Israel-Palestine war LIVE: Second Hamas leader killed, UK could face legal action for ‘complicity’ in the conflict says Tory MP, as Brits flee Israel

Thousands of pro-Palestine supporters have begun their march through London as police warn that anyone showing support for Hamas or deviating from the route could face arrest.

Protesters have begun their planned descent as thousands can be seen starting their march down Portland Street.

Men, women and children of all ages are boasting placards demanding the Israeli government to ‘stop bombing Gaza’. The chants from emotional pro-Palestine supporters can be heard streets away as a sea of Palestinian flags floods the capital city.

Children were among the dead after a strike hit a Palestinian convoy of vehicles fleeing northern Gaza to the south, a report has said.

Reports emerged yesterday alongside video of the devastation of the scene after the strike.

The BBC Verify service said it has confirmed that the strike happened on Salah-al-Din street, which is one of two evacuation routes from north Gaza to the south.

As Gazans fled the north yesterday after Israel issued an evacuation order, the road was packed with traffic.

In the footage, at least 12 dead bodies of mostly women and children as young as two to five years old, can be seen, the BBC reported.

The report said the video was likely filmed at around 5.30pm local time because of the placement of the shadows.

Most of the people killed in the strike can be seen lying on the back of a flatbed lorry, and others are around the road. Other cars destroyed in the strike are also seen.

The Palestinian health ministry said that 70 people were killed at the scene and blamed Israel for the attack, the BBC reports.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) told BBC Verify that it is investigating but said its enemies are trying to prevent civilians leaving the north.

Hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters have gathered for a rally in central London this afternoon following the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Groups supporting Palestine are protesting against Israel’s retaliation to Hamas’ attacks last week.

More than 1,000 officers have been deployed by the Metropolitan Police for the march, which saw supporters gather to express solidarity with Palestine as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues to escalate.

Protesters gathered outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House in Portland Place ahead of the march this afternoon.

Palestine flags and supportive placards were waved as people chanted, with Metropolitan Police and community support officers stationed nearby.

The UK Government has been steadfast in support of Israel, with ministers also calling on police to use the ‘full force of the law’ against shows of support for Hamas or bids to intimidate the UK’s Jewish community.

Waving a proscribed flag in support of Hamas or other proscribed organisations at the protest will be an offence.

The Home Secretary also suggested this week that waving Palestinian flags could in some contexts be seen as illegitimate.

Amid concerns about the scale of the Israeli response, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Friday that the country has ‘every right to defend itself’ from Hamas attacks but stressed that civilian safety must be ‘paramount in our minds’.

A Section 12 of the Public Order Act will be in force from midday covering the demonstration route, which starts at Portland Place and finishes in Whitehall.

Israelis have razed a Palestinian pizzeria to the ground after it used a picture of a kidnapped grandmother in a mocking advert.

A bulldozer could be seen ramming into the building and pulling it apart while reversing in a video recorded in the West Bank town of Huwara.

The order to destroy the pizzeria was given by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) central command.

The advert appeared to mock an elderly woman kidnapped by terrorists a week ago during Hamas’s attack on Israel, showing an image of her next to a photo of a pizza.

Israel today gave Palestinians until 2pm to evacuate the north of the Gaza Strip, with families fleeing by car and donkey cart, as the death toll from airstrikes topped 2,200.

The IDF had allowed 1.1million civilians just 24 hours to escape to the south of the territory, a deadline that ended today at 3am BST. It said today that Gazans could flee safely via two main roads between 10am and 4pm local time (8AM – 2pm BST).

Hamas has urged civilians to ignore the evacuation order and some are refusing to leave, with Mahmoud Shalabi – director of Medical Aid for Palestinians – saying ‘no place was safe in Gaza’ and he hoped to ‘die with dignity’.

‘At time of writing the hospital is still standing,’ Doctors Without Borders said at around 11am UK time after patients and medical staff of a Gaza hospital spent part of their night on the street ‘with bombs landing in close proximity,’ following Israel’s orders to evacuate the facility.

