War in Gaza. Israel: "We will use unprecedented force, residents leave". Abu Mazen will be able to address UN Assembly via video conference

"The display of the Palestinian flag is in no way intended to be an insult to the Jewish Community, nor is it intended to endorse the terrorists of Hamas, whose crimes and horrific acts we have always firmly condemned. This choice is intended to reaffirm the principle that peace can only come from the birth of a Palestinian state alongside that of Israel, according to the logic of two peoples and two states, because we are convinced that only mutual recognition can guarantee a safe life for all. Rome is and always will be a safe home for Jews, whose roots go back thousands of years and are a constitutive part of our identity, and for this very reason we deeply understand the suffering that the Jewish Community has been experiencing since 7 October 2023, a pain that is intertwined with the memory of tragedies that have already wounded this city, such as the attack on the Synagogue in 1982 in which Stefano Gaj Taché was killed by Palestinian terrorists. Stefano will also forever remain 'our child', because his memory is engraved in the conscience of Rome and the country. Our city will never stop being the spokesperson for a commitment to a just and lasting peace, which also means clearly expressing the need for a political solution that overcomes and condemns the choices of the Netanyahu government and restores hope to both the Israeli and Palestinian people. Rome will always stand by the Jewish Community against all forms of anti-Semitism, hatred and violence, and will continue to promote dialogue, coexistence and mutual recognition, because this is the most authentic sense of our identity'. This was stated in a note by the majority group leaders in the Capitoline Assembly, Valeria Baglio, Ferdinando Bonessio, Giovanni Caudo, Alessandro Luparelli, Sandro Petrolati and Giorgio Trabucco.

"It would have been enough if - with the intervention of the United States or Europe - Hamas had returned the hostages, all those alive and the bodies of the dead ones, and Israel would no longer have had an alibi to continue the war". So said Senate President Ignazio La Russa, speaking at 'Portofino Talks'.

"This Executive Committee has not discussed, and has never discussed, the possibility of non-representation of all National Committees. Regarding the security of the Israeli athletes, we will continue to consult with the law enforcement agencies of the host country, as we have always done". This was stated by IOC President Kirsty Coventry regarding the participation of Israel's athletes in the Milan-Cortina Games. 'We have guarantees from all components,' Coventry added, during the press conference after the Executive Committee meeting, 'their commitment. It will be a 100 per cent safe Olympics'.

"In Gaza City, IDF troops continue to expand activities, while in Khan Yunis and Rafah they continue to operate against terrorist threats." The Israeli army reports this on social media, adding that "more than ten terrorists have been eliminated and more than 20 military infrastructure sites have been dismantled". Among them, "Mahmoud Yusuf Abu Alkhir, deputy head of military intelligence in Hamas' Bureij battalion, was eliminated in an IDF attack in northern Gaza".

Palestinian National Authority President Abu Mazen will be allowed to address the UN General Assembly's High-Level Week by video conference. The General Assembly decided this after Donald Trump's administration denied him a visa to travel to New York.

Four Palestinians, including a child, have died of malnutrition in the last 24 hours in Gaza. This was reported by al Jazeera, citing the Hamas Ministry of Health. This brings the total number of people who have died of starvation since the beginning of the war to 440, including 147 children.

"Genocide is when you knowingly decide to eliminate an entire people. In Gaza it is a massacre, a violation of international law'. This was said by FI leader and deputy prime minister Antonio Tajani on the sidelines of a party conference, responding to those who asked him whether, in his opinion, genocide is taking place in Gaza. 'It is not a question of words but of substance,' he pointed out. Many wash their consciences with words, we will try to save lives'.

At least 21 Palestinians were killed today in Israeli attacks in Gaza: Medical sources told Al Jazeera.

To cover the costs of the June war against Iran and the ongoing ground offensive in northern Gaza, Israel is preparing to increase its defence budget by 25.9 billion shekels (€6.5 billion), a 23% increase over the initially planned budget for 2025. The defence budget, examined by the Knesset Finance Committee yesterday, is expected to account for about 9% of Israeli GDP, double the military spending before the 7 October 2023 attack launched by Hamas.

