Gaza truce talks fail as UN warns of ‘slaughter’ in Israeli invasion of Rafah – live

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said people in Rafah with nowhere to go “cannot simply vanish into thin air” as Israel prepares an assault on the border city.

“They need safe places and safe corridors to avoid being caught in the crossfire even more,” she said before talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Britain has troops stationed in Saudi Arabia to provide air defence against possible drone and missile attacks by Houthi rebels at a time of growing concern about the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

A unit of around 50 gunners from 12 Regiment Royal Artillery are deployed at a base near Riyadh, as well as well as number of oil installations, in a bilateral defence arrangement with the Kingdom which had led a military alliance against the Houthis in Yemen.

Read more from our World Affairs Editor, Kim Sengupta, here:

In northern Israel, a rocket attack from Lebanon has killed an Israeli woman in a barrage that also hit a military base and wounded several other people on Wednesday, an Israeli government spokesperson has said.

Israel carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon in response, killing four people, including a Syrian woman and her two Lebanese children, and wounding at least nine, Lebanese security officials and local media said.

Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, which supports Hamas, have traded fire along the border nearly every day since the start of the war in Gaza, raising the risk of a wider conflict. Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for the rocket attack.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is making his first visit to Egypt since 2012 , taking a big step toward rebuilding relations between the regional powers.

Mr Erdogan has said discussions would focus on Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. Mr Erdogan and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose relations frayed over Egypt’s 2013 military coup and its fallout for the Muslim Brotherhood, planned to hold a joint press conference later.

The visit caps diplomatic efforts in recent years to thaw the nations’ frosty relations. They mutually appointed ambassadors last year, and this month Turkey said it would provide Egypt with armed drones.

Relations between Ankara and Cairo broke down in 2013 after Egypt’s then-army chief, Mr Sisi, led the ousting of the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi, an ally of Turkey who had become Egypt’s first democratically elected president the year before.

Mr Sisi greeted Erdogan as he emerged from his plane in Cairo with his wife and they conversed as they walked along a red carpet amid a fanfare, live television footage showed.

According to a draft programme, Mr Sisi and Mr Erdogan were to hold bilateral talks before a meeting between the two delegations, with a formal dinner planned.

Mr Erdogan has sought to ease tensions with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel since 2021 – though since October he has publicly sniped with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s devastating war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Palestinians are increasingly conncerned about an Israeli assault into Gaza, particulary in the wake of there being no major breakthrough in recent ceasefire talks.

“The news was disappointing, we hoped there could be a deal reached in Cairo. We are now counting down the days before Israel sends in tanks. We hope they don’t but who can prevent them?” Said Jaber, a Gaza businessman who is sheltering in Rafah with his family, told Reuters via a chat app. “We’ve lost our homes, our jobs. Isn’t that enough? We’ve had enough of this war, and we will need decades to rebuild Gaza and regain our lives. When will the world stop Israel’s slaughter of our people?”

As the UN warns of dire consequences of an Israeli asasault into the Gaza border city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering, the UK’s foreign secretary – David Cameron – has warned Israel to “stop and think” befire moving in any further,

About two-thirds of Jewish Americans felt less secure in late 2023 than they did a year earlier, according to a survey mostly conducted after the Hamas attack on Israel on and released now.

The American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group, said the survey was based on telephone and online interviews from Octiber to November. The findings were compared to the same survey a year earlier.

Explosions have struck a natural gas pipeline in Iran, with an official blaming the blasts on “sabotage and terrorist action” as tensions remain high in the Middle East amid Israel’s war on Hamas.

The pipeline runs from Iran’s western Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province up north to cities on the Caspian Sea. The roughly 790-mile structure begins in Asaluyeh, a hub for Iran’s offshore South Pars gas field.

Saeed Aghli, the manager of Iran’s gas network control centre, told Iranian state television that “sabotage and terrorist action” caused explosions along several areas of the line.

There are no known insurgent groups operating in that province, home to the Bakhtiari, a branch of Iran’s Lur ethnic group. In the past, Arab separatists in south-western Iran have claimed attacks against oil pipelines. However, attacks against such infrastructure are rare elsewhere.

Israeli survivors of the 7 October Hamas attack – and family members of hostages – are stepping up efforts to get the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor to scrutinise Hamas’ crimes as part of his investigation into the attack and Israel’s response in Gaza.

“We want to make sure that the world acts and that their freedom is hindered,” Udi Goren, cousin of 41-year-old Tal Haimi who was abducted on 7 October. Mr Haimi was later confirmed dead, his body still being held in Gaza.

“We want to … make sure that the leaders of Hamas are taken into custody or that they cannot leave Qatar anymore and that this puts pressure on them to release the hostages,” Mr Goren said, speaking at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.

Mr Goren was among a group of around 100 family members of hostages preparing to fly to the ICC’s headquarters in The Hague.

Israel is not a member of the ICC and does not recognise its jurisdiction. But prosecutor Karim Khan reaffirmed to Reuters this week that the court has jurisdiction over the events of 7 October and they form part of the court’s investigation. He declined to comment further on the ongoing investigation.