The UK government has announced it intends to extend the deadline for calling a fresh election in Northern Ireland and cut the pay of Stormont Assembly members.
Making a statement in the House of Commons, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said he will introduce legislation to “provide a short straightforward extension to the period for executive formation”.
The deadline for the Northern Irelandparties to form a fresh power sharing executive ran out on 28 October.
The current law stated that Mr Heaton-Harris was obliged to call a fresh election within 12 weeks of the deadline passing – which would be 19 January.
Mr Heaton-Harris told MPs he was now extending the deadline for parties to form an executive by six weeks to December 8, with the option of a further six-week extension.
The 12-week clock for calling an election will now come into effect either on 8 December – meaning an election would have to be held by March – or six weeks later on 19 January, meaning a poll would need to be held by April at the latest.
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The Northern Ireland secretary did not say how much he is proposing to reduce MLA pay by while Stormont remains in deadlock.
The moves give parties in Northern Ireland more time to break the stalemate at Stormont.
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The proposals will require legislation to be laid and passed at Westminster to be enacted.
“The one thing that everyone agrees on is that we must try and find a way through this current impasse – where I have a legal duty to call an election that few want and all say will change nothing,” Mr Heaton-Harris told MPs.
“Thus, I will be introducing legislation to provide a short, straightforward extension to the period for Executive formation – extending the current period by six weeks to 8 December, with the potential of a further six week extension to 19 January if necessary.
“This aims to create the time and space needed for talks between the UK and EU to develop and for the Northern Ireland parties to work together to restore the devolved institutions as soon as possible.”
He continued: “People across Northern Ireland are frustrated that MLAs continue to draw a full salary whilst not performing all of the duties they were elected to do.
“I will thus be asking for the House’s support to enable me to reduce MLAs’ salaries appropriately.”
Mr Heaton-Harris also confirmed he will give extra powers to Stormont civil servants to enable them to run the region’s public services as the impasse continues.
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DUP on why NI election won’t work
A Democratic Unionist Party boycott of the devolved institutions, in protest at Brexit’s Northern Ireland Protocol(NIP), has prevented an administration being formed since the May election earlier this year.
The protocol was aimed at avoiding a hard border with Ireland but has created economic barriers on the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, causing resentment and anger among many unionists and loyalists.
The DUP has refused to return to Stormont until decisive action is taken over the treaty.
DUP MLA Edwin Poots said the UK government must recognise that until the Protocol is replaced with arrangements that unionists can support there will be no basis to restore devolution in Northern Ireland.
“Our opposition to the Protocol is not dependent on salaries. The sooner the government deals with the Protocol, the sooner Stormont can be restored,” he said.
“It is a matter for the secretary of state if he wishes to call an election and what legislation he wishes to introduce. We are ready to renew and strengthen our mandate. Elections are the bedrock of democracy and unlike others we will readily take our case to the electorate.”
While in the Commons, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson told Mr Heaton-Harris that while courage, understanding, and compromise are “good words”, what is needed is “a solution that sees the institutions restored on the basis that Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom”.
Ireland’s Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney welcomed the decision saying it allows further space for progress in the EU-UK talks.
“I urge the UK authorities to make use of this renewed opportunity to engage positively, and with real urgency, in the knowledge that the European Commission has listened carefully to the concerns of people across Northern Ireland, including and especially unionists,” he said in a statement.
But Sinn Fein vice-president Michelle O’Neill said the uncertainty over an election was not good enough.
“What we now have are new deadlines, multiple deadlines, in which he may or may not call an election,” she told reporters at Stormont.
“So this is not a good enough space for people to be in and I think the fundamental question today has to be around what’s next?
“What do the British government intend to do to find an agreed way forward on the protocol?”
Ms O’Neill also questioned why Mr Heaton-Harris had not targeted the pay cut at DUP MLAs who were refusing to engage with the devolved institutions.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood welcomed the move to cut MLA pay, saying the DUP “have no justifiable reason for hanging about while people’s homes get colder and their cupboards get emptier”.
Alliance Party leader Naomi Long welcomed “clarity” from the Northern Ireland secretary, but added: “However, the overall picture has not changed. As long as any one party can take the institutions hostage, they will.
