
Pope renews call for immediate Gaza ceasefire
'I once again call for an immediate end to the barbarity of this war and for a peaceful resolution to the conflict,' the pontiff said at the end of his Sunday Angelus prayer from his summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo.
Leo also expressed his 'deep sorrow' for the Israeli attack on the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, which killed three people and wounded 10 others, including the parish priest.
'I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations,' the Pope added.
The shelling of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza also damaged the church compound, where hundreds of Palestinians have been sheltering from the Israel-Hamas war, now in its 21st month.
Israel expressed regret over what it described as an accident and said it is investigating.
'We need to dialogue and abandon weapons,' the Pope said earlier on Sunday, after presiding over Mass at the nearby Cathedral of Albano.
'The world no longer tolerates war.'

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Evening Standard
5 minutes ago
- Evening Standard
Who will be left to tell the story, if Gaza's last journalists die?
Israel clearly understands that. Why else would it seek to silence the press? Alongside its calculated targeting of journalists in Gaza, Israel has increased its repression of journalists in the West Bank, introduced new laws to throttle journalism it does not like, pressured Israeli media critical of the war, and – perhaps most tellingly - banned foreign journalists from independently entering Gaza. The international press has been clamouring to get in, to relieve the burden on Palestinian reporters and see for itself the crumbled state that Gaza is in. But Israel knows too well the value of narrative control.


Telegraph
6 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The BBC are the last news agency Israel should let into Gaza
There aren't many organisations Israel is less inclined to heed than the BBC, and most of them come with their own armed wing. So the Corporation's joint statement with news wires AFP, AP and Reuters, professing itself 'desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families' is unlikely to move Benjamin Netanyahu or his government. Nor is the BBC's call for foreign journalists to be allowed back into Gaza, which is not only not in Israel's military interests but would put journalists in mortal danger. Israel is being pummelled daily by the BBC. It's not about to be responsible for one of Auntie's reporters being abducted by Hamas or killed in crossfire. Even if the BBC had any credibility remaining inside Israel, its statement would be misguided, but the Corporation seems not to realise just how degraded its reputation is among Israelis across the political spectrum. In the past six months alone, the BBC has aired a documentary on the Gaza war narrated by the son of a Hamas deputy minister, livestreamed Bob Vylan chanting 'death, death to the IDF' at Glastonbury, and its news chief executive has opined that 'we need to continually remind people of the difference' between the Hamas government and its armed wing, a distinction which does not exist in UK law. This is what will be to the forefront of the Israeli government's mind when receiving this statement. Jeremy Corbyn's new political party has a better chance of getting a hearing. The BBC's intervention is especially unfortunate given that it risks amplifying Hamas's messaging against those trying to alleviate the horrific suffering in Gaza. There is a concerted effort to make sure the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation fails and for one reason only: the GHF's mission is to distribute aid to the residents of Gaza. That's it. Nothing more nefarious than feeding people. But feeding people is a threat to the Hamas-NGO complex that has hitherto held a chokehold on humanitarian aid distribution inside Gaza. Whatever the aid, whatever its source, when Hamas is in charge it siphons off the best for its own and uses the remainder to coerce ordinary Gazans into joining its ranks or toeing the line – or see their families go hungry. This strategy is not unknown to the NGOs that work on the ground in Gaza and have become too willing to turn a blind eye. The GHF is disrupting this cartel. By directing its efforts to dispensing food parcels to the needy, and declining to become part of Hamas's propaganda echo chamber, the GHF is a trial run for a different future for Gaza. A Gaza in which humanitarian aid is not controlled by Hamas is a Gaza in which Hamas will struggle to retain control. That Gaza is one in which the gruelling work of state-building can finally begin, if the Palestinians choose a new leadership more concerned with developing the economy than using the strip as an eternal launching pad for a self-defeating war on the Jews. Ergo the deliberate provocations at food distribution sites, ergo Hamas's determination to bait the IDF into opening fire, ergo the death toll propaganda war. By cosigning this statement, the BBC is contributing to the propaganda war. The Corporation can either be a reporter of the conflict or a participant in it, but it can't be both. In less than two years since October 7 the BBC has accelerated a case for its privatisation that its detractors spent decades trying (and failing) to force into the political mainstream. Hamas controls Gaza today because, in 2007, it seized the territory during a brief civil war against rival Fatah. The two organisations proved incapable of cooperating in the wake of the 2006 Palestinian elections, which Hamas won and ended decades of Fatah dominance. Palestinian voters chose Hamas at the ballot box but almost two decades later there have been no further elections. The Israelis kidnapped on October 7 aren't the only hostages being held by Hamas. The international community should, for reasons both humanitarian and self-interested, be willing on Israel in its efforts to smash Hamas and give Gazans an opportunity to break free of their grip, reject bigoted and futile anti-Zionism, and choose a better future for themselves. As long as the international news media, including and especially the BBC, continue serving as useful idiots for Hamas, this cannot happen. And as long as Western populations are bombarded with unverified Hamas claims about starvation and fatalities, Western leaders will continue to heap pressure on Israel to relent and allow Hamas to keep its hold over Gaza. The result will be more terrorism, more wars, and more dead Palestinians. Gaza will continue to hold itself hostage from its own future. The Corporation's statement will have no impact in Israel. The Israelis have stopped listening to the BBC. Unless it changes, they won't be the only ones.


BBC News
6 minutes ago
- BBC News
Gaza: UN and charities say people urgently need more food
Charities are warning that people in Gaza need food straight away. A group of 100 aid agencies, which includes Save The Children and Oxfam, says that people face United Nations (UN) has reported that people have been taken into hospital because they have not had enough and aid agencies say that children and old people are particularly vulnerable to starvation. Israel put in place a blockade of aid deliveries to Gaza. Although the blockade was partly loosened after two months, shortages of food have got worse since Israel started the blockade in March 2025, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was doing it because Hamas was refusing to agree to an American outline of talks for the next stage of the ceasefire. At the same time, Prime Minister Netanyahu also repeated demands for the return of all Israeli aid agencies and the UN blame Israel for the food UN says that there have been many issues causing the shortage of aid, but they say the main one in recent weeks is that people have been killed at sites controlled by the Israeli military where aid is handed out in Israeli military says that its troops near the aid sites only fire warning shots and do not deliberately shoot at civilians (people not involved in the fighting). The 100 charities say it is time for governments around the world to take "decisive action", meaning they should take strong steps to get food to people in Foreign Ministry said it "categorically rejected" the statement from the 100 aid agencies, meaning that it definitely and very firmly disagreed with what they Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in October 2023, after Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7th October 2023, killing civilians and taking people hostage.