Jake Marlowe: British man missing after Hamas attack on music festival in Israel, says embassy
A British man is missing after Hamas attacked a music festival in Israel, the country’s embassy in the UK has told Sky News.
Jake Marlowe, 26, has not been heard from since Saturday morning, the embassy said.
It said he was “missing near Gaza” after the attack on the festival in southern Israel.
Read more: Women and children among hostages, says Israel – follow live
Jake Marlowe’s friends issued an appeal for help finding him: Pic: Facebook
It is understood that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is in contact with and assisting the families of several people in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Mr Marlowe’s mother told the Jewish News her son was working as part of the security team at the dance festival near Re’im – a village close to the Gaza border.
“He was doing security at this rave and called me at 4.30am to say all these rockets were flying over,” she said.
“Then, at about 5.30am, he texted to say, ‘signal very bad, everything OK, will keep you updated I promise you,’ and that he loves me.”
Israeli soldiers search the area around Re’im, near where the festival took place
She said her son lived in Ma’alot, in northern Israel, having moved to the country permanently two years ago.
Other people at the festival told Israeli media how the music was interrupted by air raid sirens, before Hamas militants opened fire.
“The music stopped and there was a rocket siren,” a woman told Israel’s N12 News.
“Suddenly, out of nowhere, they started shooting.”
Read more:
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What next for Israel and Palestine?
Another party-goer, Esther Borochov, said a car rammed her vehicle as she tried to escape.
She said she played dead until Israeli soldiers arrived: “I couldn’t move my legs,” she told Reuters news agency.
“Soldiers came and took us away to the bushes.”
Meanwhile, German media reported that German citizen Shani Louk is among those missing.
The fate of the young woman, who is reported to have been kidnapped by Hamas militants, has not been confirmed.
The woman’s mother has appealed for any information about her daughter’s whereabouts in a video posted on social media.
The mother said she could “clearly recognise” her daughter in a video being widely circulated online.
In an interview with German newspaper Bild, relatives in Germany said they hoped Ms Louk is alive and will be released.
It also emerged on Sunday that a British man serving in the Israeli army had been killed in an attack by Hamas militants.
Nathanel Young, 20, died on Saturday, the Israel Defence Forces said
Corporal Nathanel Young, 20, from London, was a soldier in the 13th Battalion, according to the Israeli Defence Forces.
He was living in a home for lone IDF soldiers in Raanana, north of Tel Aviv, according to the Jewish News.
His family said on Facebook they were “heartbroken” and that he had been killed “on the Gaza Border yesterday [Saturday].”
Soldiers and civilians kidnapped
The Israeli embassy to the US said women and children were among more than 100 soldiers and civilians kidnapped by Hamas fighters and that active hostage situations were “ongoing”.
Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, told Sky News on Sunday that her country was “doing everything to make sure all the people being kept hostage at the moment in the hands of Hamas will be released”.
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‘We woke up to a nightmare’
Ms Hotovely said Israel had woken to a “nightmare” after Hamas launched its surprise attack on Saturday.
She said 300 Israelis were “brutally, barbarically murdered in cold blood” by people who planned the most “calculated way” to invade.
Children were taken from their homes to Gaza, while people with dementia were “taken hostage”, she added.
On Sunday afternoon, Israeli media reported that 500-600 of the country’s citizens had died.
Meanwhile, an Israeli military official said “hundreds” of Hamas militants had been killed and dozens captured in retaliatory attacks.
The Palestinian health ministry said on Sunday afternoon that at least 370 people had been killed in Gaza and about 2,200 wounded.
World
Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra sacked for ethics violation after leaked phone call
Thailand’s prime minister has been sacked after a leaked phone call with a senior Cambodian politician caused outrage.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was Thailand’s youngest PM, has been dismissed from office by the country’s Constitutional Court after only a year in power.
The court found Ms Shinawatra, 39, violated ethics in a leaked June telephone call, during which she appeared to kowtow to Cambodia’s former leader Hun Sen as the bordering countries were on the verge of an armed conflict.
She also criticised a Thai army commander – a taboo move in a country where the military is extremely influential.
Fighting erupted weeks later and lasted five days. At least 35 people were killed and more than 260,000 were displaced.
Ms Shinawatra, who was new to politics when she took office in August last year, apologised over the call and said she was trying to avert a war. She was suspended in July.
Ms Shinawatra arriving at Government House in Bangkok ahead of the verdict on Friday. Pic: Reuters
She is now the fifth Thai PM from, or backed by, the billionaire Shinawatra family to be removed by the military or the judiciary in 17 years, amid a battle for power between the country’s warring elites.
The ruling thrusts Thailand into more political uncertainty at a time of public unease over stalled reforms and a stuttering economy.
Speaking after the court’s decision, the exiting PM said “all sides” in Thai politics now “have to work together to build political stability and to ensure that there won’t be another turning point again”.
The focus will now shift to who will replace Ms Shinawatra.
Her influential, billionaire father, Thaksin Shinawatra, who also once served as Thailand’s PM, is expected to be at the heart of a flurry of bargaining to keep the ruling Pheu Thai party in power.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Read more:
What happened between Thailand and Cambodia
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The leader of the main opposition People’s Party has called for the next prime minister to dissolve parliament once they are installed.
The deputy PM, Phumtham Wechayachai, and the current cabinet will act as government caretakers until a new leader is elected by parliament. There is no time limit on when that must take place.
After all those raised hopes of peace, Ukraine has been hit by the second-worst night of Russian air attacks since the war began.
So much for diplomacy, despite the Alaska summit, then the Washington DC meeting.
The Kremlin says it was aiming at military targets, but yet again, the pictures tell a very different story.
