A grenade given as a birthday present has blown up and killed a close aide of the head of Ukraine's armed forces Valery Zaluzhny.
Maj Hennadiy Chastyakov, 39, had returned to his flat with presents from his colleagues and was opening them with his son when the grenade exploded.
Maj Chastyakov was killed and his 13-year-old son left seriously wounded.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the boy had started turning the ring on the grenade.
"Then, the serviceman took the grenade from the child and pulled the ring, causing a tragic explosion."
The blast has been described as a "tragic accident" and the minister appealed to the public to await the outcome of an official investigation. Police said the explosion in the family flat at Chaiky in the western outskirts of Kyiv had been "as a result of careless handling of ammunition".
But it soon emerged that another five grenades had been found in the flat. Mr Klymenko said that they had been a gift from a colleague in the army.
Two similar grenades were later found in a search of the colleague, described as a colonel in the army.
Pictures from the scene showed other grenades on the floor of the flat, along with other gift bags. Maj Chastyakov had apparently brought the grenades home in a bag with a bottle of whisky.
A source told Ukrainska Pravda that the bottle had been in a gift bag with grenade-shaped glasses and the explosion happened when he opened the bag. Other reports said that his colleague had handed over the bottle saying: "It's hard to surprise you: That's why I'm giving you combat grenades and a bottle of good whisky."
Gen Zaluzhny spoke of the unspeakable pain and heavy loss to the Ukrainian military and to him personally, describing Maj Chastyakov as a "reliable shoulder" since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
His death is the latest setback for the Ukrainian military, after a missile strike killed 19 soldiers in a Russian attack on an awards ceremony close to the front line in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. There was widespread criticism that the ceremony had been allowed to go ahead in a dangerous area.
Pro-presidential MP Maryana Bezulha said Maj Chastyakov's death was down to negligence: "I would never have thought Hennadiy would die as a result of carelessness on his own birthday. Grenades are issued, not given as presents."
However, the official cause of the explosion has been questioned by Ukrainian commentators, some of whom have speculated whether it was an attack targeting Gen Zaluzhny himself, on the assumption that he might have attended his aide's birthday celebrations.
Last week the commander in chief gave a blunt assessment of the situation on Ukraine's front lines against Russia's invasion forces.
"Just like in World War One, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate," he told the Economist. "There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough."
Both the Kremlin and President President Volodymr Zelensky denied the war had reached deadlock. "Today people are tired, everyone is tired, and there are different opinions. That is clear, but there is no stalemate," Mr Zelensky said at the weekend.
In his regular nightly address on Monday night he appealed to Ukrainians to "pull ourselves together, avoid unwinding and splitting up into disputes or other priorities".
He also announced that "now is not the right time" for presidential elections due to take place next spring, because Ukraine was at war and under martial law. He was elected in 2019.
Israel may govern Gaza for an “indefinite period”, after the war ends, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested in an interview with the US’ ABC News.
Noting that US President Joe Biden had previously said it would be a “mistake” for Israel to occupy Gaza, interviewer David Muir asked Netanyahu who should govern the territory when the fighting ends.
The prime minister suggested Israel would have a role to play for an “indefinite period.”
Those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas … It certainly is not – I think Israel will, for an indefinite period will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it. When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.
Last month, Israel defence minister Yoav Gallant said one key objective of Israel’s military campaign was to sever “Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip” and establish a “new security reality for the citizens of Israel.”
The US has also suggested the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank, could take charge in Gaza while others have suggested a consortium of Arab states could take responsibility.
Asked about Netanyahu’s comments, US national security council spokesperson John Kirby said:
What we support is that Hamas can’t be in control of Gaza any more.
We are having conversations with our Israeli counterparts about what governance in Gaza should look like post-conflict and I don’t believe that any solutions have been settled upon one way or the other.
The Israel Defence Forces military spokesperson Daniel Hagari has said that Israel has again fired into Lebanon in response to an attack. He wrote:
A short time ago, an IDF tank attacked a terrorist squad in Lebanese territory that tried to launch an anti-tank missile towards Israeli territory near the Shatula area. Also, earlier today IDF forces attacked a position of the terrorist organisation Hezbollah, in order to remove a threat.
The Kremlin called on Tuesday for “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, and it described the humanitarian situation there as “catastrophic”.
Russia will continue contacts with Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians to help ensure that humanitarian supplies can be delivered into Gaza, Reuters reports that the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told a regular briefing.
