A NATO nuclear exercise with warplanes that can drop atomic bombs will take place from next week over the United Kingdom, the North Sea and Belgium, the alliance has said.
The annual training – called Steadfast Noon – is going ahead despite escalating tensions with Russia over fears President Vladimir Putin might consider a real nuclear strike in Ukraine.
Unusually, NATO chose to highlight well in advance the fact the exercise was coming up.
This appears to have been in a bid to ensure transparency and reduce the risk of any misunderstanding about the top secret and highly sensitive exercise.
Image: A B-52 bomber assigned to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota – where some aircraft will fly from for the training exercise. Pic: AP
Even the name, Steadfast Noon, was only formally declassified three or four years ago.
Air forces from some 14 countries are set to take part, with up to 60 aircraft operating over northwestern Europe, the alliance said on Friday.
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They will include fighter jets from allied nations, such as Belgium and Germany, that can carry B61 bombs provided by the United States as well as US B52 bombers.
No live weapons will be used.
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The jets will be escorted by other warplanes along with refuelling aircraft and spy planes.
The aim is to test the ability of allies to conduct nuclear strikes – the bedrock of NATO deterrence policy.
“Training flights will take place over Belgium… as well as over the North Sea and the United Kingdom,” NATO said in a statement.
Image: A B-52H Stratofortress from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota flying over an oil tanker. Pic: AP
Training helps ensure nuclear deterrent is ‘safe, secure and effective’
The B-52 long-range bombers will fly from Minot Air Base in North Dakota.
Hosted this year by Belgium, the training will run from Monday until 30 October.
Oana Lungescu, the alliance spokesperson, said: “This exercise helps ensure that the alliance’s nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and effective.”
A different NATO country hosts the exercise each year. Last year it was Italy’s turn.
Everything related to the alliance’s nuclear policy, posture and activity is normally top secret.
Allies try to be incredibly careful about any comments on nuclear weapons because even that could be seen as escalatory.
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What is a tactical nuclear weapon?
Similarly, NATO does not spell out when it might use nuclear weapons, other than to say such circumstances would be “extremely remote”.
Drawing red lines could undermine the alliance’s ability to deter threats so it prefers to be deliberately ambiguous.
But France’s president appeared to break with this convention on Wednesday.
In a television interview, Emmanuel Macron said his country would not retaliate with a nuclear strike should Russia’s Vladimir Putin launch a nuclear weapon in Ukraine or in the region.
Axing training event would have sent ‘very wrong signal’
Russia has used the threat of a nuclear strike in Ukraine as part of its efforts to deter the West from supporting the Ukrainian military.
The Ukraine crisis appears to have prompted the alliance to be increasingly public about its annual nuclear exercise.
Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, said earlier in the week it would send a “very wrong signal” to cancel the long-planned event.
Ben Wallace, the British defence secretary, echoed this view and noted that Russia’s nuclear forces are due to conduct their annual training exercise at around the same time.
“I think that is the key. What we don’t want is to do things out of routine,” he said on Thursday, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels.
Only three of NATO’s 30 allies have nuclear weapons – the US, the UK and France.
But France plays no direct role in NATO’s nuclear deterrence and is not part of the alliance’s nuclear planning group, which oversees all allied nuclear matters.
A large-scale Russian attack through the night into Sunday injured at least 11 in Kyiv and killed three people in towns surrounding the capital.
There were attacks elsewhere as well, including drone strikes in Mykolaiv, where a residential building was hit.
Image: An apartment building destroyed after a Russian attack in Mykolaiv. Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
‘Massive’ attack
In Kyiv, the city’s administration warned “the night will be difficult”, as people were urged to remain in shelters.
The city’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko described it as a “massive” attack.
He said: “Explosions in the city. Air defence forces are working. The capital is under attack by enemy UAVs. Do not neglect your safety! Stay in shelters!”
It came after at least 15 people were injured in attacks the night prior.
Russia claimed it also faced a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday, and that it intercepted and destroyed around 100 of them near Moscow and across Russia’s central and southern regions.
