Closing summary
Gazans gathered on Monday for the funeral of five Al Jazeera staff members and a sixth reporter killed in an Israeli strike, AFP reports. Dozens stood amid bombed-out buildings in the courtyard of Al-Shifa hospital to pay their respects to Anas al-Sharif, a prominent Al Jazeera correspondent aged 28, and four of his colleagues, killed on Sunday.
United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres condemned the killing of Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza in an Israeli air strike, his spokesperson said on Monday. “The secretary-general calls for an independent and impartial investigation into these latest killings,” said UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
New video footage appears to show the moment a Palestinian activist was killed as an Israeli settler fired toward him during a confrontation with unarmed Palestinians in the occupied West Bank last month, AP reports. The video released Sunday by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, shows Israeli settler Yinon Levi firing a gun toward the person filming. The footage cuts but the camera keeps rolling as the person moans in pain.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) has issued a statement expressing its “outrage” over the killing of Palestinian journalists in Gaza City. The FPA said in a statement that “the Israeli military has repeatedly labelled Palestinian journalists as militants, often without verifiable evidence”.
Palestinians reported the heaviest bombardments in weeks on Monday in areas east of Gaza City, just hours after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he expected to complete a new expanded offensive in the territory “fairly quickly”, Reuters reports.
Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund said on Monday it is terminating contracts with asset managers handling its Israeli investments and has divested parts of its portfolio in the country over the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. The announcement follows an urgent review launched last week following media reports that the fund had built a stake in an Israeli jet engine group that provides services to Israel’s armed forces, including the maintenance of fighter jets.
Israel’s new offensive in Gaza City could take weeks to start, leaving the door open for a ceasefire, officials say, even as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it would get underway “fairly quickly” and end the war with Hamas’ defeat. Two officials who were at a security cabinet meeting on Thursday to approve the plan told Reuters that the evacuation of civilians from affected areas may only be completed by the start of October, giving time for a deal to be pursued.
Talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency will be “technical” and “complicated,” the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry said ahead of a visit by the nuclear watchdog for the first time since Tehran cut ties with the organisation last month, AP reports.
Italy’s defence minister said in an interview that Israel’s government had “lost its reason and humanity” over Gaza and signalled an openness to potential sanctions, AFP reports.
Gaza’s health ministry said five more people had died of malnutrition and starvation in Gaza in the past 24 hours, Reuters reports. That raised the number of deaths from such causes to 222, including 101 children, since the war began, the ministry said.
Keir Starmer has said he is “gravely concerned” about the repeated targeting of journalists in Gaza, the British prime minister’s spokesperson said on Monday, after the killing of Anas al-Sharif and four colleagues by the IDF.
Emmanuel Macron has condemned Israel’s plans to step up its military operation in Gaza as a “disaster waiting to happen” and proposed an international coalition under a United Nations mandate to stabilise Gaza.
The Western Wall in Jerusalem has been vandalised with graffiti condemning Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, triggering widespread condemnation from religious leaders and politicians, AFP reports. “There is a holocaust in Gaza,” was graffitied in Hebrew on the southern portion of the wall, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray.
Qatar’s prime minister and minister for foreign affairs, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani condemned Israel’s killing of six Palestinian journalists, five of whom were working for Al Jazeera, which is headquartered in Qatar and part state-funded.
Greta Thunberg said she and a Palestinian activist group plan to sail a new flotilla loaded with humanitarian aid to Gaza to break the “illegal Israeli siege”, AFP reports.
Israel’s plan to take over Gaza City is “a matter of grave concern,” China’s permanent representative to the UN Fu Cong, said at a weekend meeting on the Palestinian-Israeli issue held by the UN Security Council, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reports.
Three-quarters of UN members have already, or soon plan to, recognise Palestinian statehood, according to a tally by news agency Agence France-Presse.
UN chief Guterres condemns killing of Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza
United Nations secretary-general António Guterres condemned the killing of Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza in an Israeli airstrike, his spokesperson said on Monday.
“The secretary-general calls for an independent and impartial investigation into these latest killings,” said UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
“At least 242 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began. Journalists and media workers must be respected, they must be protected and they must be allowed to carry out their work freely, free from fear and free from harassment.”
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