Headline
Israel-Hamas: US, UK, India Evacuate Citizens, Deaths Hit 2,700

…12 UN workers, 13 French Citizens killed
The United States, the United Kingdom, India and France are working to evacuate their citizens from Israel following the attacks by Hamas.
CNN reports that India’s charter flight scheduled to land in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening will collect approximately 230 Indian nationals. This was disclosed by a Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, Arindam Bagchi, at a news conference on Thursday. The flight will “likely” return to India on Friday morning.
Nepal’s foreign ministry has so far evacuated 253 Nepali students who were in Israel, saying on X, formerly Twitter, that a flight carrying the students took off from Tel Aviv on Thursday.
Ten Nepali agriculture students were killed when Hamas attacked a kibbutz in southern Israel, Nepal’s Ambassador to Israel Kanta Rizal told CNN. Three students were injured in the attack and are recovering in a hospital, while one student remains missing, the ambassador added.
A plane carrying 110 Colombian nationals has also left Tel Aviv, according to the country’s foreign ministry on Thursday.
READ ALSO: Israel-Hamas War: US Secretary Of State Blinken Arrives In Jordan
12 UN workers killed
At least 12 people working with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency have been killed in Gaza since Saturday, a spokesperson for the UN’s secretary-general said on Thursday, as the humanitarian crisis there deepens.
CNN reports that all 12 of the UN workers killed were Palestinians, according to the spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, who disclosed this while speaking to reporters in New York on Thursday.
Hundreds of thousands have been displaced in Gaza following the war. Dujarric said mass displacement continues to rise across the Gaza Strip as Israel pounds the territory with airstrikes, climbing 30 per cent over the last 24 hours to reach more than 338,000. Of that figure, two-thirds are taking shelter in 92 schools run by the UNRWA.
Death toll hits 2, 700
According to Al Jazeera, the death toll in Gaza now stands at 1,417 people, while the number of people killed in Israel has reached 1,300.
Also, the Israeli army has bombarded the Gaza Strip with approximately 6,000 bombs containing 4,000 tonnes of explosives since Saturday’s Hamas attack, according to Al Jazeera.
READ ALSO: Israeli Airstrikes Kill 558 People In Gaza
Israel has said there would be no humanitarian exceptions to its siege of the Gaza Strip until Hamas frees all the hostages captured on Saturday.
Israeli minister had said there will be no electricity, fuel or humanitarian aid into Gaza until Hamas releases all captives taken in an unprecedented attack.
Officials in Gaza stated that the health system’s collapse has “truly begun” amid Israel’s heavy bombardment and “complete blockade”.
Meanwhile, the White House in the United States said Thursday it was working to organise charter flights to help US citizens leave Israel as the country reels from the massive attack by Hamas.
The number of Americans who have died after the Hamas terror attack in Israel now stands at 27, according to the White House.
READ ALSO: Israeli Forces Kill Two Palestinians In West Bank Raid
Meanwhile, 14 Americans are missing, said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on Thursday during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington.
The US State Department had noted that the known death toll of US citizens in the violence had risen to “at least 22.”
“Beginning tomorrow (today), the United States government will arrange charter flights to provide transportation from Israel to sites in Europe,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby.
According to France 24, Kirby added that officials were “still working through some of the details”.
UK evacuates nationals
The United Kingdom said it was set to fly British nationals out of Israel, with the first flight set to leave Tel Aviv later on Thursday, according to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
The UK government “will facilitate commercial flights to the UK to help British nationals wanting to leave Israel following the Hamas attack, the Foreign Secretary has announced,” the FCDO said in a news release according to CNN.
READ ALSO: Israel-Gaza War: Death Toll Rises Above 1,000 As Fighting Intensifies
Vulnerable British nationals “will be prioritised for these flights,” the FCDO added, advising that eligible people wait to be contacted and not make their way to the airport unless they are called.
A Rapid Deployment Team has also been sent to Israel to bolster the efforts of British consular officials, the FCDO said.
13 French citizens killed
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday vowed that France would do everything to ensure the release of the dozens of hostages held by Palestinian militant group Hamas after its attack on Israel.
“I want to say that we will do everything to ensure that these hostages, whatever their nationality, are released,” he said in an address to the nation, adding that France would work to this end both with “our partners” and the Israeli authorities, AFP reported.
The French president said that at least 13 French citizens were confirmed to have been killed in the attack by Hamas but 17 more “children and adults” were missing and “without doubt, some of them are held, hostage”.
“France will never abandon its children,” he said. Around 150 people are believed to be held hostage by Hamas.
Headline
UK Police Hunt Asylum Seeker Mistakenly Freed For Sex Offence

UK police were still hunting Saturday for an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender whose crimes sparked a wave of anti-immigration protests and who was accidentally released from prison.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by Friday’s “totally unacceptable” error that saw 38-year-old Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.
“This man must be caught and deported for his crimes,” the UK leader added.
Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service mistake occurred.
READ ALSO:UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt
Kebatu’s high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.
Justice Secretary David Lammy said late Friday night that Kebatu was “at large in London” after he was seen boarding a train to the capital in Chelmsford, eastern England.
Essex Police, which is leading the search with the help of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Saturday that “inquiries are continuing at pace this morning to locate and arrest” him.
“Officers worked throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage,” the force added, noting “it is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people”.
READ ALSO:UK Cuts Post-study Work Period For Foreign Students
The Telegraph reported he was wrongly categorised as a prisoner due to be released on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.
The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told Sky News that “the justice system has let us down”.
Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.
He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.
At the time, Kebatu was staying at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.
Headline
UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”
Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.
In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.
READ ALSO:Badenoch Unveils Strict UK Immigration Plan, Targets 150,000 Yearly Deportations
“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.
Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.
NDLEA intercepts drugs hidden in snails, others meant for UK, US, DRC
Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.
READ ALSO:Badenoch Slams UK’s Palestine Recognition Decision As ‘Absolutely Disastrous’
“Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”
In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.
“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”
Headline
King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.
The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.
It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.
The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.
READ ALSO:King Charles III To Visit Vatican Next Week
The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.
Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.
Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.
Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.
READ ALSO:King Charles To Knight David Beckham For Football, Charity Work
It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.
– Schism –
The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.
In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.
The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.
The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.
READ ALSO:King Charles III To Visit Vatican Next Week
This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.
Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.
Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.
– Royal Confrater –
Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.
READ ALSO:Police Bust Child Trafficking Syndicate In Rivers, Rescue Babies
The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.
Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.
The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.
The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.
It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.
AFP
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