In its latest bulletin, the UN has recorded just under 22,000 civilian casualties, including 7,481 killed, in areas of Ukraine controlled by the Kyiv government since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. You can follow our live coverage of the Ukraine-Russia war here.
The IDF has reported that sirens are sounding in Ashkelon in southern Israel. Ashkelon has come under repeated rocket fire from Gaza during the last month.
Israel’s military has said that it has again opened a corridor for people to travel from the north of Gaza to the south.
On its Arabic language channel, it wrote:
Residents of Gaza, join the many who are heading to the south of Wadi Gaza at this hour. I would like to inform you that although Hamas continues to undermine the ongoing humanitarian efforts on your behalf and uses you as human shields, today the IDF will once again allow passage on the Salah al-Din Road between 10am and 2pm. For your safety, take this next opportunity to move south beyond Wadi Gaza. Many of you are doing this at this hour, as you can see in the attached photos that were taken a short while ago. If you care about yourself and your loved ones, head south according to our instructions. Rest assured that Hamas leaders have already taken care of defending themselves.
It is currently approaching 11.30am in Gaza, meaning residents have about two and a half hours left to move.
Despite the repeated calls for Gazan residents to move south for safety, Israel has continued to bombard cities like Rafah and Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, began a five-day visit to the Middle East on Tuesday to engage with government officials and civil society on the human rights violations taking place amid Israel’s escalation in Gaza.
“It has been one full month of carnage, of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair,” Reuters reports Türk said in a statement. “Human rights violations are at the root of this escalation and human rights play a central role in finding a way out of this vortex of pain.”
Türk is in Cairo on Tuesday and will visit Rafah, located on the border with Gaza, on Wednesday, before he travels to the Jordanian capital of Amman on Thursday, his office said.
Israel is currently marking a month since the 7 October Hamas attacks with a moment of silence.
Haaretz reports that a Palestinian woman has been shot this morning in the occupied West Bank after allegedly approaching Israeli forces with a knife and a Hamas flag.
It reports the woman approached the Qalandia checkpoint into Jerusalem, “and advanced towards security guards”.
The report continues that security forces responded by shooting her, and that she has been arrested and is receiving medical attention.
In the UK, the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, has been appearing in a series of interviews on radio and television which is known as the “morning media round”, where the government puts up a minister to answer any questions put to them by broadcasters.
PA Media reports that Chalk said: “We think there are three British hostages who are there [in Gaza].”
Chalk also commented on a controversy that has been brewing in the UK, on the proposals for a pro-Palestinian march on Saturday 11 November in London. It would take place on the same day that the country marks the end of the first world war at 11am, known in the UK as Armistice Day.
The Metropolitan police force in London have advised that the protest, calling for a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza, be cancelled, a request that is widely expected to be ignored. Chalk said:
Of course, there is the right to protest, which is important, but also concerns about public safety. We think that it’s wise advice. We think it takes account of all the competing considerations and that it should be followed.
The home secretary, Suella Braverman – the equivalent of an interior minister – has previously described pro-Palestinian marches in the UK as “hate marches”. Chalk echoed her words, saying: “The home secretary is absolutely correct when she says that there is hate on these marches.”
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has described on social media the situation in Gaza as a “tragedy of colossal proportions”.
It writes:
For one month, people across Gaza Strip have been denied aid, killed and bombed out of their homes. Daily struggles to find bread and water. Blackouts cut people off from loved ones and the rest of the world. This is forced displacement and humanitarian tragedy of colossal proportions.
Here is the video clip of Benjamin Netanyahu saying on US television that Israel “for an indefinite period will have the overall security responsibility” for Gaza.
In the clip, Netanyahu also reiterates Israel’s position that there can be no overall ceasefire with Hamas until it has released all of the hostages it seized from Israel on 7 October.
Israeli leaders have been commenting about the death in California of Paul Kessler, which Ventura County sheriff’s department says it hasn’t ruled out being a hate crime. Kessler died Monday at a hospital a day after he reportedly was battered after a confrontation between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Thousand Oaks, north-west of Los Angeles.
Describing it as a murder, the war cabinet minister Benny Gantzposted to social media to say:
The murder of Jewish-American Paul Kessler should serve as a stark warning sign to the whole world. Israel stands today at the forefront of the global fight against the murderous antisemitic ideology behind the Hamas terror attacks of 7 October. I call on world leaders and the international community to be unequivocal and proactive in their condemnation of terror and antisemitism.
The Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, said:
Paul Kessler was killed in Los Angeles because he was a Jew. It is not because of Gaza, it is because of antisemitism. This is what happens when protesters glorify Hamas and call to “globalise the intifada.” They don’t love Palestinians, they hate Jews.
Reuters spoke to a man rescued from the rubble of a house in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip who said Israel would be “taught a very tough lesson”.
The news agency quotes him saying: “This is the bravery of the so-called Israel, they show their might and power against civilians, babies inside, kids inside, and elderly.” He gave his name as Ahmed Ayesh.
Palestinian health officials said 11 people had been killed in the strike on Khan Younis, which is inside the area where the Israeli military have told the Gazan population to evacuate to.
Eylon Levy, the Israeli government spokesperson, has posted to social media some images of people working to identify human remains from the destruction caused by Hamas fighters inside Israel on 7 October. In the accompanying message, he writes:
On 7 October, Hamas incinerated its victims so badly that the IDF has recruited archaeologists to sift through the rubble and find human remains. They’ve found “certain evidence” of the remains of ten people.
The Hamas attack on 7 October killed at least 1,400 people. The death toll of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its campaign against Hamas now stands, according to the health ministry there, at more than 10,000. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty claim from Gaza.
Israel’s military has issued its latest operational update, in which it claims to have captured a Hamas military stronghold and detonated a Hamas weapons depot “in a civilian area” adjacent to al-Quds hospital. Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas is using hospital buildings to carry out operations.
In a statement posted to Telegram, the Israeli military said:
Over the past day, IDF troops secured a military stronghold belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation in the northern Gaza Strip. Anti-tank missiles and launchers, weapons, and various intelligence materials were located in the compound by the troops.
In coordination with soldiers on the ground, an IDF fighter jet struck a cell of approximately ten terrorists. Following this, IDF ground troops identified an anti-tank missile cell operating in their vicinity. The troops directed an IDF aircraft that struck the terrorist cell.
Dozens of Hamas mortar shell launchers were also struck overnight.
In addition, IDF naval forces struck with precise ammunition strategic targets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation, including posts containing technological assets.
Furthermore, IDF troops located a number of Hamas terrorists who barricaded themselves in a building adjacent to the al-Quds Hospital, and planned to carry out an attack on the forces from there. IDF soldiers directed an aircraft to strike the Hamas terrorists. The attack led to significant secondary explosions which indicate the presence of a Hamas weapons depot in a civilian area.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that a statement by an Israeli junior minister who appeared to voice openness to the idea of Israel carrying out a nuclear strike on Gaza had raised many questions, Reuters reports.
The heritage minister Amihai Eliyahu, part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, made the remarks in a radio interview, and has been suspended from the Israeli cabinet.
In comments also carried by Tass, the foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on the Soloviev Live TV channel:
This raised a huge number of questions. Question number one – it turns out that we are hearing an official statement about the presence of nuclear weapons? Accordingly, the next questions that everyone has are – where are the international organisations, where is the IAEA, where are the inspectors?
Israel has never conducted a public nuclear test or stated in public that it has possession of nuclear weapons. However, international observers believe it has a stockpile of 80-90 warheads.
Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel would consider “tactical little pauses” in fighting to allow the entry of aid or the exit of hostages from the Gaza Strip, but he again rejected calls for a ceasefire, as Israel marked a month since Hamas’s deadly attacks killed 1,400 people.
When asked who should govern the territory after fighting ends, the Israeli prime minister told ABC news in an interview broadcast on Monday night: “Israel will for an indefinite period … have the overall security responsibility [in Gaza] because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have that security responsibility.”
Having encircled the densely populated Gaza City in the north of the enclave, where the Hamas Islamist group is based, Israel’s military said it had taken a militant compound and was set to attack fighters hiding in underground tunnels.
Read our full report on the latest news from the Israel-Hamas conflict here:
Fresh pictures have been coming in from Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military has been carrying out airstrikes.
The Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has expressed grief over the death of a 69-year-old Jewish man during an altercation between opposing protesters in the city of Thousand Oaks on Monday (which we reported here).
In a statement, the body’s executive director, Hussam Ayloush, said it was “deeply saddened by this tragic and shocking loss” and said its thoughts were with his family and the Jewish community.
