separated Gaza from Israel. He had been fighting for hours with an AK-47 taken from a dead Hamas militant. Now he and three friends were headed to the town of Ohad to search for relatives who had gone missing.

“Only when we set off south did we understand how big this was. It was like an apocalypse,” the engineer, who did not want to be named, said last week. “There were hundreds of bodies of civilians inside their cars or on the road, hundreds of dead terrorists with their pickup trucks or motorbikes. There were dead police, army vehicles on fire. We were alone.”

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Israel launches intense wave of airstrikes on 120 sites in Lebanon

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Military says 100 aircraft used in attack on targets in south of country as Israeli operations expand on multiple fronts

Israel launched an intense wave of air raids on southern Lebanon on Monday, with 100 aircraft targeting about 120 sites in the space of an hour, according to the country’s military.

An IDF Arabic spokesperson issued an urgent warning to Lebanese civilians to avoid being on the beach or on boats on the coast from the Awali River southward until further notice.

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Division among Australian politicians easy to see and hear on 7 October anniversary

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Labor condemns Hamas and acknowledges ‘devastating’ loss of civilian lives. Coalition offers emphatic support of Israel and chides calls for a ceasefire

The divisions within Australian politics over the Israel-Gaza war were on full display on Monday as senior leaders marked the first anniversary of the 7 October attacks.

The Labor government reaffirmed its unequivocal condemnation of the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

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Israel marks October 7 with memorials and protests, as attacks on Lebanon and Gaza continue

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The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah intelligence and weapons storage, as rocket hits Haifa injuring at least 5 people

Ceremonies were held across Israel on Monday as the country marked the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks, with the war it launched in response raging in Gaza and escalating in Lebanon, while conflict threatened to spread across the Middle East.

In the hours leading up to the anniversary, Israel bombed targets in Beirut and Gaza, while Hezbollah rockets struck Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, causing damage to buildings, police said. Israeli media reported 5 people were wounded in rocket attacks in Haifa and the city of Tiberias.

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‘A year is just too long’: relatives of Gaza hostages speak of their anguish

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Many are deeply sceptical of the argument that only more military pressure will bring their loved ones back

Eli Albag had been fighting for the release of his daughter from captivity in Gaza for almost a year when he was pelted with eggs and verbally abused.

The father of Liri Albag, who is held hostage by Hamas, was protesting recently outside a political event attended by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the coastal city of Netanya.

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Middle East crisis: Iran confirms resumption of air traffic – as it happened

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This blog has now closed. You can see all our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war: one year on here and all our coverage of the Israel-Lebanon conflict here.

The death toll from the Israeli strike on the Gaza mosque has risen to 24, according to local authorities. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said 93 people were also wounded in the strikes on the mosque and the school, near the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital told the Associated Press that the strike hit a mosque sheltering displaced people. Eyewitnesses told Reuters the same. However Israeli forces say the mosque was being used as a Hamas command and control centre “to plan and carry out terrorist operations against the IDF forces and the State of Israel”, and that it took steps to reduce the chance of harming civilians. An AP reporter counted 18 bodies at the hospital morgue, and said hospital records listed all those killed as men.

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Netanyahu hits out at Macron over call for halt to arms exports to Israel

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Israeli prime minister turns on French counterpart’s continuing efforts towards a ceasefire and end to violence in Lebanon

A call by Emmanuel Macron for a halt in arms supplies to Israel for use in Gaza has been met with an angry rebuttal from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The French president’s comments were directed mainly at the US and were part of continuing French efforts to revive its call for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

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Israel ‘preparing response’ to Iran attack as 7 October anniversary looms

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Military also ordering civilians in two Gaza camps to evacuate, while operations in Lebanon continue to ramp up

The Israeli military is expanding its operations on multiple fronts around the anniversary of the 7 October attacks on Monday, including planning for a “significant and serious” retaliation against Iran for last week’s large-scale ballistic missile attack on Israel.

Signs of imminent Israeli retaliation against Iran came as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for an international embargo on arms delivered to Israel for use against Gaza, where authorities say more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s year long assault.

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Middle East crisis live: night of bombing in south Beirut; IDF confirms Gaza mosque strike

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Israeli army issued evacuation warnings on Saturday to people in the south of Lebanese capital; Israel says Deir al-Balah mosque in Gaza was Hamas site

At least 41,825 Palestinians have been killed and 96,910 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the territory’s health authorities said on Saturday.

A South Korean military transport aircraft returned 97 citizens and family members from Lebanon on Saturday as Middle East tensions rise, the foreign ministry said.

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More blasts in Beirut after Israel demands new evacuations – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. Our latest live blog is here. See all our Middle East crisis coverage

The Israeli military launched a series of strikes on southern Beirut on Thursday night, in one of the most intense bombardments on the city since the campaign began last week.

A source close to Hezbollah told the AFP news agency that Israel had conducted 11 consecutive strikes on the group’s stronghold in the Lebanese capital.

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Iran’s Ali Khamenei vows Hezbollah and Hamas will not back down

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In rare public address, supreme leader defends missile attack on Israel and makes appeal for Muslim unity

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has vowed that Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza will re-emerge strongly with new leaders, as an Israeli airstrike cut Lebanon’s main route to Syria.

In a rare public sermon in front of tens of thousands in Tehran on Friday, Khamenei defended the “legal and legitimate” ballistic missile attack on Israel this week that Iran has said was in retaliation for the deaths of the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, and the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.

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Visas for Palestinians taking average of four months, data shows, not 24 hours as Coalition claimed

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Exclusive: Guardian Australia found Coalition politicians cited the 24-hour figure in interviews on at least 12 occasions in August

It was one of the most potent talking points during the Coalition’s campaign against “rushed” visas to Palestinians fleeing Gaza.

“It is not appropriate to give 3,000 tourist visas to people leaving a war zone controlled by a terrorist organisation in an average of 24 hours,” the Liberal senator James Paterson told Sky News on 20 August.

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A year on, how the Hamas attack has profoundly affected UK political life

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From general election upsets to protests on the streets, the shockwaves from the Middle East have resonated in Britain

When Shockat Adam, the newly elected independent MP for Leicester South, addressed his supporters at the July election count, he brought his speech to an end with a dedication – not to the constituents of the East Midlands city he now represents, but to people more than 2,000 miles away.

“This is for the people of Gaza”, he said, holding a Palestinian keffiyeh aloft.

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UK Palestinians on the nightmare of watching war unfold from afar

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One year on, we speak to those who have lost more than 50 relatives and who call some ministers’ support for the Israeli government ‘shameful’

In September 2023, 45-year-old Mohammed Ghalayini travelled to Gaza from Manchester, where he had lived since 2004, to visit family. He was still there on 7 October when Hamas’s attack on Israel killed 1,200 people. In Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza – which to date has killed more than 41,000 people – he and his family were displaced multiple times, faced shortages of food and water, and endured the relentless sound of drones.

Ghalayini is now back in the north of England, but nearly a year into Israel’s war in Gaza, he says every day still brings bad news – whether from family members in WhatsApp messages, or in updates on Facebook, which has become like an “obituary page”. Ghalayini said he feels helpless.

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Yazidi woman kidnapped by IS freed from Gaza after decade in captivity

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Officials say US, Israel, Jordan and Iraq involved in rescue of 21-year-old who had been captured in Iraq

A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago has been freed from Gaza in an operation led by the US.

The operation this week also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.

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