A crew has entered the International Space Station (ISS) to replace the astronauts who were stranded there for nine months.

A SpaceX capsule delivered four astronauts on Sunday on a mission to allow Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams – who have been on the ISS since June 2024 – to return home.

The Dragon craft, with the Crew-10 astronauts inside, docked with the orbiting laboratory at 4.04am UK time, around 29 hours after it had been launched on the top of the Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots, along with Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots, will spend the next six months at the space station.

Their mission will allow four members of Crew-9, which includes Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams, to return to Earth.

It took several minutes for Dragon to safely dock at the ISS, in what is an automated process.

But there was about 1 hour and 45 minutes of additional safety checks before the hatch could be opened.

Mr Wilmore swung open the space station’s hatch and rang the ship’s bell as the arrivals floated in one by one and were greeted with hugs and handshakes.

How they were stranded

Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams originally planned to go to space for just eight days but got stuck on the station after their Boeing Starliner spacecraft started experiencing problems.

Technical issues left them stranded, and various attempts to bring them home were unsuccessful.

The craft encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it return to Earth empty, leaving the pilots behind until now.

‘You can hardly even put it into words’

“It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive,” Ms Williams told Mission Control after the new astronauts had been welcomed aboard.

Speaking after the successful docking, Ms McClain added: “Crew-10 has had a great journey up here and I cannot tell you the immense joy of our crew when we looked out the window and we saw the space station for the first time.

“That is such an amazing journey. You can hardly even put it into words.”

The journey back to Earth

The four newcomers will spend the next few days learning the station’s ins and outs from Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams.

Then the two of them will strap into their own capsule later in the week, one that has been up there since last year, to close out the unexpected extended mission.

The pair’s ride back arrived in late September with a downsized crew of two and two empty seats reserved for the leg back.

But more delays emerged when their replacements’ brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs.

An older capsule took its place, pushing up their return by a couple of weeks to mid-March.

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Weather permitting, the SpaceX capsule carrying them and two other astronauts will undock no earlier than Wednesday and splash down off Florida’s coast.

At least 51 people are reported to have died in a fire at a nightclub in North Macedonia.

The blaze broke out while a local pop band was performing at around 2.35am on Sunday in the town of Kocani – allegedly after fireworks were set off inside the venue, interior minister Panche Toshkovski told a news conference.

Although the public prosecutor’s office said the “number of victims and injured in the fire is being determined” – 100 people are thought to have been injured, Mr Toshkovski said.

They are being treated at Kocani General Hospital, where relatives have gathered to await more information, newspaper Nova Makedonija said.

The country’s prime minister Hristijan Mickoski is travelling to the scene, it added.

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An Israeli airstrike in Gaza has killed at least nine Palestinians, including three local journalists, the territory’s health ministry has said.

The strike hit a car, with casualties inside and outside the vehicle, and several people were critically injured, according to officials in the Gaza Strip.

Six volunteers from the Al Khair Foundation were “deliberately targeted” and killed while on their way to deliver aid in the northern town of Beit Lahia, said the UK-based international non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Among the six were the three journalists – Mahmoud al Sarraj, Mahmoud Isleem, and Bilal Abu Matar – who were recording humanitarian relief efforts for those affected by the war in Gaza, the foundation said.

The other three victims have been named as Bilal Akeela, Mohammad al Ghafir, and Hazem Gharib.

The foundation said: “The first strike injured one team member, prompting them to move away, but a drone followed them and struck their vehicle directly with a second strike, killing them all.”

What has Israel’s military said?

In a statement, the Israeli military said it had struck two individuals who it identified as “terrorists” operating a drone that it said posed a threat to forces in Beit Lahiya.

The military later struck several other suspects who it said had collected the drone equipment and entered a vehicle.

The military did not say how it had established that the individuals it had struck were “terrorists” or provide details about the threat that the drone had posed to its troops.

Gaza official denies army’s claims

Salama Marouf, the head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, denied the Israeli army’s allegations.

“The team was made of civilians and worked in an area near a shelter on a mission sponsored by a charity. They didn’t exist in a prohibited area and didn’t pose any danger of any kind to the occupation army,” Marouf said in a statement.

Saturday’s incident underscores the fragility of the 19 January ceasefire agreement that halted large-scale fighting in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian health officials say dozens of people have been killed by Israeli fire despite the truce.

The airstrike coincided with a visit to Egypt’s capital Cairo by Hamas’s exiled Gaza chief, Khalil al Hayya, for further truce talks aimed at resolving disputes with Israel.

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The militant group has accused Israel of attempting to renege on the ceasefire agreement, putting the number of Palestinians killed since 19 January, it says, at 150.

Hamas urged mediators to compel Israel to move ahead with the implementation of the phased ceasefire deal, blaming Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the current impasse.

What next for ceasefire deal?

The temporary first phase, where Hamas released dozens of Israeli hostages in return for around 1,500 Palestinian prisoners being freed from Israeli jails, expired on 2 March.

But Israel says it wants to extend the first phase, a proposal backed by US envoy Steve Witkoff.

Hamas says it will only resume freeing hostages under the second phase.

Israel has rejected opening the second phase of talks, which would require it to negotiate over a permanent end to the war, which is Hamas’s main demand.

The war began when Hamas militants carried out a cross-border raid into southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing around 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Israel responded by launching an air and ground offensive in Gaza which has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, say Gaza health officials.

The Gaza health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count but said more than half of the fatalities were women and children.