Giving an update on X, formerly Twitter, on the Al Awda Hospital, MSF said: ‘After spending part of the night in the street with bombs landing in close proximity, we understand that some medical staff and all patients have been able to move but the situation remains extremely complicated and chaotic.

‘We call on Israel once again to cease the indiscriminate bloodshed, withdraw their ultimatum, and to protect healthcare facilities and civilians.’

Scott Hamilton, a spokesman for the aid group, which is known as MSF, said some of the medical staff and all patients have been moved to another location.

MSF said last night that Israel gave ‘just two hours to evacuate’ the hospital in the Gaza Strip, before later adding that the demand to evacuate was postponed until 6am,

The international humanitarian medical organistion said last night that their staff were still treating patients when they were given the order.

A statement said: ‘We unequivocally condemn this action, the continued indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on health care in Gaza. We are trying to protect our staff and patients.’

BBC headquarters has been covered with blood-red paint as the controversy still rages on over the corporation’s decision not to call baby-slaughtering Hamas ‘terrorists’.

The Metropolitan police confirmed to MailOnline: ‘We are aware of criminal damage to a building in Portland Place, W1A. At this stage there is no suggestion this is linked to any protest group.’

The Met Police have issued a warning ahead of a pro-Palestine protest in London due ot take place this afternoon.

You can watch a video from the force’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, who is responsible for policing in London this weekend, below.

Thousands of people are expected to march in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in central London today as police warn that anyone showing support for Hamas or deviating from the route could face arrest.

Palestinians have begun a mass exodus from northern Gaza after Israel’s military told them to evacuate ahead of an expected ground invasion following attacks on Israel which killed at least 1,300 people, mostly civilians. At least 2,200 people have been killed in Gaza as Israeli forces retaliate.

The Israeli military has said they have killed a second Hamas commander, an elite who led unit of commando forces that gunned down civilians in last week’s attack on southern Israel.

Israeli military aircraft killed Ali Qadi, a company commander of the Hamas ‘Nukhba’ elite commando force, in an airstrike, a statement said.

A Hamas official told AFP they had ‘no comment’ concerning the Israeli claim.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Qadi, 37, was a unit commander in the elite Hamas force.

Both the Palestinian official and the Israeli military statement said Qadi was one of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel in 2011 in exchange for a soldier, Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas in 2006.

Qadi was arrested by Israel in 2005 over the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli man who media reports at the time identified as a broker for the Shin Bet internal security agency.

Hamas militants who broke through the militarised security barrier around the Gaza Strip on October 7 killed more than 1,300 people in southern Israel, triggering retaliatory Israeli bombardment that has killed at least 2,215 people in Gaza

This comes after reports this morning that a senior military commander of Hamas who headed the Islamist group’s aerial operations in Gaza City was killed in Israeli air strikes.

Murad Abu Murad was killed when fighter jets hit an operations centre where Hamas carried out its ‘aerial activity’, the Israeli military said earlier today.

Mr Blunt is a co-director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), which has announced that it has penned a notice of intention to prosecute British government officials for ‘aiding and abetting war crimes in Gaza’.

The Conservative backbencher told Sky News this morning that he was ‘not entirely sure that my colleagues have grasped the legal peril they are in or fully understand international law in this area’.

He said that ‘you can’t encourage powers to commit war crimes’, adding that ‘everyone must act to restrain people’ if you know war crimes will take place.

‘And as international law has developed in this area, the fact of being complicit makes you equally guilty to the party carrying out the crime,’ Mr Blunt told Sky News.

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The letter from the ICJP follows Israel’s warning to Palestinians to evacuate to the south of the Gaza Strip or risk being caught up in military action and calls for the UK to support an immediate ceasefire.

At least 2,215 people, including 724 children, have been killed and 8,714 have been wounded in Gaza, the Hamas-controlled Palestinian health ministry has said.

Some 458 women were among those killed, and in the West Bank, 54 people were killed and 1,100 were injured, the ministry added.

