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Israel-Hamas war live: Hamas attacks Israeli city of Ashkelon with rocket...

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Militant group warned civilians to leave before 5pm local time, while rocket strikes also reported in Israeli cities including Tel Aviv

The US senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has criticised China’s response to the Israel-Hamas conflict while in China, calling on the government there to show more support for Israel.

Schumer spoke repeatedly about China’s response, including directly to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Monday, during a rare meeting on a multi-day trip to the country.

“I urge you and the Chinese people to stand with the Israeli people and condemn the cowardly and vicious attacks upon them,” he told Xi in Beijing.

Earlier he had accused China’s foreign minister Wang Yi of showing “no sympathy or support for Israel during these tough, troubled times.”

On Sunday, China’s foreign ministry released a statement calling on “relevant parties” to end to hostilities and protect civilians. It said “the fundamental way out of the conflict lies in implementing the two-state solution and establishing an independent State of Palestine”.

Speaking in Shanghai, Schumer said he was “very disappointed” with China’s initial statement. He also said he had asked for China to use its “influence” on Iran to “not allow the conflagration to spread”. On Monday, at the first daily press conference since a week-long holiday break in China, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning responded to Schumer’s criticism by reiterating Beijing’s concern over the conflict and calling for peace.

Facing multiple questions on the topic, Mao said China was closely following the “recent escalation of tensions”.

“We are deeply saddened by the civilian casualties caused by the conflict and oppose and condemn acts that harm civilians. China opposes escalating the conflict and destabilising the region.”

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Look at the horror of the Israel-Hamas war: then at Elon...

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He took Twitter, sacked staff and reduced its checks and standards. Now, in this time of crisis, we see why that matters

Way back in the mid-1990s, back when UK cable TV was considered new media, the notorious former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie was launch boss for a rolling station called Live TV. The channel’s offering was an eclectic mix of neuron-slaughtering dross, to put it kindly, including Topless Darts, the News Bunny – a giant rabbit who stood behind the newsreader and emoted according to the story being read out – and Tiffani’s Big City Tips, wherein a model stripped to her underwear while telling you where to invest (in rival telly companies, would seem to be the short answer). A guy who’d played an Oompa Loompa in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory did the weather forecast while bouncing on a trampoline.

Looking back, it does sound quite like some of the worst bits of modern life online, or perhaps the best bits, depending on your view. But it quickly turned to shit – again, quite like some of modern life online – and the ill-suited and vindictive MacKenzie hit on a ruse for cutting costs and amusing himself at the same time. He would walk in to the studio or production gallery and fire someone at random. If this summary loss of personnel did not appear to affect the live broadcast happening at the time – if it contrived to stay rolling, one way or another – then he’d regard the financial saving as well made. How important, really, could that person actually have been?

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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‘Murdered in cold blood’: stories emerge of Israelis killed at Gaza...

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Friends and relatives say Hamas killed a grandmother, parents protecting their children, and an entire family during raids

A little after 11pm on Sunday, the Israeli government posted a photograph of a family on one of its social media accounts. There were five people in the selfie: a mother, a father and their three young children, all of them smiling.

“Tamar, Yonatan and their children Shachar, Arbel, Omer,” the caption read. “An entire family wiped out by Hamas terrorists. There are no words. May their memory be a blessing.”

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British-Israeli survivor tells of horrific scenes after kibbutz attack

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Social worker describes being holed up with family in safe room, trying to keep babies quiet as rockets flew overhead

A British-Israeli has described scenes of horrific bloodshed after her kibbutz came under attack by Hamas militants on Saturday.

Esther Marcus, 59, who left London for Israel in 1984, was holed up in a safe room in Alumim, a kibbutz about 2 miles (3km) from the Gaza border, for 27 hours while armed guards fought Hamas.

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People supporting Hamas in UK will be ‘held to account’, says...

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PM also says government is ready to support any British citizens in need of help after attacks on Israel

Rishi Sunak has vowed that anyone in the UK supporting Hamas will be “held to account” in the aftermath of the attack on Israel.

The prime minister said the government was ready to support any British citizens in need of help, during a visit in Staffordshire on Tuesday.

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Israel recovers bodies of more than 1,500 Hamas fighters as airstrikes...

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Concerns grow Israel is planning ground invasion as military installs ‘iron wall’ along Gaza border

The Israeli military said it had recovered the bodies of more than 1,500 Hamas fighters inside Israel and mostly secured its border with Gaza after a night of intensified airstrikes across the enclave that destroyed infrastructure and displaced thousands.

An Israeli military spokesperson said its forces were installing “an iron wall” of tanks and helicopters along the Gaza border, ahead of an expected large-scale ground invasion of the besieged enclave.

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Large parts of Gaza City left in ruins after night of...

