Media Report 2025.09.28
PM open to Blair running Gaza plan
The Age (& SMH) | Matthew Knott | 28 September 2025
London: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed openness to former British prime minister Tony Blair running a post-war authority in Gaza, as he rejected the anti-immigration politics of insurgent British right-wing populist leader Nigel Farage.
Albanese also expressed confidence that US President Donald Trump would back the AUKUS nuclear-powered sub marine pact after holding a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Downing Street in London where the pair vowed to co-operate on critical minerals and defence technologies.
Albanese met with Blair to discuss the Middle East earlier in the day, just hours after it was revealed the White House is backing a plan that would see the former British Labour leader head a temporary administration of the Gaza Strip when the war ends.
Blair’s appointment could arouse controversy because of his role supporting the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 when he was British prime minister. “He’s someone who has been involved in the Middle East issues for some period of time, and I’m sure that he will always play a constructive role because that’s the nature of Tony Blair,” Albanese said.
Asked whether Blair would have his support to run Gaza after the war, Albanese said the pair had discussed “some of what he has undertaken”.
“I don’t want to pre-empt those processes, but it is an important opportunity to be informed … The world wants to see this conflict end.” Under the proposal being pushed by the White House, as reported by Israeli media out lets, Blair would lead a body called the Gaza International Transitional Authority that would have a mandate to be Gaza’s “supreme political and legal authority” for as long as five years.
The authority would initially be based in Egypt before assuming control of the territory with the backing of a UN-endorsed multinational peacekeeping force largely led by Arab countries. Albanese has expressed openness to Australia participating in such a force, though any role would likely be small.
Since 2016, Blair has led the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a non-profit that has sought to promote peace in the Middle East and a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Albanese will travel to Balmoral, Scotland, to meet King Charles III on Saturday local time before he addresses a crowd at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on his final day in the UK.
As well as Starmer, Albanese met British Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch but said he had no plans to meet Reform leader Nigel Farage, who spearheaded the Brexit campaign, while in London. “I don’t want to see the rise of populist organisations such as that,” Albanese said when asked about Reform’s surging popularity in the UK. “I met with the mainstream opposition party here.”
YouGov polling on Friday showed that Reform would be close to having enough support to form a majority government if an election were held today, increasing its parliamentary representation from five seats to 311. The poll found Labor would be left with 144 seats and the Tories with just 45 seats.
Asked about the future of the AUKUS pact, which is under review by the Pentagon, Albanese said: “There is no indication that I’ve seen of anything other than support for AUKUS going forward. It is in the interests of all three nations.”
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‘You caved’: Netanyahu lashes West
The Age (& SMH) | Michael Koziol | 28 September 2025
Washington: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the decision by Australia and others to recognise a Palestinian state told terrorists that “murdering Jews pays off”, as he accused western leaders of buckling to media pressure and antisemitism.
In a blistering speech to the United Nations in New York, Netanyahu said giving Palestinians a state a mile from Jerusalem after the October 7, 2023, massacre was akin to giving Al-Qaeda a state a mile from New York City after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“This is sheer madness, it’s insane, and we won’t do it,” he said. “Israel will not allow you to shove a terrorist state down our throats. We will not commit national suicide because you don’t have the guts to face down a hostile media and antisemitic mobs demanding Israel’s blood.”
Dozens of delegates staged a mass walkout before Netanyahu’s address, leaving him to speak to a mostly empty General Assembly Hall. But remaining delegations, especially Israel’s, clapped and cheered loudly in key parts of the Israeli leader’s speech.
Netanyahu explicitly referred to Australia twice, mentioning Jews had been the victim of antisemitic incidents there, and saying there were likely people in New York, London and Melbourne thinking: “What does all of this have to do with me?”
“The answer is: everything. Because our enemies are your enemies,” he said, referring to radical Islamists. “Our enemies hate all of us with equal venom … You know, deep down, that Israel is fighting your fight.”
He said behind closed doors “many of the leaders who publicly condemn us privately thank us”, saying Israeli intelligence had thwarted terrorist at tacks in their capital cities. Australia joined Canada, France, the United Kingdom and other nations in recognising a Palestinian state at the UN meeting, though this has little practical effect.
Part of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s rationale for the move was it would build momentum for a two-state solution, and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority that has partial control of the West Bank, had given undertakings to Australia about holding democratic elections and enacting significant reforms to governance, finance and education.
But Netanyahu argued promises by the PA were meaning less, accusing the body of endemic corruption and celebrating violence against the Jewish people, including paying terrorists to kill Jews.
“We’ve heard these promises for decades … they never deliver,” he said. “They haven’t held elections in 20 years. They use the same textbooks as Hamas. They teach their children to hate Jews and destroy the Jewish state.
“These are the people you want to give a state to? What you’re doing is giving the ulti mate reward to intolerant fanatics who perpetrated and supported the October 7th massacre.”
Netanyahu said his objection to a Palestinian state was not a fringe position or the result of pressure from political actors to his right. Rather, it was the pol icy of the Israeli people, and he spoke on their behalf.
He said the “uncomfortable truth” was the decades-long conflict was driven by the Palestinians’ persistent rejection of a Jewish state in any form, and it was “amazing” Western leaders could not understand that. “How can they not see this basic truth when it is repeated again and again and again, ad nauseam?” he said.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said he believed a deal to return the remaining hostages and end the war in Gaza was close. Netanyahu is due to visit Trump at the White House on Monday.
Later, Trump said on Truth Social intense talks had been going on for four days, involving “all the countries within the region”. There was more good will and enthusiasm than he had seen before, he added.
At the UN, the Israeli PM also condemned Western leaders for wavering in their support for Israel’s campaign against Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups, casting it as an existential battle between good and evil.
“There’s a familiar saying: when the going gets tough, the tough get going,” he said. “Well, for many countries here, when the going got tough, you caved.
“For much of the past two years, Israel has had to fight a seven-front war against barbarism with many of your nations opposing us … This is not an indictment of Israel, it’s an indictment of you.
“They’re already penetrating your gates. When will you learn? You can’t appease your way out of jihad. To overcome that storm, you have to stand with Israel. But that’s not what you’re doing.
“Western leaders may have buckled under the pressure. I guarantee you one thing: Israel won’t,” he said to applause.
At one point, Netanyahu directed his remarks at the 48 remaining hostages held by Hamas, saying he was speaking to them via loudspeakers that had been set up around Gaza and were tuned to his speech.
Then he said special efforts by Israeli intelligence had enabled him to broadcast a message directly to the cellphones of Gazans, including Hamas leaders.
“Lay down your arms. Let my people go,” he said. “Free the hostages, all of them. If you do, you will live. If you don’t, Israel will hunt you down. If Hamas agrees to our demands, the war could end right now.”
Australia and Albanese have also called for the hostages to be returned. But he argued at the UN the best and only way to end the cycle of violence afflicting both Jews and Palestinians was by establishing a homeland for the Palestinian people in which Hamas could play no role.
The Palestinian Authority, supported by the Arab League, must demilitarise, hold elections, “undertake wholesale reform” and reaffirm Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, he said.
Albanese spoke to Netanyahu before Australia announced it would join the coalition of nations recognising Palestine, and “gave him the opportunity to outline what [alternative] political solution there was”.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who led the recognition push, told this masthead in New York that Australia’s decision to join the movement was “bold and important”
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Bibi fires up in UN sermon
Daily Telegraph | 28 September 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken direct aim at Australia over its recognition of a Palestinian state in a fiery speech to the United Nations.
Speaking in New York on Friday morning US time, Mr Netanyahu hit out at nations which had voiced their support for official Palestinian recognition, calling the move a “mark of shame”.
“This week, the leaders of France, Britain, Australia, Canada and other countries unconditionally recognised a Palestinian state,” Mr Netanyahu said in his speech.
“You know what message the leaders who recognise the Palestinian state this week sent to the Palestinians? It’s a very clear message: murdering Jews pays off.” Earlier this week in his own address to the UN, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reaffirmed Australia’s support for Palestine to exist “side-by-side” with Israel. Mr Netanyahu also declared Israel “will not allow you to shove a terrorist state down our throats”, and vowed to “finish the job” against Hamas.