It added that 8,714 people have also been wounded, after an earlier statement said at least 324 people were killed in the past 24 hours alone.

Emmanuel Macron has paid tribute to a teacher stabbed to death in northern France yesterday, saying he ‘saved many lives’ by protecting pupils from the attacker.

Dominique Bernard, a French literature teacher in his 40s, was murdered – allegedly at the hands of Chechen refugee Mohamed Mogouchkov – at Gambetta high school in Arras at 11am local time.

Witnesses said the attacker could be heard to shout ‘Allahu Akbar’, while French interior minister Gerald Darmanin said the incident bore a link to the Middle East as Palestinian terror group Hamas called on Muslims to demonstrate on a ‘day of Jihad’.

Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least 324 people in the past 24 hours alone, including 126 children, the Hamas-controlled health ministry said.

It said that 88 women were among those killed and that 1,018 were wounded over that period.

Harrowing photos showed rows of body bags lining the streets of Gaza City, as people waited outside the Shifa Hospital to carry out dead bodies of Palestinians were killed in during Israeli attacks.

They were pictured before performing funeral prayer for them as Israeli airstrikes continued for an eigth day in Gaza City.

Another photo (below), showed a distraught man carrying a young girl who had been injured following an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip today.

The first repatriation flight helping Brits flee Israel has landed in Cyprus ahead of the Israeli military’s land offensive on Gaza.

The Royal Air Force was brought in last night to help British Citizens to safety after they said ‘we don’t want our children to witness what is about to happen in Gaza’.

An Airbus A400M made two flights from Tel Aviv to Cyprus, the first on Friday night and the second during the early hours of Saturday morning, according to FlightRadar24.

A Foreign Office (FCDO) statement said: ‘A UK Government charter flight has now left Israel (October, 13), with further flights expected to leave in the coming days while commercial options are limited.’

It comes as the UK Government had failed to organise repatriation flights from Israel due to problems obtaining insurance.

The Israeli army said today it was ‘very sorry’ for the death of a Reuters journalist who was killed when he got caught up in cross-border shelling along the frontier with Lebanon.

‘We are very sorry for the journalist’s death,’ military spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters when asked about the killing of Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah on Friday. But the Israeli military did not acknowledge responsibility.

‘We are looking into it,’ Hecht said of the incident in which six other journalists, including two from AFP, were also injured.

Thousands of people are expected to march in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in central London as police warn that anyone showing support for Hamas or deviating from the route could face arrest.

The Metropolitan Police Service will deploy more than 1,000 officers to police the demonstration, in which people will be marching in solidarity with Palestine and demanding Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian land, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

A Section 12 will be in force from midday covering the demonstration route, which starts at Portland Place and finishes in Whitehall.

Met Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor told a press briefing yesterday: ‘Whilst people have the right to protest, they do not have the right to incite violence, they do not have the right to incite hatred and they do not have the right to commit criminal offences and we will robustly police that situation.’

Waving a proscribed flag in support of Hamas or other proscribed organisations at the protest will be an offence.

At the same briefing, Mr Taylor told of a ‘massive increase’ in antisemitic crime and incidents since the Israel-Hamas conflict. He said the force has seen an increase in Islamophobic incidents as well, ‘but nothing like the scale of the increase in antisemitism’.

Saudi Arabia has reportedly suspended talks on potentially normalising ties with Israel, amid the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

‘Saudi Arabia has decided to pause discussion on possible normalisation and has informed US officials,’ a source familiar with the discussions told AFP.

The Gulf kingdom, home to the holiest sites in Islam, has never recognised Israel and did not join the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords that saw neighbours Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco establish formal ties with Israel.

Sickening footage released by Hamas allegedly shows the terrorists holding Israeli toddlers and children during the Saturday’s shocking massacre.

The video shows Hamas members holding the youngsters as they sit around a table. One is seen rocking a pram as an infant cries. Others are carrying the distressed children, rocking them and patting their backs.

The footage was recorded as Hamas gunmen carried out their mass infiltration of Israel last Saturday, according to Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post.

