Spaniard among six killed in Jerusalem shooting as Madrid steps up criticism of Israel – Middle East crisis live
By Guardian - Tom Ambrose / Yohannes Lowe - Mon 8 Sep 2025 15.53 BST
The Spanish government has confirmed that a Spanish citizen was among the six people murdered in the East Jerusalem attack. Sánchez has accused Netanyahu’s government of ‘exterminating defenceless people’ and killing innocent boys and girls with hunger’.
13.29
Spanish citizen killed in Jerusalem shooting
Sam Jones
The Spanish government has confirmed that a Spanish citizen was among the six people murdered in the East Jerusalem attack.
“The government wishes to express its solidarity and extend its deepest condolences to the families of the victims, especially those of the murdered Spanish citizen, and to express its hope that the injured recover as quickly as possible,” the Spanish foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Spain reiterates its commitment to peace in the Middle East and its firm condemnation of terrorism.”
The statement came as Spain and Israel are engaged in an escalating diplomatic row after Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, renewed his scathing criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, accusing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of “exterminating a defenceless people” by bombing hospitals and “killing innocent boys and girls with hunger”.
Speaking on Monday morning to announce a raft of measures designed to increase the pressure on Netanyahu to stop the military campaign, Sánchez said that while the Spanish government would always support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, it felt compelled to try to “stop a massacre”.
The Israel government responded by accusing Sánchez’s administration of deploying “wild and hateful rhetoric” and of using a “continuous anti-Israel and antisemitic attack” to distract from corruption allegations. It also announced that two Spanish ministers, including one of the country’s deputy prime ministers, would be banned from entering Israel because of their criticisms of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
The Spanish foreign ministry described the Israeli government’s words as “false and slanderous”, called the entry ban “unacceptable”, and said the country would not be “intimidated in its defence of peace, international law and human rights”.
ShareUpdated at 13.33 BST4m ago15.53 BST
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has stepped up his scathing criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Sánchez accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of “exterminating a defenceless people” by bombing hospitals and “killing innocent boys and girls with hunger”.
Spanish PM steps up scathing criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza – video23m ago15.35 BST
Spain’s foreign ministry said on Monday it summoned its ambassador in Tel Aviv for consultations, hours after Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar accused the Spanish government of “antisemitic” following its new measures against Israel-bound ships and aircraft over the war in Gaza.
In his statement, Saar also said the government used the measures to divert public attention from corruption scandals.
Updated at 15.35 BSTSupport the Guardian
Understanding what is happening in the Middle East is more important than ever.
It’s the Guardian’s job to decipher this, and with reporters sharing live updates around the clock, including from inside Gaza, we’re well placed to provide comprehensive, fact-checked reporting, to help us all make sense of the events reshaping global politics. But we can’t do it without your support.
We appreciate that not everyone can afford to pay for news right now. That’s why we choose to keep our journalism open for everyone. If this is you, please continue to read for free. But if you can, can we count on your support at this perilous time?
Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich blamed the deadly attack by two Palestinian gunmen on the outskirts of Jerusalem this morning on the Palestinian Authority, which he claimed “raises and educates its children to murder Jews”.
“The Palestinian Authority must disappear from the map, and the villages from which the attackers came should be reduced to the status of Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” he wrote in a post on X, referring to cities in Gaza that have been devastated by relentless Israeli airstrikes.
The PA is a civilian ruling authority in areas of the West Bank, where about three million Palestinian people live – as well as around half a million Israelis occupying settlements considered illegal under international law.
Smotrich is a minister who also holds a position at Israel’s defence ministry with oversight of planning issues in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He was placed under sanctions along with fellow far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir by the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in June for “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities”.
Updated at 15.00 BST1h ago14.42 BST
Actors and directors pledge not to work with Israeli film groups ‘implicated in genocide’
Anna Betts
Anna Betts is a breaking news reporter for Guardian US
Hundreds of actors, directors and other film industry professionals have signed a new pledge vowing not to work with Israeli film institutions they say are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”.
“As film-makers, actors, film industry workers, and institutions, we recognise the power of cinema to shape perceptions” the pledge reads. “In this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror.”