His speech, on Friday morning US time, was to a largely empty room as many diplomats walked out just before he turned up, which Israel’s ambassador to the UN said was “staged” by Palestinians.
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Walk out at Israeli leader’s speech
Daily Telegraph (Courier-Mail, Hobart Mercury) | 28 September 2025
New York: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed in an angry UN address to block a Palestinian state, accusing world leaders of pushing his country into “national suicide” and rewarding Hamas.
Mr Netanyahu, in a defiant speech he said was partially broadcast on Israeli military loudspeakers in Gaza, vowed to “finish the job” against Hamas even as US President Donald Trump said he thought he had sealed a deal on a ceasefire.
Dozens of delegates walked out as Mr Netanyahu took to the stage, leaving a sea of empty chairs in front of him. As the Israeli leader was the first listed speaker of the day, the delegates who walked out were only in their seats a short while.
Days after Australia, France, the UK and other Western powers recognised a state of Palestine, Mr Netanyahu said that they had sent “a very clear message that murdering Jews pays off”.
“Israel will not allow you to shove a terrorist state down our throats. We will not commit national suicide because you don’t have the guts to face down the hostile media and anti-Semitic mobs demanding Israel’s blood,” he said.
Mr Netanyahu mocked Western support and called the Palestinian Authority “corrupt to the core”. But he notably did not touch on the issue of annexing the West Bank, which some members of his cabinet have threatened as a way to kill any prospect of a real Palestinian state.
Mr Trump, normally a staunch ally of Mr Netanyahu, has warned against annexation as he pitches a peace plan on Gaza that would include the disarmament of Hamas.
Mr Netanyahu went out of his way to praise Mr Trump, whom he will meet with on Monday in Washington.
Just after the UN speech, Mr Trump said: “I think we have a deal.”
Mr Netanyahu said that his speech was broadcast in part on loudspeaker in hopes of reaching both Hamas leaders and hostages still held since the October 7, 2023, attack.
“We have not forgotten you – not even for a second. The entire nation is with you, and we will not be silent or let up until we bring you all home, the living and the dead alike,” he said.
Hamas said the mass walkout of UN delegates showed Israel’s “isolation”.
“Boycotting Netanyahu’s speech is one manifestation of Israel’s isolation and the consequences of the war of extermination,” said Taher al-Nunu, media adviser to the head of Hamas’s political bureau.
Also on Friday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose government has championed Hamas, said he backed any ceasefire in Gaza.
“Any agreement that can stop this tragedy, that can save lives and stop women and children suffering from hunger, we would support wholeheartedly,” Mr Pezeshkian said on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
He denied any Iranian responsibility for the October 7 attacks, saying without evidence that Israeli intelligence could have known about the assault – a conspiracy theory suggesting Israel was looking for an excuse to attack Gaza.
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Playing into the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah and puppet master Iran, who have no interest in peace
Daily Telegraph | Piers Akerman | 28 September 2025
To cheers of terrorist groups, Anthony Albanese has sold out Australians before a global audience.
Grasping at relevance, he recognised a non-existent state of Palestine in our name and embraced the historically corrupt Palestine Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to justify his sickening action.
Just as murderous members of Hamas and Gazan civilians invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, during Jewish holiday Simchat Torah – a celebration of singing and dancing – Albanese made his UN General Assembly speech at the start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
He could have shown no greater contempt for Australia’s tiny Jewish community or greater disrespect for its outstanding leadership legacy, from genius general and engineer Sir John Monash, to leading jurist and governor-general Sir Isaac Isaacs, let alone doctors, academics, entrepreneurs and philanthropists.
It is 5786 in the Jewish calendar, predating the Gregorian by 3761 years, and Islam’s Prophet Muhammad’s birth of 570, making Muslim claims to Jerusalem recent by comparison with those of Jews and Christians.
In his contradictory, historically inaccurate address to a near-empty UN chamber, Albanese said Hamas had no role in Gaza’s future and quoted the UN charter on tolerance and peace between neighbours.