Follow latest: UK summons Putin’s ambassador
Firefighters work at the site of a burning building after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine. Pic: AP
One civilian building after another was hit, more than a dozen people were killed, and British Council and EU buildings were also damaged.
So what’s going on? Why is Vladimir Putin doing it?
Because he can.
The Russian president thinks he’s winning this war, and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he’s using diplomacy to play for time while he carries on beating down the Ukrainians’ will to win.
And at the moment, no one is stopping him
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At least 14 killed in Kyiv attack
Ukraine is hitting back, particularly at Russia‘s oil installations, more of them going up in thick black smoke, after being hit by long-range Ukrainian drones.
It is taking a heavy toll on Putin’s ‘Achilles heel’, but on its own, analysts don’t expect it will be enough to persuade him to end this war.
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British Council building hit in Kyiv
The West can wring its hands in condemnation.
But it’s divided between Europe that wants a ceasefire and much more severe sanctions, and Donald Trump, who, it seems, does not – strangely always willing to sympathise with the Russians more than Ukraine.
He’s back to blaming Ukraine for starting the war, saying earlier in the week that Kyiv should not have got into a war it had no chance of winning.
It is a grotesque perversion of history. Ukraine, of course, had no choice but to fight to defend itself when it was invaded in an act of unprovoked aggression.
Every time the US president has condemned Russia for these kinds of attacks, he has never followed through and done nothing to punish them.
Rescue workers carry an injured woman after a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine. Pic: AP
More worryingly for the Ukrainians, the Russians are getting the upper hand in the drones war, taking Iranian technology and souping it up into faster-moving drones that the Ukrainians are having increasing difficulty bringing down.
They expect as many as a thousand drones a night coming their way by the winter, and many, many more innocents to die.
Next week, Putin will join Chinese and North Korean leaders in a summit in Beijing, both supporting his war in Ukraine.
(L-R) Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. Pics: Reuters
Read more from Dominic Waghorn:
Ukrainians warn they’re in danger of losing drone arms race
We are further away from peace now than we were two weeks ago
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
A war that began as one man’s mad idea has, in three and a half years, metastasised into a titanic struggle between east and west, fought increasingly with machines in a dystopian evolution of war.
If Mr Trump is not prepared to use his power to bring this war to an end, what will another three and a half years of his presidency bring?
It is a chilling question.
World
Boy, 8, and girl, 10, killed in US Catholic school shooting named – as father brands attacker ‘a coward’
The families of two children killed in the US Catholic school shooting have said their “hearts are broken” and branded the attacker a “coward”.
Fletcher Merkel who was eight and 10-year-old Harper Moyski were killed during mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Eighteen other people were injured, including children aged between six and 15 and three adults in their 80s.
Police said Robin Westman, a male born as Robert Westman, opened fire with a rifle through the windows of the school’s church as children sat in pews.
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New details released of US school shooting
‘Our hearts are broken’
Harper’s parents, Michael Moyski and Jackie Flavin, remembered her as “a bright, joyful, and deeply loved 10-year-old whose laughter, kindness, and spirit touched everyone who knew her”.
“Our hearts are broken not only as parents, but also for Harper’s sister, who adored her big sister and is grieving an unimaginable loss. As a family, we are shattered, and words cannot capture the depth of our pain,” their statement said.
They urged leaders and communities to “take meaningful steps to address gun violence and the mental health crisis in this country.”
“Change is possible, and it is necessary – so that Harper’s story does not become yet another in a long line of tragedies,” the statement added.
The family of Fletcher Merkel said there was a ‘hole in our hearts’. Pic: Family handout/AP
‘Fletcher loved his family’
In a statement reported by Sky’s US partner network NBC News, Fletcher’s father Jesse Merkel blamed the “coward” killer for why the boy’s family can’t “hold him, talk to him, play with him, and watch him grow into the wonderful young man he was on the path to becoming”.
He said: “Fletcher loved his family, friends, fishing, cooking, and any sports that he was allowed to play.
“While the hole in our hearts and lives will never be filled, I hope that in time, our family can find healing.”
Mr Merkel also praised “the swift and heroic actions of children and adults alike from inside the church”.
“Without these people and their selfless actions, this could have been a tragedy of many magnitudes more. For these people, I am thankful,” he added.
Families and loved ones reunite at the scene after the shooting. Pic: Reuters
Mayor calls for assault weapon ban
It comes after Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey called for a statewide and federal ban on assault weapons, a day after the deadly school shooting.
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Minneapolis mayor urges assault weapons ban
“Thoughts and prayers are not going to cut it. It’s on all of us to see this through,” the mayor said at a news conference. “We need a statewide and a federal ban on assault weapons.
“We need a statewide and a federal ban on high-capacity magazines. There is no reason that someone should be able to reel off 30 shots before they even have to reload.
“We’re not talking about your father’s hunting rifle gear. We’re talking about guns that are built to pierce armour and kill people.”
Meanwhile, Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara gave an update on the investigation, saying the suspect had fired 116 rifle rounds into the church.
“It is very clear that this shooter had the intention to terrorise those innocent children,” he added, before saying the killer “fantasised” about the plans of other mass shooting attackers and wanted to “obtain notoriety”.
Read more from Sky News:
Man ‘who impersonated Michael Jackson’ was ‘unfairly dismissed’
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Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Thomas Klemond, interim CEO of Minneapolis’s main trauma hospital Hennepin Healthcare, said at an earlier news conference that the hospital was treating nine patients injured in the shooting.
One child at the hospital was in a critical condition, he added.
Children’s Minnesota Hospital also said that three children remain in its care as of Thursday morning.
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