“Therefore we need reform of the Assembly and executive to stop that happening, or else we could easily be back in this same situation again in a matter of months.”
The UK government has vowed to secure changes to the agreement, either by way of a negotiated compromise with the EU or through proposed domestic legislation which would enable ministers to scrap the arrangements without the approval of Brussels.
Opponents have likened the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill to “placing a gun on the table” at talks with the EU aimed at finding a solution and argues it breaks international law as well as risking a trade war.
Footage has emerged of the moment 15 aid workers were killed in Gaza last month – showing their ambulances and fire insignia were clearly visible when Israeli troops are believed to have opened fire on them.
The bodies of 15 aid workers – eight medics working for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), six civil defence members, and one United Nations employee – were found in a “mass grave” after the incident, according to the head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Jonathan Whittall.
The Israeli military said it is investigating – claiming before the video came to light that its initial inquiry found its troops opened fire on vehicles without headlights or emergency signals, which therefore looked “suspicious”. It also says there was an evacuation order in place in the area at the time of the incident.
But video footage obtained by the PRCS – and verified by Sky News – shows ambulances and a fire vehicle clearly marked with flashing red lights.
Image: Vehicles are seen with red flashing lights in the footage
Sky News has used aftermath video and satellite imagery to verify the location and timing of the footage.
It was filmed on 23 March north of Rafah. It shows a convoy of marked ambulances and a fire-fighting vehicle travelling south along a road towards central Rafah. All of the vehicles visible in the convoy have their flashing lights on.
It was filmed early in the morning, with a satellite image seen by Sky News taken at 9.48am local time on the same day showing a group of vehicles bunched together off the road.
The PRCS first posted about losing contact with its crews just before 7am local time.
Satellite imagery shows the area on 26 March, three days later. Tyre tracks are visible, as are groundworks likely created by military vehicles.
Image: Pic: Planet Labs PBC
The footage is first filmed from inside a moving vehicle, through the windscreen a convoy of vehicles is visible – including ambulances and a fire truck with flashing emergency signal lights.
When the convoy stops, a vehicle is seen having veered off the road to the left-hand side.
The vehicle where the video is being filmed from stops and the aid workers get out. Intense gunfire then breaks out and continues for around five minutes.
The paramedic filming the video is heard saying in Arabic that there are Israelis present – and reciting a declaration of faith used before someone dies.
Hebrew voices are also heard in the background but it is not clear what they are saying.
Image: The footage was filmed from a moving vehicle
Israel conducting ‘thorough examination’
In a fresh statement on Saturday, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said the incident is “under thorough examination”.
“All claims, including the documentation circulating about the incident, will be thoroughly and deeply examined to understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation,” it added.
In its statement on Saturday, the PCRS said the clip was “found on the phone of martyred EMT Rif’at Radwan, after his body was recovered” and that it “clearly shows that the ambulances and fire trucks they were using were visibly marked, with flashing emergency lights on at the time they were attacked”.
“This video unequivocally refutes the occupation’s claims that Israeli forces did not randomly target ambulances, and that some vehicles had approached ‘suspiciously without lights or emergency markings’,” it added.
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Speaking at the United Nations on Friday, PRCS president Dr Younis Al Khatib said the organisation has “asked for an independent investigation”.
He added: “Something I can release, I heard the voice of one of those kids. I heard the voice of one of those team members who was killed and his phone was found with his body and he recorded the whole event.
“His last words before being shot, ‘Forgive me, mom. I just wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives’.”
Image: Pic: Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS)
Dylan Winder, permanent observer of the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) said it is “outraged at the deaths of eight medics from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society killed on duty in Gaza“.
“They were humanitarians. They wore emblems that should have been protected. Their ambulances were clearly marked, and they should have returned to their families. They did not,” he said.
“Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules. These rules of international humanitarian law could not be clearer: civilians must be protected, humanitarians must be protected, health services must be protected.”
In a statement issued before the footage of the incident emerged, the IDF said it condemned “the repeated use of civilian infrastructure by the terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip, including the use of medical facilities and ambulances for terrorist purposes”.
It claimed that several members of the militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were killed in the incident.
