Militants have continued to fire rockets into israel, towards tel aviv and other areas in the south. The World Health Organization has condemned israels evacuation order; it says forcing Hospital Patients to relocate would be a Death Sentence. President biden has spoken with the israeli Prime Minister, benjamin netanyahu, and urged him to provide safety for civilians amid the bombardment. Diplomatic efforts to prevent the violence from spreading have been stepped up, with mr biden s secretary of state, antony blinken, visiting cairo. Hes expected to press egyptian officials to restart talks on getting aid into gaza through the Border Crossing. The us is sending a second Aircraft Carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean near israel. The Uss Eisenhower will lead a group of ships aimed at deterring further attacks against israel in particularfrom iran or the lebanese militant group, hezbollah. We start the hour with this report from our middle east correspondent, yolande knell. Sirens wail. R
military operation is going to take place. here said not only that this invasion take place. here said not only that this invasion is take place. here said not only that this invasion is going - that this invasion is going ahead but also he hinted at maximalist aims. you promised he would demilitarise ukraine. the hearing reports there are shelling in cities near done verse and explosions further afield. we can assume this is a large scale invasion that the biden administration has been warning about for some weeks. when you see large girl is talking about the donbas region and you think he could go wider than that? than that? one of the things he said in his than that? one of the things he said in his speech, said in his speech, demilitarise ukraine sounds larger. much he alluded to a nato expansion to preventing ukraine from joining nato. a lot of things that he could not achieve simply in the donbas which i think does imply, and we re going to find out very shortly, that he
here? well, there s no evidence that putin has backed away from his maximalist aims. which means he wants to dominate ukraine. and the talk from the russian military that they were going to change their operations and not focus on kyiv. doesn t have to be true, so if putin said i m sending lavrov to turkey to meet with ukrainian counterpart to negotiate peace, that would be significant, that would be interesting, but we re not seeing that. right. the president of ukraine, by the end of today, he will have addressed 17 international parliaments and three multilateral institutions. the european council, g7, nato all to try to get more help against russia s invasion. i mean, i saw that this morning and i thought, what more can this man do? hold on, go ahead, ambassador. there s actually a group of