Signatories include film-makers Yorgos Lanthimos, Ava DuVernay, Asif Kapadia, Boots Riley and Joshua Oppenheimer; and actors Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Ayo Edebiri, Riz Ahmed, Josh O’Connor, Cynthia Nixon, Julie Christie, Ilana Glazer, Rebecca Hall, Aimee Lou Wood and Debra Winger. The pledge had 1,200 signers as of Sunday night.
The pledge, shared exclusively with the Guardian, claims to draw inspiration from the cultural boycott that contributed to the end of apartheid in South Africa.
It commits signatories not to screen films, appear at or otherwise work with what it considers complicit institutions – including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters and production companies. Examples of complicity include “whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid, and/or partnering with the government committing them”.
You can read the full story here:
Actors and directors pledge not to work with Israeli film groups ‘implicated in genocide’Read more2h ago14.03 BST
Reports of at least 40 Palestinians killed in Gaza today
At least 40 Palestinian people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn, the majority of whom in the northern part of the territory, Al Jazeera has been told by medical sources.
Updated at 14.47 BST2h ago13.40 BST
Sam Jones
Spain’s Federation of Jewish Communities expressed its “profound sorrow” over the murder of the Spanish citizen, and declared a day of mourning on Monday.
In a statement, it added: “We extend our condolences to his family, to the Jewish community of Melilla of which he was a part, and we express our solidarity with Israeli society, which is marked by terrorism.”
It pointed out that two Spanish citizens - Iván Illarramendi and Maya Villalobo - were murdered in the 7 October attacks.
Spanish citizen killed in Jerusalem shooting
Sam Jones
The Spanish government has confirmed that a Spanish citizen was among the six people murdered in the east Jerusalem attack.
“The government wishes to express its solidarity and extend its deepest condolences to the families of the victims, especially those of the murdered Spanish citizen, and to express its hope that the injured recover as quickly as possible,” the Spanish foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Spain reiterates its commitment to peace in the Middle East and its firm condemnation of terrorism.”
The statement came as Spain and Israel are engaged in an escalating diplomatic row after Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, renewed his scathing criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, accusing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of “exterminating a defenceless people” by bombing hospitals and “killing innocent boys and girls with hunger”.
Speaking on Monday morning to announce a raft of measures designed to increase the pressure on Netanyahu to stop the military campaign, Sánchez said that while the Spanish government would always support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, it felt compelled to try to “stop a massacre”.
The Israel government responded by accusing Sánchez’s administration of deploying “wild and hateful rhetoric” and of using a “continuous anti-Israel and antisemitic attack” to distract from corruption allegations. It also announced that two Spanish ministers, including one of the country’s deputy prime ministers, would be banned from entering Israel because of their criticisms of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
The Spanish foreign ministry described the Israeli government’s words as “false and slanderous”, called the entry ban “unacceptable”, and said the country would not be “intimidated in its defence of peace, international law and human rights”.
Updated at 13.33 BST3h ago13.05 BST
The United Nations human rights chief condemned Israel on Monday for the “mass killing” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and “hindering of sufficient lifesaving aid”, saying the country had a case to answer before the International Court of Justice.
Volker Turk, who heads the Office of the United Nations high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR), stopped short of describing the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide, as hundreds of UN staff had urged him to do, Reuters reported.
But in his opening address to the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Turk expressed horror at what he called “the open use of genocidal rhetoric” and “disgraceful dehumanisation” of Palestinians by senior Israeli officials.
“Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza; its infliction of indescribable suffering and wholesale destruction; its hindering of sufficient lifesaving aid and the ensuing starvation of civilians; its killing of journalists; and its commission of war crime upon war crime, are shocking the conscience of the world,” said Turk.
“Israel has a case to answer before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the evidence continues to mount,” Turk said, referring to the ICJ’s ruling in January that Israel had a legal obligation to prevent acts of genocide. Israel accused Turk of not bothering with “facts and complexities”.
Updated at 14.04 BST3h ago12.36 BST
Here are some of the latest images that are being sent to us over the newswires from Gaza:
Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza reaches 64,522, says health ministry
At least 64,522 Palestinian people have been killed and 163,096 others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
At least 65 Palestinian people were killed and 320 others injured in the last 24 hours alone, the ministry said.