"This is a budget entirely dedicated to essential security expenditures necessary to continue the war, to the purchase of ammunition and equipment, and to support the operational needs of the Israeli army," said far-right Finance Minister Belazel Smotrich.

The IDF will act in Gaza City with "unprecedented force" and urge residents to flee south, announcing the closure of a temporary evacuation route opened 48 hours earlier. In a post on X addressed to Gaza City residents, the army's Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, said: 'As of this moment, Salah al-Din Road is closed to southbound traffic. The Israel Defence Forces will continue to act with unprecedented force against Hamas and other terrorist organisations." The spokesperson added that the only possible route south is Al-Rashid Street and urged residents to "seize this opportunity and join the hundreds of thousands of city residents who have moved south to the humanitarian area".

"Abdul al-Malik al-Houthi, your time will come": this was written on X by the Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz, in the aftermath of the new attack launched by the Yemeni Houthi group against Israel.

"You will be sent to meet the entire government and all members of the eliminated axis of evil waiting in the bowels of hell," Katz added, referring to the premier and 11 Houthi government ministers killed by an Israeli attack in San'a on 28 August.

Israel closed the only access route between the West Bank and Jordan, a day after a driver carrying humanitarian aid from Jordan to Gaza opened fire and killed two Israeli soldiers. Haaretz reports. The Israel Airport Authority, which operates the Allenby Bridge, announced that it would remain closed until further notice. The two crossings between Israel and Jordan were also affected: the Jordan River crossing in the north was closed, while the Rabin crossing in the south remained open for workers only.

During a security cabinet meeting held yesterday, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu reportedly blamed Jordan for the deadly attack at the Allenby crossing, committed by a Jordanian truck driver carrying aid bound for Gaza. According to reports by public broadcaster Kan, the prime minister told ministers that he would like to see new security protocols introduced for humanitarian aid trucks arriving from Jordan. The Times of Israel reports. "I ask that from now on the drivers go through metal detectors and that the trucks be thoroughly inspected," Netanyahu said. "It was Jordan's responsibility to prevent the attack, and it did not do so," he added.

"Today the word blood burns on us because blood is a language that we all understand and that demands accountability. The blood of Gennaro is ideally mixed with the blood shed in Palestine, as in Ukraine and in every wounded land where violence is believed to be omnipotent and instead is just noise. Blood is sacred: every innocent drop is an overturned sacrament'. Thus the Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Domenico Battaglia, in a passage of his homily for the San Gennaro celebrations, and continued: "If I could, I would collect in an ampulla the blood of every victim, children, women, men of every people, and I would expose it here, under these vaults, so that no ritual absolves us of responsibility, so that prayer feels the weight of every wound and does not slip away. And today, with modesty and with fire, I say: it is the blood of every child of Gaza that I would put on display in this cathedral, next to the ampulla of the saint because there are no 'other' tears: all the earth is one altar'.

'We are off, this time we will not stop'. This is how Maria Elena Delia, spokesperson for the Global Sumud Flotilla, officialises from the roadstead of Portopalo di Capo Passero, in the Syracuse area, the departure of 42 boats bound for Gaza to bring humanitarian aid, along with six others that set sail from Greece.

"Peace is a gift and, if we continue with our prayers and sacrifices, we can all collaborate in peace. And then we must speak of peace, convince, with much sincerity and charity. We must be convinced that peace is possible, it is not a utopia. The situation is very serious throughout the Gaza Strip, there is bombing, it is a war situation, death continues, tens of thousands of people have already been taken away, 18,000 children have been killed in this war. There is no peace, weapons have taken over'. This was said by Father Gabriel Romanelli, parish priest of the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza, in the video message broadcast in the Cathedral of Naples at the opening of the Eucharistic celebration for the feast of San Gennaro.

In the video message, Father Romanelli thanked "for the prayers and material aid".

According to the latest IDF estimates, about 480,000 Palestinians have so far fled Gaza City, heading towards the south of the Strip. An estimated one million Palestinians resided in Gaza City before the IDF launched a major offensive against Hamas in the area.

"An attack on diplomacy itself. And Netanyahu's explanations are an insult to intelligence'. With these words - in an editorial in the Washington Post - the Qatari Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, commented on Israel's attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, declaring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a serious threat to peace and security in the Middle East and to the international legal order". "Never before in modern times has a negotiating party attacked a mediating country," the minister added. The attack therefore 'violated the most basic principles of sovereignty and non-intervention enshrined in international law' and was 'an attack on the very practice of mediation'. Rejecting Netanyahu's justifications for the attack, the minister writes: "The justifications given by his government - comparing the attack on Qatar to the US hunt for Osama bin Laden, French operations in Africa, and Britain's role in the fight against the Islamic State - are distortions and diversions. To give just one example, the US never targeted the Taliban office in Doha while negotiating a deal with Qatar as a mediator'. Al-Khulaifi praises Qatar's role with Hamas over the years in preventing conflict and reaching hostage agreements during the current war, adding: 'For Netanyahu to criticise Qatar now for hosting Hamas officials is to insult the intelligence of the international community, the media and even the Israeli public. If mediators can be bombed with impunity, who will host peace talks? Without secure diplomatic channels, war becomes the only option, civilisation recedes and the rule of law is replaced by brute force'.

The activities of the Catholic parish in Gaza continue despite the fighting taking place a short distance from the church. As posted on social media this morning by the parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, loud explosions were heard during meditation in the church.

"There is no politics, no self-defence that can justify killing tens of thousands of people. If you are a criminal like Slobodan Milosevic, or a tyrant like Putin, you have to be taken to court. And if you are a Jew and an Israeli and your name is Netanyahu, you have no exemptions, you too go to court': this is what former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg said, stressing in an interview with Repubblica that this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, which exists in the world 'just as Islamophobia, Judeophobia, homophobia, xenophobia exist, part of a more widespread tendency towards hatred fuelled by politicians like Trump and Netanyahu'.

According to Burg, 'the State of Israel, even before Netanyahu, turned anti-Semitism into a weapon to prevent anyone from criticising'.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced last night during a visit to Madrid that his government will take a position at the next informal meeting of European leaders on 1 October on the EU proposal to suspend trade agreements between EU countries and Israel in response to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.

During the visit, during which he held talks with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, the German Chancellor emphasised that the two leaders shared a "deep concern" over the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the Israeli offensive. "We also share the fear that annexation actions will be taken in the West Bank, which would further complicate the two-state solution," he told reporters, reiterating Germany's position that it is not prepared to recognise Palestinian independence.

Iran has called on the UN to choose "diplomacy instead of confrontation" ahead of a vote by the UN Security Council on the reintroduction of sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear programme, i.e. the activation of the "snapback" mechanism demanded by France, Germany and the UK, the European countries signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal. "It is therefore time for the UN Security Council to intervene and choose diplomacy over confrontation. The stakes could not be higher," said Iran's Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, who had a telephone conversation with the EU's High Representative for Foreign Policy, Kaja Kallas, and counterparts from the between European countries (E3) on Wednesday. "On behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, yesterday I presented a reasonable and viable plan to the E3/EU counterparts to avert an unnecessary and avoidable crisis in the coming days," Araghchi said, as reported by Mehr, pointing out that Tehran recently reached an understanding to continue cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after the Iranian parliament suspended cooperation with the UN atomic agency in the summer following the conflict with Israel and the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. "Instead of being greeted with a commitment on the substance of this plan, Iran is now faced with a litany of excuses and outright distractions, including the farcical claim that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not represent the entire political establishment," Tehran's diplomatic chief added.

Israel has closed the Allenby crossing point between the West Bank and Jordan until further notice, following yesterday's attack in which two Israeli soldiers were killed. The perpetrator of the attack was a Jordanian driving a truck carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. According to the Israeli airport authority, the Jordan River Crossing is also closed, while the Israeli-Jordanian crossing near Eilat is only open for workers and the Taba crossing with Egypt is normally operational.