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Drone footage from Gaza City shows buildings reduced to burnt-out shells and rubble after one of the fiercest nights of Israeli airstrikes across the besieged strip. Fighting crossed into a third night on Monday, as Israel increased the intensity of its response to a Hamas attack launched on Saturday

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US opinion divided amid battle for narrative over Hamas attack on...

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Groups express opposing views over root cause of the attack, alongside differences over whether Gaza is still occupied

The grim weekend attack by Hamas produced an unusual degree of unity on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide in the US, with widespread revulsion at the scale of the killings, the horrific video of bodies paraded through Gaza, and the abduction of civilians by the Palestinian armed group including the very young and elderly.

But opinion in the US quickly divided as the broader battle for narrative took hold, particularly over the cause of the attack, alongside differences over whether Gaza is still occupied, as the Palestinian death toll, including entire families, rose sharply under Israel’s retaliatory bombardment.

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Thousands gather in London for protests and vigils as Israel-Hamas war...

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Thousands of people gathered in London on Monday to participate in vigils held for Israel in Westminster and pro-Palestine solidarity protests near Israel's embassy in Kensington. The gatherings took place as the war in Gaza passed its third day, with a heavy toll for civilians on both sides. At least 704 Palestinians have died in Gaza and more than 900 Israelis

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Hamas and Israel at war: what we know on day 4

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Death toll rises as Israeli military says Hamas has ‘nowhere to hide’ after launching airstrikes across Gaza

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that Hamas operatives had “nowhere to hide” in Gaza and that its air force was carrying out intensive airstrikes in waves every four hours. “We will reach them everywhere,” chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in a briefing. The Israeli air force has announced on social media that it is “launching an extensive attack against terror targets of the terrorist organisation Hamas in the Gaza Strip”.

The UN human rights chief said on Tuesday that Israeli air operations had struck residential buildings, including tower blocks, as well as schools and UN buildings across Gaza, resulting in civilian casualties. Gaza’s health ministry has put Palestinian casualty figures as at least 770 killed and 4,000 wounded by Israeli airstrikes since Saturday. They additionally claim that at least another 18 people were killed and 100 injured in the West Bank since Saturday.

Israeli media reports that Hamas fighters killed about 900 people inside Israel during the weekend incursion.

Israel has retaken control of the Gaza border fence breached by Palestinian Hamas gunmat the weekend, and is planting mines in the parts where the barrier was toppled, the chief military spokesperson said on Tuesday. Hagari said there had been no new infiltrations from Gaza since Monday.

The Times of Israel reports that officers are preparing to inform 100 families that their loved ones have been taken hostage by Hamas and are being held in Gaza. A senior member of the militant group has said it intends to use the dozens of hostages being held in Gaza to secure the release of Palestinians detained in Israel and overseas.

The Israeli air force confirmed it had flown back “hundreds of IDF soldiers who were abroad” in order to contribute to “the IDF’s efforts to mobilise additional forces to continue fighting”.

The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said he was sure that Israel was focused exclusively on destroying Hamas in Gaza, and not on attacking Palestinians in general or the wider Arab world.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran was not involved in the Hamas attack on Israel, but hailed what he called Israel’s “irreparable” military and intelligence defeat. “We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack on the Zionist regime,” Khamenei said in his first televised speech since the attack. “The Zionist regime’s own actions are to blame for this disaster,” he added. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the comments were unacceptable.

The Spanish acting foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said on Tuesday his government opposed the proposed suspension of EU aid to Palestinians. “This cooperation must continue, we cannot confuse Hamas, which is in the list of EU’s terrorist groups, with the Palestinian population, or the Palestinian Authority or the UN organisations on the ground,” Albares said in an interview with Spanish radio. His views were echoed by France’s foreign ministry, which issued a statement in Paris this morning saying: “We are not in favour of suspending aid that directly benefits the Palestinian people.”

The French foreign ministry has announced that four French nationals have died in the attacks. Thirteen French nationals are still missing, and their situation was considered “very worrying”, the ministry said. Spain has said two of its citizens are still missing.

Austria is arranging an evacuation of its citizens from Israel by military transport aircraft on Wednesday, chancellor Karl Nehammer said. Cyprus has said it is ready to help with the evacuation of nationals from third countries who might want to leave Israel.

Eighteen Thais have been killed in the conflict, the kingdom’s government said on Tuesday, up from the previous toll of 12. A foreign ministry spokesperson said nine Thai citizens had been wounded and 11 taken hostage. About 30,000 Thais work in Israel.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said Moscow and Washington have not been in contact over the escalation of the conflict.

The Palestine football team has withdrawn from a tournament in Malaysia. It had been scheduled to compete in the Merdeka Cup in Malaysia from 13-17 October. Israel’s Euro 2024 qualifier against Switzerland, which was due to be played on Thursday, has already been postponed.

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