It did not comment directly on the deaths of the Red Crescent workers but later told the Reuters news agency it had allowed the bodies to be recovered from the area, which it described as an active combat zone.
Image: Fifteen people died in the incident on 23 March
Bodies found in ‘mass grave’
The bodies of the missing aid workers were found in sand in the south of the Gaza Strip in what Mr Whittall, called a “mass grave”, marked with the emergency light from a crushed ambulance.
He posted pictures and video of Red Crescent teams digging in the sand for the bodies and workers laying them out on the ground, covered in plastic sheets.
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Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), said that the bodies had been “discarded in shallow graves” in what he called “a profound violation of human dignity”.
According to the UN, at least 1,060 healthcare workers have been killed in the 18 months since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on 7 October 2023.
The UN is reducing its international staff in Gaza by a third because of safety concerns.
Palestinian health authorities say more than 50,000 people have been killed since Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October assault, when Hamas militants crossed the border into southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 people, and taking some 250 hostage.
Gaza’s health ministry records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Gaza’s health ministry has removed 1,852 people from its official list of war fatalities since October, after finding that some had died of natural causes or were alive but had been imprisoned.
The list of deaths currently stands at 50,609 following the removals. Gaza’s health ministry records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Almost all of the names removed (97%) had initially been submitted through an online form which allows families to record the deaths of loved ones where the body is missing.
The head of the statistics team at Gaza’s health ministry, Zaher Al Wahidi, told Sky News that names submitted via the form had been removed as a precautionary measure pending a judicial investigation into each one.
“We realised that a lot of people [submitted via the form] died a natural death,” Mr Wahidi said. “Maybe they were near an explosion and they had a heart attack, or [living in destroyed] houses caused them pneumonia or hypothermia. All these cases we don’t [attribute to] the war.”
Others submitted via the form were found to be imprisoned or to be missing with insufficient evidence that they had died.
Some families submitting false claims, Mr Wahidi said, may have been motivated by the promise of government financial assistance.
It is the largest removal of names from the list since the war began, and comes after 1,441 names were removed between August and October – 54% of them originating in hospital morgue records rather than the online form.
Mr Wahidi says his team audited the hospital data after receiving complaints from people who had ended up on the list despite being alive.
They found that hospital clerks, when operating without access to the central population registry and lacking full names or dates of birth for the dead, had marked the wrong people as dead in their records.
In total, 8% of people who were listed as dead in August have since been removed from the official death toll. Many of those may later be added back in, as the judicial investigations proceed.
‘It doesn’t look like manipulation’
Gabriel Epstein, a research assistant at US thinktank The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said there’s no reason to think the errors are the result of deliberate manipulation intended to inflate the share of women and children among the dead.
“If 90% of the removed entries were men aged 18-40, that would look like manipulation,” he said. “But it doesn’t look like that.”
Of those entries removed since the start of the war and whose demographic information was recorded, 41% are men aged 18 to 60, while 59% are women, children and elderly people.
By comparison, 44% of remaining deaths are working-age men. This means that the removals have had the effect of slightly reducing the share of women and children in the official list.
Names were previously added to the list without verification
Until October, Mr Wahidi said, names submitted via the online form had been added to the official list of registered deaths before undergoing a judicial confirmation process.
The publication of unverified deaths submitted via the form had previously led to issues with the data, with 1,295 deaths submitted via the form being removed from the list prior to October. This included 474 people who were later added back again.
Sky News previously understood that names from the form were only published after undergoing judicial confirmation. However, Mr Wahidi says this practice only began in October.
“This does cause me to downgrade the quality of the earlier lists, definitely below where I thought they were,” said Professor Michael Spagat, chair of Every Casualty Counts, an independent civilian casualty monitoring organisation.
A Ministry of Health document from July 2024 confirms that names submitted through the online form were, at the time, included in the official fatality list before being verified.
These names “are initially included in the final count of martyrs, but verification procedures are undertaken afterward”, the document says.
“They basically said that they were posting these things provisionally pending investigation,” said Prof Spagat.
“There may have been literally zero people, including us, who actually absorbed this message, but they weren’t hiding it either.”
More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed in the 7 October attack and ensuing war.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
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