Ayloush also urged the public to wait for the results of the police investigation into the death before drawing any conclusions.
We join local Jewish leaders in calling on all individuals to refrain from jumping to conclusions, sensationalizing such a tragedy for political gains, or spreading rumors that could unnecessarily escalate tensions that are already at an all-time high …
While we strongly support the right of political debate, CAIR-LA and the Muslim community stand with the Jewish community in rejecting any and all violence, antisemitism, Islamophobia, or incitement of hatred.
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Police in the northern German city of Hamburg are continuing to deal with a suspected hostage situation at the airport after a man drove through a security barrier and onto the tarmac. Police say there are at least two people in the car including a child.
Air traffic at Hamburg airport remained blocked on Sunday by an apparent hostage situation on the tarmac, after the alleged kidnapping of a child by his father as part of a family dispute, according to local authorities.
“The police operation continues, air traffic remains suspended until further notice,” the management of the airport in northern Germany wrote on X - formerly Twitter.
“We have mobilised police psychologists and we are currently speaking with the perpetrator, we are banking on a negotiated solution,” police spokesperson Sandra Levgrün told the regional channel public television NDR.
She called it a “very good sign” that the father had remained in contact with the authorities “for so long”.
On Saturday evening, around 8:00 p.m. local time (7:00 p.m. GMT), the gunman drove his car through an airport gate and onto the tarmac, shooting twice in the air and throwing two burning bottles, a police spokesperson said.
Police said they believed a "child custody dispute” was the cause of the incident.
According to the authorities, a father and his child remain in the car. The daily Bild newspaper has reported that the man is 35 years old and of Turkish nationality, and that the child is a little girl aged 4.
Police said the negotiations were taking place in Turkish.
Reports say the wife of the driver of the car had alerted the police of the child's kidnapping to police.
On Saturday evening, 17 flights scheduled to land in Hamburg, with a combined 3,200 people on board, had to be diverted. On Sunday, 286 flights are in principle planned, carrying 34,500 passengers, but it’s unlikely any will be able to land until the situation is resolved.
On a narrow road in the middle of Al-Maghazi camp,
the smallest and most crowded of the refugee camps, a huge bulldozer struggles
to remove the rubble of four houses flattened to the ground.
More than a hundred people were here at the time of
the Israeli air strike - 52 were killed, says the head of the Al-Aqsa hospital, and a number of others were
injured.
Residents tried to dig with their hands through layers of cement
in an attempt to extract those trapped under the rubble.
Muhammad Al-Alul, a photojournalist, lost his wife
and four of his children (three daughters and a son). He has one son
left.
"I wish I had been with them and been
killed with them," he tells me.
"I was, as usual, reporting on the rapidly
unfolding story in Al-Aqsa Hospital. Suddenly I heard that a raid had
struck Al-Maghazi camp. It did not occur to me that my children might be buried
under the rubble."
Al-Maghazi is a small camp inside the area of Gaza
where Israel asked residents of the north to go in order to escape the
fighting. But airstrikes in the south have not stopped.
"There is no safe place in Gaza," says Muhammad, a civil defence officer who rushed to the scene to help. "They ask the
Palestinians to go to the south but kill them everywhere - on the roads, in
schools where people are sheltering, and even in hospitals."
In the main street near the bombed site, the
movement of people around the main market in the camp seems almost as normal. People try to buy what remains of some canned food and some vegetables
collected by farmers from nearby farms.
You notice the misery, fear and sadness on the
faces of passers-by. Many have not managed to change their clothes or
shower in a long time.
"Don’t film me," an old woman shouted at me. "We
are respectable people, but the conditions are very difficult.
"There is no water, no bread, and we have no money
left."
Normal life has been on hold since 7 October.
People here can’t see an easy or a quick way out of this.
Hamas is delaying the escape of foreign nationals from Gaza by putting its wounded fighters on lists of those allowed to leave for Egypt through the Rafah crossing.
A Biden administration official said on Friday that one-third of the wounded Palestinians on the first list were Hamas fighters.
After the list was rejected by the United States, Israel and Egypt the terror group continued to put forward its own fighters to leave the enclave, drastically delaying efforts to evacuate civilians.
Hamas reportedly relented in its demand for the safe passage of its fighters, giving the names of wounded Palestinians.