An RAF flight left Israel on Friday night, as part of a UK Government effort to get British nationals out of the country amid the escalating conflict in the region.

The RAF flight carried passengers from Israel to Cyprus last night.

It is understood that the air force is assisting the Foreign Office due to the current limited availability of commercial flights.

A Royal Air Force A400M made two flights from Tel Aviv to Cyprus, the first on Friday night and the second during the early hours of Saturday morning, according to FlightRadar24.

A Foreign Office (FCDO) statement earlier said: ‘A UK Government charter flight has now left Israel (October 13), with further flights expected to leave in the coming days while commercial options are limited.’

Israeli forces said today that they had killed several ‘terrorists’ trying to cross from Lebanon amid heightened tensions and after repeated cross-border shelling.

The military ‘identified a terrorist cell which attempted to infiltrate from Lebanon into Israeli territory,’ a military spokesman said, adding that a drone strike ‘targeted the terrorist cell and killed a number of the terrorists’.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said yesterday that it was ‘fully prepared’ to join its Palestinian ally Hamas in the war against Israel when the time is right.

Arab countries and the United Nations have urged Hezbollah to stay out of the growing conflict, but the Lebanese-based group’s deputy chief Naim Qassem said the movement would not be swayed.

Amid mounting tensions, Israel shelled two villages in south Lebanon near the border on Friday, Lebanese security sources told AFP, following a blast on the border fence.

A Reuters journalist was killed and six others, from AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera, were wounded in southern Lebanon on Friday when they were caught up in cross-border shelling.

On Monday, Hezbollah had said Israeli strikes had killed three of its members, while Palestinian fighters claimed a thwarted infiltration bid.

On Tuesday, Israel said it hit Hezbollah observation posts and a day later, Hezbollah said it targeted an Israeli position near the Lebanese village of Dhayra. Retaliatory Israeli fire wounded three people.

Israel has killed a key Hamas commander as it continues to pummel the besieged territory with airstrikes and thousands of Palestinians flee south in preparation for a full-scale ground invasion.

Murad Abu Murad, the head of the terror group’s aerial operations, was killed over the past day when fighter jets struck an operational centre, the Israeli military said today.

Israel yesterday gave 1.1million civilians just 24 hours to escape to the south of the country. The UN has asked the move to be revoked, saying it was impossible without ‘devastating humanitarian consequences’.

Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing northern Gaza as Israeli tanks started to roll into the war zone.

This comes after Israel ordered nearly half the population – around one million people, including the entire population of Gaza City – to flee south, ahead of a ground offensive against Hamas.

The UN and aid groups warned that such an exodus would cause human suffering, with hospital patients and others unable to relocate, with the UN urging Israel to reverse the order.

And Hamas have now told the Palestinian people to ignore the evacuation order, leaving families in Gaza facing a difficult choice of whether to leave or stay.

Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with their possessions crowded a main road heading southwards from Gaza City as Israeli air strikes continued to hammer the besieged territory. Hamas’ media office said war planes struck cars fleeing south, killing more than 70 people.

The Israeli military said its troops conducted temporary raids into Gaza to battle militants and hunted for traces of some 150 people – including men, women and children – abducted in the shocking assault on southern Israel by Hamas on October 7.

In urging the evacuation, Israel’s military said it planned to target underground Hamas hideouts around Gaza City. But Palestinians and some Egyptian officials fear that Israel ultimately aims to push Gaza’s people out through the southern border with Egypt.

More than 1,300 buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, the United Nations has said today, after nearly a week of fierce bombardment by Israeli forces.

The UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said ‘5,540 housing units’ had been destroyed and nearly 3,750 more homes were so badly damaged that they were uninhabitable.

A senior military commander of Hamas who headed the Islamist group’s aerial operations in Gaza City has been killed in Israeli air strikes, the IDF said today.

Murad Abu Murad was killed when fighter jets hit an operations centre where Hamas carried out its ‘aerial activity’, the military said. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas.