60 minutes ago Middle East crisis: Israeli strikes kill 28 Palestinians in Gaza – live updates

The strikes came a day after Pope Francis condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as ‘cruelty’Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes overnight and early this morning have killed at least 28 Palestinian people. Civil agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were killed in an airstrike on a house in Deir al-Balah – a town in central Gaza – belonging to the Abu Samra family.Bassal said that eight people, including four children, were killed in the attack on the Musa Bin Nusayr school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war. Bassal said an overnight Israeli airstrike killed three people in the southern city of Rafah, and a drone strike this morning hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people.They (Israeli forces) have been using heavy artillery and detonating explosive devices that had been planted in the areas surrounding the hospital, preventing and impeding the movement of ambulances, as well as that of people seek...

Events

67 minutes ago Magdeburg Christmas market attack: Three minute terror that left five dead

The suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi exile whose name has been reported as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, has been remanded into custody over the attack that has shaken Germany

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73 minutes ago At least 17 Palestinians killed as Israeli forces attack Gaza school and hospital

Pope Francis condemns killing of children in Gaza as ‘cruelty, not war’

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2 hours ago Watch live: Mourners lay flowers for German Christmas market attack victims as death toll rises

Watch live as mourners lay flowers for victims of the German Christmas market attack on Sunday (22 December).

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2 hours ago Magdeburg: Memorial service held in Magdeburg as police confirm four women among those killed in Christmas market attack

Social media videos show casualties lying on the ground surrounded by a heavy police presence

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2 hours ago Magdeburg Christmas market attack suspect Taleb A in court as five killed and 200 injured

Germany authorities have confirmed that four women - aged between 45 and 75 - and a nine-year-old boy were killed during Friday's horrific attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany - with the death toll expected to rise

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4 hours ago Nicole Kidman looks elegant in white as she and husband Keith Urban take their daughter Faith to church in Sydney

Nicole Kidman looked elegant as she attended church with her husband Keith Urban and their daughter Faith in Sydney on Sunday.

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4 hours ago Magdeburg Christmas Market attack: Organisers break silence after horror attack kills five

At least five people are dead and dozens more injured after a car ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany in what is being described as a deliberate attack

Events

5 hours ago We didn’t make it to the Paralympics, but we still have hope: the Gazan paracyclist

As part of the Guardian’s Gaza Voices series this year, Hazem Suleiman told of how the roads he trained on had been destroyed. Now, he’s raising money for other amputeesHazem Suleiman is a member of the Gaza Sunbirds, a paracycling team based in Gaza. A former footballer, he lost a leg as a result of being shot in protests at the Rafah border in 2018. We first spoke to him five months ago as part of our Gaza Voices series on everyday Palestinian life. At that time, Suleiman, who also photographs and documents life in Gaza, was dealing with the toll of displacement from his home in Rafah to the town of Khan Younis.He and the other Sunbirds had been training hard, hoping to represent Palestine in the 2024 Paralympics in Paris, but after the Israeli assault on Gaza following Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023, they were unable to realise this dream. They did at least achieve their goal – to compete in an international competition for the first time – in May this year: the Para-Cycling Ro...

Politics

5 hours ago ‘She should have a bit of me’: the Dutch mothers fighting for their children to carry their surname

Women are challenging the law that prevents them giving their kids both family names without father’s consentWhen 43-year-old Rebecca Lee took her birth mother’s Korean surname, it was a revelation. “I was adopted and got a Dutch name but I never felt completely Dutch,” she says. “When, a few years ago, I first went to Korea, things fell into place. You don’t just go ‘one, two, three’ and change your name, but now I feel more whole.”The entrepreneur from Groningen split from her husband and wants to give her five-year-old daughter “Lee” as part of a double-barrelled surname – but she cannot, under a Dutch law that some women, a leftwing MP and legal experts believe is unfair. Continue reading...

Politics