Gaza’s health ministry said in a post on Telegram that over the past day it recorded six new deaths, including two children, caused by “famine and malnutrition”.
This brings the total number of Palestinian people who have died from famine and malnutrition to 393, including 140 children.
“Since the IPC declared famine in Gaza, 115 deaths have been recorded, including 25 children,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
Israel has been widely accused of using food as a political weapon and was accused of flagrantly breaking international law by collectively punishing the civilian population of Gaza by its total 11 week blockade of aid (which began in March), which was only slightly eased in response to international pressure, particularly from US senators.
Aid organisations were bringing somewhere between 500 and 600 aid trucks a day into Gaza during the ceasefire earlier this year, but now ongoing Israeli restrictions mean much less aid is being allowed into the territory and distributed.
In August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a globally recognised organisation that classifies the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition, said that an “entirely man-made” famine was taking place in Gaza’s largest city, Gaza City, and its surrounding area.
Updated at 12.08 BST4h ago11.30 BST
Six people killed in Jerusalem shooting attack, Israel's foreign minister says
Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar said six people were killed in the Jerusalem attack (not five as Israel’s ambulance service had said) after Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a crowded bus stop in the northern outskirts of the city.
Saar made the comments as he was speaking via a translator at a joint briefing with Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto in Budapest.
Saar described a “terrible terror attack”, adding: “We are in a war with radical Islamist terrorism. Europe and the international community, every country, must now make a clear choice. Are they on Israel’s side, or are they on the side of the jihadists?”
As my colleagues note in this story, hundreds of members of the security forces were deployed at the scene to search for additional attackers or explosives that could have been planted around the area.
The Israeli military said it was encircling Palestinian villages on the outskirts of the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah in response to the attack.
Hamas praised two Palestinian “resistance fighters” who it said had carried out the attack but stopped short of claiming responsibility. Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group, also praised the shooting without claiming responsibility.
12.29
France and Germany have both condemned the deadly shooting attack in Jerusalem this morning in which at least five people were killed and seven seriously injured.
“France strongly condemns the terrorist attack that has just occurred in East Jerusalem”, French President Emmanuel Macron wrote in a post on X.
“The spiral of violence must come to an end. Only a political solution will bring back peace and stability for all in the region,” he added.
Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, meanwhile, said he was “deeply shocked” by the attack in East Jerusalem, describing it as a “cowardly terror attack”.
“My thoughts are with the victims’ families. I wish those who were injured a speedy recovery,” Wadephul wrote on X.
The statement came as Spain and Israel are engaged in an escalating diplomatic row after Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, renewed his scathing criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, accusing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of “exterminating a defenceless people” by bombing hospitals and “killing innocent boys and girls with hunger”.
Speaking on Monday morning to announce a raft of measures designed to increase the pressure on Netanyahu to stop the military campaign, Sánchez said that while the Spanish government would always support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, it felt compelled to try to “stop a massacre”.
The Israel government responded by accusing Sánchez’s administration of deploying “wild and hateful rhetoric” and of using a “continuous anti-Israel and antisemitic attack” to distract from corruption allegations. It also announced that two Spanish ministers, including one of the country’s deputy prime ministers, would be banned from entering Israel because of their criticisms of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
The Spanish foreign ministry described the Israeli government’s words as “false and slanderous”, called the entry ban “unacceptable”, and said the country would not be “intimidated in its defence of peace, international law and human rights”.
13.33
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has stepped up his scathing criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Sánchez accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of “exterminating a defenceless people” by bombing hospitals and “killing innocent boys and girls with hunger”.
Spanish PM steps up scathing criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza –
15.35
Spain’s foreign ministry said on Monday it summoned its ambassador in Tel Aviv for consultations, hours after Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar accused the Spanish government of “antisemitic” following its new measures against Israel-bound ships and aircraft over the war in Gaza.
In his statement, Saar also said the government used the measures to divert public attention from corruption scandals.
15.35
Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich blamed the deadly attack by two Palestinian gunmen on the outskirts of Jerusalem this morning on the Palestinian Authority, which he claimed “raises and educates its children to murder Jews”.
“The Palestinian Authority must disappear from the map, and the villages from which the attackers came should be reduced to the status of Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” he wrote in a post on X, referring to cities in Gaza that have been devastated by relentless Israeli airstrikes.
