live from our studio in singapore, this is bbc news it s newsday. hello and welcome to the programme. president biden has arrived in belfast for a four day trip to mark the 25th anniversary of the historic good friday agreement. the landmark deal largely brought to an end the 30 year conflict in northern ireland known as the troubles. president biden says he looks forward to reiterating america s commitment to preserving the peace. my colleague emma vardy has more. air force i arrives at belfast international and northern ireland s first presidential visit in ten years is under way. time for a short hello with rishi sunak on the tarmac before the president was whisked away for the night. a ring of steel is in place in belfast city centre in what is one of the biggest security operations here of recent years. we ve been planning for this for a number of weeks. we ve prepared for all the various contingencies. our style and tone that we ll be delivering around this policing o
the new images come as tens of thousands of palestinians are streaming into rafah city, near the gaza strip s southern border with egypt, trying to escape intense fighting elsewhere. the head of humanitarian affairs for the united nations says there is no longer any humanitarian operation worthy of that name in the south of gaza. from jerusalem, here s our international editor, jeremy bowen. a warning you may find some of the images upsetting. video emerged this afternoon off palestinian men taken for interrogation. bbc staff recognised the town in northern gaza and we have geo located the video there, too. palestinian diplomats said these were savage images evoking humanity s darkest times. the israeli army said only that suspects were being interrogated. posts on social media said the men had been sheltering with their families at a un school and that others were killed during the israeli raid. in this photo the men had been moved to another location, which we have not been
we believe we re closer than we ve ever been so we re hopeful, but there is still work to be done and nothing is done until it s all done, so we re going to keep working on this. our security correspondent frank gardner has more details on the process of reaching an agreement. is a deal to release the hostages getting close? well, it certainly sounds like it but we have been here before. and this is incredibly tough for the families, the relatives, who been marched up this hill before and marched down again with enormous disappointment, so it s not done until it s done. but i have managed to speak to some of the parties involved in this negotiation, indirectly, and they are more optimistic than they have been before, that in the coming days there could well be a release of dozens of israeli hostages in a single batch followed by further batches and in return there would be pauses in the fighting of a few hours for each day for a number of days, 3 4, five days, something like
thousands of lives at risk through, what it called, the direct and repeated targeting of the hospital. the israel defense forces have not commented specifically on any operation involving the indonesian hospital, but says it continues to target what it calls terrorists and terrorist infrastructure . also the israeli military has released video, which it says supports its claim that hamas was using gaza s biggest hospital al shifa. it released cctv images, which it says show two hostages being taken by hamas into al shifa, after they were abducted from southern israel on the 7th of october. one is injured and wheeled in on a trolley. the bbc has not been able to verify the video. the idf also released video which it says shows a 55 metre long tunnel, beneath the hospital complex. hamas which is designated a terrorist organisation by many western governments has denied using al shifa as a base. 31 surviving premature babies were evacuated from al shifa, in a joint op
biden are important and they are powerful, potentially powerful, so i think that northern ireland, not many countries in the world have been visited by the president, is only northern ireland yesterday, in the american present s diary that is quite a lot of time, to carve that time out of his time to go to northern ireland to try to be helpful in that he will be trying to knock heads together or twist arms and persuade them to go back into the assembly and reform the executive, but i think will be sending signals particularly about the economic dividend that can flow from the windsor framework being implemented and northern ireland taking advantage. look, his irish was ireland taking advantage. look, his irish was obviously - ireland taking advantage. look, his irish was obviously a - ireland taking advantage. look, his irish was obviously a big - his irish was obviously a big part of his identity and obviously a big part of this visit, how important a fact did you think this would b