It was beyond laughable.
A Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research December 2023 survey, two months after the attack, found 82 per cent of respondents in the West Bank saw Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7 offensive as a correct one, much higher than 57 per cent support from Gazans reported in the same poll.
Hamas’s original charter, in 1988, explicitly called for destruction of the state of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state over the entire territory of historic Palestine, which pre-1948 was Transjordan and Egypt.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN, the decision by Australia and others to recognise a Palestinian state signalled to terrorists that “murdering Jews pays off”. Giving Palestinians a state a mile from Jerusalem after the October 7, 2023, massacre was akin to giving
al-Qa’ida a state a mile from New York City after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said.
Hamas has always rejected the two-state solution fantasised by Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, of Israel and Palestine existing side-by-side in peace and security with mutual recognition.
Equally nonsensical was Albanese’s bleat for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council when his respect for his own security is so weak he relocated his electorate office rather than run the gauntlet of a mob of scruffy pro-Palestine demonstrators.
Under Wong, our foreign policy has shrivelled into insignificance. Lectures to Pacific Islands on diversity and inclusion have pushed them into China’s embrace. They prefer cash, not woke culture.
Non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council are voted on and millions will have to be doled out to nations, many of them Islamic, with which we have no common culture, to woo the necessary votes.
(More millions will have to be spread around if Climate Minister Chris Bowen wants to win the 2026 COP31 gabfest for Adelaide.)
Albanese and Wong and their advisers ignore the facts. Hamas, Hezbollah and their puppet master, Iran, aren’t interested in peace. Arabs from the West Bank rejected UN Resolutions in 1975 which could have been a pathway to peace, they walked away from the Camp David Accords in 1978, and the Camp David Summit in 2000. The Egyptian Taba Summit in 2001 failed, as did the Annapolis Conference which ran 2007-08.
Ex-UK prime minister Tony Blair’s reported desire to lead yet another initiative involving the Palestine Authority is bound to fail also.
The only pathway to peace begins with Hamas releasing the remaining Israeli hostages, dead and alive.
The Palestinian cause is not about freedom; it’s a ruse to generate anti-Semitic hostility in the guise of anti-Israel or anti-Zionist protests. The appeasement stance by Albanese, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Canada’s Mark Carney and the UK’s Keir Starmer will not be a turning point for the region, but just another turning point that failed to turn.
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Israeli strikes in Gaza despite international pressure
Canberra Times / AAP | Wafaa Shurafa & Samy Magdy | 27 September 2025
Israeli strikes and gunfire have killed at least 38 people across Gaza, local health officials say as international pressure grows for a ceasefire but Israel’s leader remains defiant about continuing the war.
Strikes in central and northern Gaza killed people in their homes in the early hours of Saturday morning, including nine from the same family in a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to health staff at the Al-Awda hospital where the bodies were brought.
The attacks came hours after a defiant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told fellow world leaders at the UN General Assembly Friday that his nation “must finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s words, aimed as much at his increasingly divided domestic audience as the global one, began after dozens of delegates from multiple nations walked out of the UN General Assembly hall en masse Friday morning as he began speaking.
International pressure on Israel to end the war is increasing, as is Israel’s isolation, with a growing list of countries deciding recently to recognise Palestinian statehood – something Israel rejects.
Countries have been lobbying US President Donald Trump to press Israel for a ceasefire. On Friday, Trump told reporters on the White House lawn that he believes the US is close to achieving a deal on easing fighting in Gaza that “will get the hostages back” and “end the war”.
Trump and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet on Monday, and Trump said on social media on Friday that “very inspired and productive discussions” and “intense negotiations” about Gaza are ongoing with countries in the region.
Yet Israel is pressing ahead with another major ground operation in Gaza City, which experts say is experiencing famine. More than 300,000 people have fled, but up to 700,000 are still there, many because they cannot afford to relocate.
The strikes on Saturday morning demolished a house in Gaza City’s Tufah neighbourhood, killing at least 11 people, more than half of them women and children, according to the Al-Ahly Hospital where the bodies were brought.