At least four Palestinians, including two children, have been killed and several injured in attacks by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip since dawn today, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, citing medical sources. Two children were killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a tent of displaced families west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. In the central Strip, one man was killed and others were injured when Israeli planes bombed near the Old Mosque in Deir al-Balah. Another civilian was killed in a drone attack west of the Nuseirat camp.

The Taliban government has removed books written by women from the university teaching system in Afghanistan as part of a new ban that has also banned the teaching of human rights and sexual harassment. This was reported by the BBC on its website. Some 140 books written by women, including titles such as 'Safety in Chemical Laboratories', are among the 680 books considered 'worrying' because of 'anti-Sharia and Taliban policies'. Universities have also been told that 18 subjects are no longer allowed to be taught, with one Taliban official claiming that they were 'in conflict with the principles of Sharia and the politics of the system'. The decree is the latest in a series of restrictions introduced by the Taliban since they returned to power four years ago. Just this week, fibre optics were banned in at least 10 provinces by order of the Taliban's supreme leader, in a move that officials said was aimed at preventing immorality. Although the regulations have had an impact on many aspects of life, women and girls have been particularly hard hit: they are banned from accessing education beyond sixth grade, with one of their last higher education courses discontinued at the end of 2024, when midwifery courses were quietly shut down, the BBC recalls. Now university subjects on women are also being targeted: six of the 18 banned are specifically about women, including 'Gender and Development', 'The Role of Women in Communication' and 'Women's Sociology'. The Taliban government claimed to respect women's rights in accordance with its interpretation of Afghan culture and Islamic law.

US President Donald Trump said he is working to re-establish the US presence at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. This comes four years after the chaotic US withdrawal from the country left the base in the hands of the Taliban. Trump floated the idea during a press conference on Thursday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the end of a state visit to the UK. The Republican president linked the idea to the need for the US to counter its main rival, China, stating that the base is close to 'the place where China produces its nuclear weapons'. The Trump administration has not stated whether any plans have been made to take back the base, which has been crucial in the US's longest war.

Iran has decided at the last minute to withdraw a resolution banning attacks on nuclear facilities, which was tabled together with China, Russia and other countries for a vote before the annual meeting of members of the UN nuclear watchdog. This was reported by international media, citing Western diplomatic sources. According to these sources, the US lobbied hard behind the scenes to prevent the adoption of the resolution: Washington allegedly raised the possibility of reducing funding to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if the resolution was adopted and if the body moved to restrict Israel's rights within the agency. The withdrawal of the resolution comes as US allies have begun the process of reimposing UN sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme. The UN Security Council will vote on this today.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said he will meet with Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israeli PM's visit to New York for the UN General Assembly. This was reported by the Jewish state media. During a press conference on the security of the UN event starting next week, the mayor was asked if the New York police are "preparing arrest warrants" for foreign heads of state. "I'm going to meet several of them, and I'm looking forward to meeting Netanyahu as well when he arrives in the city: he'll be welcomed like the other dignitaries," Adams said, pointing out that "there's something called diplomatic immunity." For his part, mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani said that if elected, he would have Netanyahu arrested on the basis of the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against him, although the mayor of New York does not have the authority to do so since the ICC has no jurisdiction in the US and federal law prevents US entities from cooperating with the ICC.

A former member of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) security forces in Gaza, 50-year-old Hossam al-Astal, claims to have formed a group operating against Hamas in Khan Yunis and urges Palestinians in the area to seek refuge with him. This was reported by the Israeli media. Astal states that his group will welcome "anyone living under Hamas oppression" and that there is enough food, water and shelter for everyone. "In the coming days, we will welcome another 300-400 people," he said, adding that his group conducts security checks to ensure that those who join have no ties to the Islamist movement. Astal explains that there is 'coordination' between his group and the Jewish state and that they will soon 'rely on Israel for electricity and water'. Astal says the group is equipped with weapons to defend itself and has received funding from several sources including the US, Europe and unspecified Arab states. "People here do not want Hamas, they want peace with Israel," according to Astal.