The prospect of Hamas fighters leaving the strip is particularly worrying for Egypt as it remains vigilant for terrorists crossing the border into its territory to leave or join the war against Israel.
Brit in Gaza describes desperate scene at Rafah crossing
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An Israeli attack on an ambulance outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza has killed 15 people, officials said as Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls for a temporary halt to his country’s attacks on Gaza unless hostages held by Hamas militants are freed.
“Upon their arrival to al-Shifa, (Israel) directly targeted the convoy’s second vehicle, committing a terrible massacre that claimed the lives of 15 (people) and wounded more than 60,” health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said. While Israel claims it was targeting Hamas in the attack on hospital vicinity, the dead and wounded include dozens of children who were left in a pool of blood.
The Israeli PM snubbed calls for a temporary ceasefire despite pleas by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do so to allow aid to enter the Palestinian enclave.
He told Mr Blinken: “We are going full steam ahead.”
This comes as the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah warned the US that preventing a regional conflict depended on stopping the Israeli bombardments of Gaza, and raised the spectre of fighting on the Lebanese front turning into a full-fledged war.
Lebanon’s prime minister emphasizes urgency of ceasefire in Gaza in meeting with Blinken
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati met with US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Amman on Saturday and emphasized the importance of working towards a ceasefire in Gaza and stopping Israeli aggression in southern Lebanon, Lebanon state news agency said.
Mikati also stressed Lebanon’s commitment to international legitimacy and the implementation of UN Resolution 1701, calling on the international community to pressure Israel to cease its violations.
Blinken, in turn, emphasized his efforts to halt military operations for humanitarian reasons and to address the issue of prisoners.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, meets with Lebanese Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati
Pentagon says it is flying unarmed drones over Gaza
The US has been flying unarmed surveillance drones over Gaza, it confirmed in a first statement after drones were spotted hovering over the war-torn region.
These drones were operating in “support of hostage recovery efforts”, Pentagon spokesman Brig Gen Pat Ryder said, adding that these UAV flights began after the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel”.
“The US is conducting unarmed UAV flights over Gaza, as well as providing advice and assistance to support our Israeli partner as they work on their hostage recovery efforts,” the Pentagon’s statement said.
The US’s rare acknowledgment comes after reporters spotted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) MQ-9 Reapers, usually operated by American special forces, over Gaza’s airspace on Flightradar24, a publicly available flight-tracking website.
Israel’s fortified underground blood bank processes unprecedented amounts
Hours after Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October, the country’s new fortified, subterranean blood bank kicked into action. Staffers moved equipment into the underground bunker and started saving lives.
The Marcus National Blood Services Centre in Ramla, near Tel Aviv, had been scheduled to open within days, but with more than 1,400 people in Israel killed since the Hamas raids — most killed during the initial attack — the timeline changed.
“It became very clear we needed to move with the war plans because this was exactly the moment, the event it was built for,” said Dr. Eilat Shinar, director of the national blood services division of Magen David Adom — Israel‘s medical emergency, disaster, ambulance and blood service.
Nestled some 15 meters (50 feet) underground at its lowest level, the $135m, 6-story, state-of-the-art facility is protected from rockets, missiles, chemical attacks and earthquakes, ensuring blood processing can continue when it’s needed most.
Shiner said the centre provided tens of thousands of units of blood in the days that followed the Hamas attacks.
“We worked very hard to supply everything they needed,” she said. “We had many injured and we had to treat them.”
The former blood bank, which was built in the 1980s, was not able to handle the country’s needs in times of war, and had been exposed — but not damaged — during earlier conflicts, the centre said. After Israel’s third war against Hamas in 2014, when rockets reached Tel Aviv and other major cities, discussions began about the need to create a more protected facility.
The new centre has the capacity to store almost twice the amount of blood of its predecessor — half a million units a year compared with 270,000 — and has processed more blood than has ever been held in Israel‘s reserves.“There was a clear understanding that because rockets were flying close to the centre — any other place in the centre can be targeted,” said Moshe Noyovich, the project engineer and representative in Israel for the American Friends of Magen David Adom, which primarily funded the new centre.
In the past, each time rockets were fired into Israel, the team had to move the equipment into a bunker to continue working. Now they can operate uninterrupted, he said.
Netanyahu says no Gaza ceasefire until hostages released – as he rejects US calls for humanitarian pause
Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back against growing pressure from the US for a humanitarian pause in its war on Hamas to protect civilians and get more aid into Gaza, saying there will be no temporary ceasefire until all hostages are released.
