The ceasefire deal is “the last chance for Gaza”, Qatar’s prime minister has said, adding: “Failure is not an option.”

In an exclusive interview with Sky News’ Yalda Hakim, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani warned that “peace won’t happen” if there is not a Palestinian state.

He also criticised parties for the time it took to reach a deal.

Qatar has been one of the key mediators between Israel and Hamas in the more than 15 months since the renewed conflict erupted.

Mr al Thani told Sky News: “What we have reached with this deal is the last chance for Gaza. To save Gaza from this war this is our last chance.

“When we talk about peace in general, peace won’t happen without a Palestinian state at the end of the day. To address the root cause of the issue and not to just address the symptoms of the issue.”

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Asked what the consequences of the ceasefire deal collapsing would be, he said: “Failure is not an option. That’s what all of us should aspire to.

“If it fails we will not give up we will make sure it is rehashed again and the parties are adhering to that.”

Mr al Thani said Qatar’s role was as “guarantor and mediators” and that they would make sure the deal is delivered.

He talked about creating a “safety net” for any issues to be resolved before the deal “explodes”.

Qatar’s prime minister also criticised the negotiating parties for the time it took to agree a deal, saying that it was the same framework agreed upon in December 2023.

“Which is basically 13-months of a waste of negotiating the details that has no meaning and is not worth a single life that we lost in Gaza or a single life of the hostages lost because of the bombing.”

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He also touched on US president-elect Donald Trump, who he said could “create a greater impact for the region”.

Commenting on how the incoming administration has operated during negotiations, he said: “I believe if this continues to be the attitude and approach for the next four years, we can create a lot of good things for the region.”

Elaborating on the need for a Palestinian state next to an Israeli state, he said: “That’s what we are aiming for.

“And I believe this moment we count on the wisdom of the leadership of the world. To really push for a solution at the end to the day.”

An investigation has been launched into Elon Musk’s explosive Starship test flight that forced dozens of planes to divert on Thursday.

The Space X rocket blew up in space over the Bahamas about eight minutes after take-off in Texas.

Blazing debris was sent miles across the sky over the Turks and Caicos, a British Overseas Territory.

Glowing orange shards from the explosion broke the sound barrier as they plummeted through the atmosphere, sending booms thundering across parts of the islands, according to seismic ground sensor data.

“Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity,” SpaceX owner Mr Musk posted on X after the launch.

The company said in a statement that a fire developed when the second stage of the rocket separated from its booster.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said it will oversee an investigation by SpaceX into the dramatic rocket launch.

“There are no reports of public injury, and the FAA is working with SpaceX and appropriate authorities to confirm reports of public property damage on Turks and Caicos,” said the FAA.

Tracking app FlightRadar24 said its most-watched flights on Thursday evening after the “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, as SpaceX called it, were those holding or diverting over the Caribbean, trying to avoid the falling debris.

It appeared to show several planes flying circular holding patterns, including a Spirit jet heading to Puerto Rico and an Air Transat flight bound for the Dominican Republic.

A Boeing 767 transporting Amazon cargo diverted to Nassau in the Bahamas, while a JetBlue flight turned back to where it began in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The FAA often closes airspace for space missions and can create a “debris response area” to protect aircraft if a rocket has a problem outside the original closed zone.

Video on social media showed the debris from the 400ft Starship rocket streaking across the sky, with another clip showing it from the cockpit of a small plane.

Despite the rocket blowing up, Mr Musk appeared to see the bright side, posting on X: “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”

SpaceX launched the rocket from Boca Chica, south Texas, on Thursday around 4.40pm local time (10.40pm in the UK).

The flight was the seventh test for the newly-upgraded Starship, which was due to make a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch.

But the company said it lost contact about eight and half minutes into the flight, with the last data indicating an altitude of 90 miles and a velocity of 13,245mph.

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There was some success though – the booster section returned to a launchpad and was caught between two giant mechanical arms, which SpaceX describes as chopsticks.

It’s the second time SpaceX has managed this particular feat and it’s part of its effort to reuse hardware and make space travel cheaper – with getting to Mars the big aim.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket also successfully launched two moon landers earlier this week, while Jeff Bezos also had a big win early Thursday morning.

The Amazon boss’s company, Blue Origin, put its partially-reusable New Glenn rocket into orbit for the first time.

A Pakistani neuroscientist held in US custody has told Sky News she has hope she will be freed after “new evidence” emerged which may suggest her innocence.

Dr Aafia Siddiqui, 52, was once one of the most wanted women in the world for her alleged links to al Qaeda‘s leadership and was jailed for 86 years in 2010 for attempting to murder an FBI agent in Afghanistan.

Dr Siddiqui, dubbed “Lady al Qaeda” by her critics, has maintained her innocence and hopes the tide could now be turning.

“I hope I am not forgotten, and I hope that one day soon I will be released,” she exclusively told Sky News, through her lawyer.

“I am… a victim of injustice, pure and simple. Every day is torture… it is not easy.”

She added: “One day, Inshallah (God-willing), I will be released from this torment.”

Dr Siddiqui’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, is calling on outgoing US President Joe Biden to issue a pardon and has submitted a 76,500-word dossier to him.

Sky News has seen this dossier – but has not been able to independently verify all the claims relating to Dr Siddiqui.

President Biden has until Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday to consider the family’s application. So far he has issued 39 pardons and commuted 3,989 sentences.

‘A catalogue of intelligence errors’

Mr Stafford Smith claims a catalogue of intelligence errors led to her initially becoming a suspect, citing witness testimonies that were unavailable at the time of her trial.

He alleges that, while Dr Siddiqui was visiting Pakistan in 2003, she was abducted with her three children by the country’s inter-services intelligence agency and handed to the CIA, which took her to Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

‘Extraordinary rendition’

The CIA accused Dr Siddiqui of operating for al Qaeda in Afghanistan – and she was the only woman who went through its full extraordinary rendition to torture programme in the early 2000s, Mr Stafford Smith claims.

Extraordinary rendition is a process that often involves a detainee being transferred to secret detention or a third country for the purposes of interrogation.

At the time of Dr Siddiqui’s trial in 2010, the judge said: “There is no credible evidence in the record that the United States officials and/or agencies detained Dr Siddiqui” before her 2008 arrest, adding there is “no evidence in the record to substantiate these allegations or to establish them as fact”.

‘No more of a terrorist than I am’

Mr Stafford Smith says US intelligence “got the wrong end of the stick in the beginning” as agencies thought Dr Siddiqui was a nuclear physicist working on a radioactive bomb “when she really did her PhD in education”.

He says this happened as the US was “terrified of terrorists getting their hands on WMD (weapons of mass destruction)”, adding: “She’s no more of a terrorist than I am”.

Mr Stafford Smith, who has secured the release of 69 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, says Dr Siddiqui’s case is “one of the worst I have seen”.

The US Department of Justice told Sky News, concerning all allegations about Dr Siddiqui, that they “will decline to comment”.

The CIA has not yet got back to our request for comment.

‘Capable and dangerous’

CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou believed unequivocally that Dr Siddiqui had “terrorist sympathies”.

Mr Kiriakou worked for the CIA in counterterrorism until 2004 and told Sky News he “literally knew everything that the CIA was doing around the world”.

“One of the things that the CIA concentrated very heavily on in the months and years after the 9/11 attacks was the task of identifying al Qaeda’s couriers,” he said.

“We just had no clear idea how al Qaeda’s leadership was communicating.

“We had heard over the years of a woman, a female courier, Aafia Siddiqui. Many people called her Lady al Qaeda, just because we didn’t know much about her.

“Her name had popped up on many occasions.

“We would hear her name mentioned as someone who could be trusted. She was presented to us as one of the most capable and dangerous figures in that movement.”

Mr Kiriakou denies the CIA tortured Dr Siddiqui in Afghanistan while he worked for the agency, saying: “We did not torture women.”

“If Aafia Siddiqui had been captured in 2003 and had been sent to a black site, I would have known it,” he added.

“I would have briefed it to the director of the CIA. We didn’t have her.”

However, he says it was “not beneath” CIA officers “to lie in official reporting cables” and that “the CIA routinely got things wrong when it came to other high-value targets”.

‘A very bad cover-up’

Dr Siddiqui’s sister, Fowzia, says she was a “victim of the war on terror… of a very bad cover-up”.

Speaking to Sky News from her home in Karachi, Pakistan, she said Dr Siddiqui was being “victimised for what a group of fanatics did some time ago… all the innocent people who fit a certain profile have been victimised”.

Fowzia has spent almost two decades campaigning for her sister’s freedom and helped locate and raise her children, Ahmed and Mariam, after their alleged abduction in 2003.

Dr Siddiqui’s youngest son, Suleiman, was just six months old when he was last seen around this time – and the Siddiqui family fear he was killed during the alleged abduction.

Pakistan’s inter-services intelligence has been contacted for comment.

“I know she’s innocent,” says Fowzia. “If I knew there was even a glimpse of guilt there I would not have put my whole life on hold for this. She doesn’t deserve to be where she is.”