Image: A municipality worker cleans up after a Russian drone strike on Kyiv. Pic: Reuters
Russia ‘dragging out the war’
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued a prisoner exchange, marking a rare moment of cooperation in the war.
Amid the most recent attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his calls for sanctions on Russia.
Russia “fills each day with horror and murder” and is “simply dragging out the war”, he said.
Image: A resident looks at an apartment building that was damaged in a Russian drone strike. Pic: Reuters
“All of this demands a response – a strong response from the United States, from Europe, and from everyone in the world who wants this war to end,” Mr Zelenskyy added.
Every day “gives new grounds for sanctions against Russia”, he said, and each day without pressure proves the “war will continue”.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is ready for “any form of diplomacy that delivers real results”.
Nine of a doctor’s 10 children have been killed in an Israeli missile strike on their home in Gaza, which also left her surviving son badly injured and her husband in a critical condition.
Warning: This article contains details of child deaths
Alaa Al Najjar, a paediatrician at Al Tahrir Clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work during the attack on her home, south of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, on Friday.
Graphic footage shared by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble.
Rescuers can be seen battling fires and searching through a collapsed building, shouting out when they locate a body, before bringing the children out one by one and wrapping their remains in body bags.
In the footage, Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi Al Najjar, who is also a doctor, is put on to a stretcher and then carried to an ambulance.
The oldest of their children was only 12 years old, according to Dr Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
Image: Nine children were killed in the strike. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” he wrote in a social media post.
“In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted – Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Image: Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
British doctors describe ‘horrific’ and ‘unimaginable’ attack
Two British doctors working at Nasser Hospital described the attack as “horrific” and “unimaginable” for Dr Al Najjar.
Speaking in a video diary on Friday night, Dr Graeme Groom said his last patient of the day was Dr Al Najjar’s 11-year-old son, who was badly injured and “seemed much younger as we lifted him on to the operating table”.
Image: Hamdi Al Najjar, Dr Al Najjar’s husband who is also a doctor, was taken to hospital. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
The strike “may or may not have been aimed at his father”, Dr Groom said, adding that the man had been left “very badly injured”.
Dr Victoria Rose said the family “lived opposite a petrol station, so I don’t know whether the bomb set off some massive fire”.
Image: Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
‘No political or military connections’
Dr Groom added: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here.
“The father was a physician at Nasser Hospital. He had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
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Nineteen of Gaza’s hospitals remain operational, all of them are overwhelmed with the number of patients and a lack of supplies
He said it was “a particularly sad day”, while Dr Rose added: “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”
Sky News has approached the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began when the militant group stormed across the border into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 251 others.
Israel’s military response has flattened large areas of Gaza and killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
The head of the UN has said Israel has only authorised for Gaza what amounts to a “teaspoon” of aid after at least 60 people died in overnight airstrikes.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Friday the supplies approved so far “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required,” adding “the needs are massive and the obstacles are staggering”.
He warned that more people will die unless there is “rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access”.
Image: A woman at the site of an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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Gaza: ‘Loads of children with huge burns’
Israel says around 300 aid trucks have been allowed through since it lifted an 11-week blockade on Monday, but according to Mr Guterres, only about a third have been transported to warehouses within Gaza due to insecurity.
The IDF said 107 vehicles carrying flour, food, medical equipment and drugs were allowed through on Thursday.
Many of Gaza’s two million residents are at high risk of famine, experts have warned.
Meanwhile, at least 60 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight.
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Ten people died in the southern city of Khan Younis, and deaths were also reported in the central town of Deir al-Balah and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.
Image: A body is carried out of rubble after an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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‘Almost everyone depends on aid’ in Gaza
The latest strikes came a day after two Israeli embassy workers were killed in Washington.
The suspect, named as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, Illinois, told police he “did it for Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of fuelling antisemitism following the shootings.
Mr Netanyahu also accused Sir Keir, Mr Macron and Mr Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.
Image: Palestinians search for casualties in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
But UK government minister Luke Pollard told Sky News on Friday morning he “doesn’t recognise” Mr Netanyahu’s accusation.
Earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu said he was recalling negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, after a week of ceasefire talks failed to bring results. A working team will remain.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251 others.
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The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.