Flying into Tel Aviv on Friday, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, sought to urge the Israeli prime minister to let-up the military offensive, at least for a time. However, Mr Netanyahu said that Israel will continue “with full force” unless Hamas releases more than 240 hostages.
It comes as an ambulance was struck outside Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, in Gaza City. The health ministry in the Hamas-run strip said that it was part of a convoy that was seeking to evacuate the wounded from northern Gaza to the south and that “several citizens were killed and dozens wounded”.
Israeli strike on school kills 20 civilians, wounds dozens
An air strike on a school in northern Gaza sheltering displaced civilians has killed 20 people people, Ministry of Health in Gaza said yesterday. The strike on the civilian building occured in the evening, it said.
“20 martyrs and dozens of wounded arrived at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after the direct targeting of a school turned into a makeshift camp for displaced people in the al-Saftawy area in northern Gaza,” the health ministry said in a statement.
Several tank mortar shells fell into the school that was directly targeted, the ministry said.
Another strike on people evacuating southern Gaza killed 14 people, the ministry said.
How the Israel-Palestine conflict is tearing the art world apart
When it was announced early last month, “Treasured Ornament: 10 Centuries of Islamic Art” promised an exhibit that evoked “the rich history of the Islamic world, and the shared human experiences that bind us, transcending borders and boundaries”.
The exhibit at the Frick Pittsburgh museum was set to open on 4 November. But, in the days after Hamas’s 7 October attacks in Israel, Israel’s siege of Gaza and a bombardment campaign that has killed thousands of Palestinians, the museum quietly decided to postpone the opening.
First, the museum blamed a “scheduling conflict” for the cancellation. But it followed up with a later announcement that linked the decision to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, explaining that “it would have been impossible to predict that war would erupt in the Middle East” during the show.
Foreign Secretary welcomes safe passage out of Gaza for British citizens
Britain is pressing for a key border crossing to remain open after more UK nationals secured safe passage out of Gaza, according to foreign secretary James Cleverly.
Around 100 British citizens were expected to be able to leave Gaza for Egypt yesterday, with the in-laws of Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf among those permitted to leave the territory through the Rafah crossing.
Mr Cleverly welcomed the “positive news” of getting a “number” of British nationals through the crossing, telling broadcasters: “We will continue to work to keep that crossing open, to liaise directly with Israel, with Egypt to ensure that as many British nationals can leave Gaza as possible.”
The Israeli Defence Forces has released footage it says shows soldiers uncovering Hamas tunnels on the outskirts of a city in the Gaza Strip. In a post on Telegram on Friday, 3 November, Israel’s military said it discovered tunnel shafts near Beit Hanoun. IDF spokesperson Lt Colonel Richard Hecht said soldiers engaged in “complex guerrilla warfare” with Hamas and people were “popping out of tunnels.” He added that Israel had “completed the encirclement of Gaza City”. The IDF’s operational goal is to finish the encirclement and then “start handling the Hamas infrastructure inside the city,” Mr Hecht said.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths confirmed 72 Unrwa staff members have been killed since 7 October. “I think it’s the highest number of UN staff lost in a conflict,” he said.
The Gaza Health Ministry’s total of more than 9,000 people killed in Gaza is four times as many deaths as during the 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in 2014 when just over 2,200 Palestinians were killed, Mr Griffiths said.
The real toll will only emerge once buildings are cleared and rubble is taken away, he said.
Mr Griffiths called for humanitarian pauses to get aid to millions of people. He also urged the immediate release of all hostages and protection of all civilians by both sides as required under international humanitarian law.
Average Gazan living on two pieces of bread a day, and people need water – UN official
The average Gazan is living on two pieces of Arabic bread made from flour the UN had stockpiled in the region, yet the main refrain now being heard in the street is “Water, water,” the Gaza director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said.
Thomas White, who said he travelled “the length and breadth of Gaza in the last few weeks”, described the place as a “scene of death and destruction”. No place is safe now, he said, and people fear for their lives, their future and their ability to feed their families.
The Palestinian refugee agency, known as UNRWA, is supporting about 89 bakeries across Gaza, aiming to get bread to 1.7 million people, White told diplomats from the UN’s 193 member nations in a video briefing from Gaza.
But, he said, “now people are beyond looking for bread. It’s looking for water”.