Four other people were killed when an airstrike hit their homes in the Shati refugee camp, according to Shifa hospital. Six other Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire while seeking aid in southern and central Gaza, according to Nasser and Al Awda hospitals where the bodies were brought.
Israel’s army did not immediately respond about the airstrikes or the gunfire.
Hospitals and health clinics in Gaza City are on the brink of collapse. Nearly two weeks into the offensive, two clinics have been destroyed by airstrikes, two hospitals shut down after being damaged and others are barely functioning, with medicine, equipment, food and fuel in short supply.
Many patients and staff have been forced to flee hospitals, leaving behind only a few doctors and nurses to tend to children in incubators or other patients too ill to move.
On Friday, aid group Doctors Without Borders said it was forced to suspend activities in Gaza City amid an intensified Israeli offensive. The group said Israeli tanks were less than half a mile from its healthcare facilities and the escalating attacks have created an “unacceptable level of risk” for its staff.
Meanwhile, the food situation in the north has also worsened, as Israel has halted aid deliveries through its crossing into northern Gaza since September 12 and has increasingly rejected UN requests to bring supplies from southern Gaza into the north, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 65,000 people and wounded more than 167,000 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, but says women and children make up around half the fatalities.
The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, but UN agencies and many independent experts consider its figures to be the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.
Israel’s campaign was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1200 people and taking 251 hostage. Forty-eight captives remain in Gaza, around 20 of them believed by Israel to be alive, after most of the rest were freed in ceasefires or other deals.
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Yvette Cooper suggests international community on brink of Gaza peace deal
Foreign secretary says world has ‘reached moment’ it wants to end war after Donald Trump signals plan within reach
The Guardian | Pippa Crerar | 28 September 2025
The international community is on the brink of securing a peace deal for Gaza that could finally bring an end to two years of conflict and a humanitarian crisis that has claimed thousands of lives, Yvette Cooper has suggested.
The new foreign secretary, who has just returned from a UN summit, said that they had “reached a moment where the world wants to end this war” after US president Donald Trump indicated a peace deal was within reach.
In an interview with the Guardian before the Labour party conference in Liverpool, Cooper urged the Israeli government to “urgently change course” away from its renewed military offensive on Gaza. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu said at the UN his country “must finish the job”.
However, the senior Labour politician declined to conclude that Israel was committing genocide in the territory, despite pressure to do so from inside her party, repeating the government’s position that was down to a legal process.
She admitted that “words seem hollow” in response to the catastrophic situation on the ground and said the priority must be trying to use new momentum behind a peace deal to end the “screams and pain” of Palestinian children.
Cooper, believed to be one of the cabinet ministers who privately pushed Keir Starmer to recognise the Palestinian state, said that while she understood the horror many felt about the humanitarian situation it was her job to focus on ending the war.
The White House is understood to be backing a plan that would have Tony Blair head a temporary technocratic administration of Gaza. Cooper twice declined to say whether the former UK prime minister was the right person to lead the transitional authority.
While Blair has good relations with the Gulf states after serving as Middle East envoy, and a route to the White House through Jared Kushner, the main architect of the plan and Trump’s son-in-law, he remains a controversial figure in the wider region over his role in the 2003 Iraq war.
“I feel like there is a consensus, a real, huge consensus building, and there was real energy and determination [at the UN] around peace. I think we’ve reached a moment where the world wants to end this war,” Cooper said.
The “beginning of the process” was a ceasefire, the restoration of humanitarian aid and the release of all the hostages, she added. However, she acknowledged the process was fragile and there were many obstacles ahead.
“We can’t pretend this isn’t incredibly hard, and how long the crisis has been going on makes it challenging. But there was no doubt that there is a real sense of determination and energy behind trying to get an end to the war and to try and get not just an immediate ceasefire, but a proper plan for the future.”
Just days before hosting Netanyahu in Washington, Trump told reporters on Friday that it was “looking like we have a deal on Gaza”. Cooper acknowledged the US president would play an instrumental role in bringing Israel on board.
The 21-point White House plan for peace is, diplomats say, compatible with the plan for Palestine endorsed by the UN last week, with agreement on no mass displacement from Gaza, no role for Hamas and no West Bank annexation.
But Foreign Office insiders are understood to be uneasy about aspects of the Trump plan, including what role Blair might play.
“Tony Blair has been one of the people adding proposals to this process, and that’s been really important, but there have been lots of other processes as well,” Cooper said. “There’s still a huge amount of work to do. At this stage, there’s a sense of consensus building but we’ve got to keep that on track.”
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, was the last world leader Cooper met before she moved from being shadow foreign secretary in 2011, and the first when she became UK foreign secretary earlier this month.
She has not yet met Netanyahu, although she was in New York when he made his remarks at the UN. “There is no military solution to this that works, there is no way that the security of Israel is remotely strengthened by this further Gaza City offensive,” she said.
“For security for Israelis, as well as security for Palestinians and as well as dealing with this devastating humanitarian crisis, I think the Israeli government urgently needs to change course.”
The UK Foreign Office makes regular internal assessments of whether there is a serious risk of genocide by Israel in Gaza, but earlier this month said it had not concluded that was currently the case.
“Every time we talk about whether it’s humanitarian crisis or whatever words that we use actually feel hollow, because what it’s really about is the screams and pain of a toddler, and that’s what’s really at the heart of this, and that’s what has to end. The war has to be brought to an end,” Cooper said.
“I think the reason that there is just such a sense of distress is because everybody can see the horror of what has happened and the fact that it feels like nothing’s being done. It feels like nothing is changing. It feels like everything is just getting worse …
“The challenge for us now is that there is a moment, and we have to make sure that that moment, through international action, is turned into a peace process.”
Turning to Russia, and the drones and jets being flown over Poland and Scandinavian countries, Cooper accused Vladimir Putin of “deliberate provocation” and attempts to destabilise Europe.
The foreign secretary urged the US to “go much further” on sanctions on Russian oil and gas, after Trump said a week ago he was ready to do so, but only if Nato countries met certain conditions. “There has to be a much more concerted effort,” she added.
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Israeli strikes kill at least 57 people as military continues Gaza City attack
Health officials report 57 dead in the strip’s largest city, where hundreds of thousands are trapped and starving
The Guardian | Jessie Williams | 27 September 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/27/israeli-strikes-kill-people-gaza-city-attack
Israeli strikes killed at least 32 people in Gaza overnight, according to health officials in the territory, including 25 people in Gaza City.
The Israeli military continues to press ahead with an attack on the strip’s largest city, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are trapped and starving, despite international pressure for a ceasefire.
Strikes on Saturday morning destroyed a house in Gaza City’s Tufah neighbourhood, killing at least 11 people, more than half of them women and children, according to al-Ahly hospital where the bodies were brought.
Bombing in central and northern Gaza killed people in their homes in the early hours, including nine members of the same family – a husband, wife and their children – in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, staff at al-Awda hospital said.
The Israeli army also killed four people when an airstrike hit a home in Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, according to Shifa hospital.
Civil defence crews have been unable to reach dozens of people trapped under the rubble.
On Friday the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told the UN general assembly in New York that his country “must finish the job” in Gaza.
Dozens of delegates staged a walk-out as he took to the podium, while protesters against Israel’s war gathered outside.
International pressure has been increasing on Israel after a UN commission of inquiry found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and a growing number of countries announced their decision to recognise Palestinian statehood, including the UK, France, Canada, and Australia.
Nearly two weeks into Israel’s offensive, the health sector in Gaza City is collapsing, with two clinics destroyed by airstrikes, two hospitals shut down after being damaged and others barely functioning. Medicine, equipment, food and fuel are in short supply, while many doctors and nurses have been forced to flee.
On Friday, Médecins Sans Frontières said it had been forced to suspend activities in Gaza City due to the rapidly deteriorating security situation.
“We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities as our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces,” said Jacob Granger, the charity’s emergency coordinator in Gaza. “This is the last thing we wanted, as the needs in Gaza City are enormous, with the most at-risk people – infants in neonatal care, people with severe injuries and life-threatening illnesses – unable to move and in grave danger.”
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