The PA is a civilian ruling authority in areas of the West Bank, where about three million Palestinian people live – as well as around half a million Israelis occupying settlements considered illegal under international law.
Smotrich is a minister who also holds a position at Israel’s defence ministry with oversight of planning issues in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He was placed under sanctions along with fellow far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir by the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in June for “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities”.
Far-right Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said the Palestinian Authority must “disappear” from the map. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
15.00
Actors and directors pledge not to work with Israeli film groups ‘implicated in genocide’
Anna Betts
Anna Betts is a breaking news reporter for Guardian US
Hundreds of actors, directors and other film industry professionals have signed a new pledge vowing not to work with Israeli film institutions they say are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”.
“As film-makers, actors, film industry workers, and institutions, we recognise the power of cinema to shape perceptions” the pledge reads. “In this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror.”
Signatories include film-makers Yorgos Lanthimos, Ava DuVernay, Asif Kapadia, Boots Riley and Joshua Oppenheimer; and actors Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Ayo Edebiri, Riz Ahmed, Josh O’Connor, Cynthia Nixon, Julie Christie, Ilana Glazer, Rebecca Hall, Aimee Lou Wood and Debra Winger. The pledge had 1,200 signers as of Sunday night.
The pledge, shared exclusively with the Guardian, claims to draw inspiration from the cultural boycott that contributed to the end of apartheid in South Africa.
It commits signatories not to screen films, appear at or otherwise work with what it considers complicit institutions – including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters and production companies. Examples of complicity include “whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid, and/or partnering with the government committing them”.
Actors and directors pledge not to work with Israeli film groups ‘implicated in genocide’
14.03
Reports of at least 40 Palestinians killed in Gaza today
At least 40 Palestinian people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn, the majority of whom in the northern part of the territory, Al Jazeera has been told by medical sources.
Spanish citizen killed in Jerusalem shooting
Sam Jones
The Spanish government has confirmed that a Spanish citizen was among the six people murdered in the East Jerusalem attack.
“The government wishes to express its solidarity and extend its deepest condolences to the families of the victims, especially those of the murdered Spanish citizen, and to express its hope that the injured recover as quickly as possible,” the Spanish foreign ministry said in a statement.
It pointed out that two Spanish citizens - Iván Illarramendi and Maya Villalobo - were murdered in the 7 October attacks.
“Spain reiterates its commitment to peace in the Middle East and its firm condemnation of terrorism.”
The statement came as Spain and Israel are engaged in an escalating diplomatic row after Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, renewed his scathing criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, accusing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of “exterminating a defenceless people” by bombing hospitals and “killing innocent boys and girls with hunger”.
Speaking on Monday morning to announce a raft of measures designed to increase the pressure on Netanyahu to stop the military campaign, Sánchez said that while the Spanish government would always support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, it felt compelled to try to “stop a massacre”.
The Israel government responded by accusing Sánchez’s administration of deploying “wild and hateful rhetoric” and of using a “continuous anti-Israel and antisemitic attack” to distract from corruption allegations. It also announced that two Spanish ministers, including one of the country’s deputy prime ministers, would be banned from entering Israel because of their criticisms of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
The Spanish foreign ministry described the Israeli government’s words as “false and slanderous”, called the entry ban “unacceptable”, and said the country would 13.33
The United Nations human rights chief condemned Israel on Monday for the “mass killing” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and “hindering of sufficient lifesaving aid”, saying the country had a case to answer before the International Court of Justice.
Volker Turk, who heads the Office of the United Nations high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR), stopped short of describing the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide, as hundreds of UN staff had urged him to do, Reuters reported.
But in his opening address to the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Turk expressed horror at what he called “the open use of genocidal rhetoric” and “disgraceful dehumanisation” of Palestinians by senior Israeli officials.
“Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza; its infliction of indescribable suffering and wholesale destruction; its hindering of sufficient lifesaving aid and the ensuing starvation of civilians; its killing of journalists; and its commission of war crime upon war crime, are shocking the conscience of the world,” said Turk.
“Israel has a case to answer before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the evidence continues to mount,” Turk said, referring to the ICJ’s ruling in January that Israel had a legal obligation to prevent acts of genocide. Israel accused Turk of not bothering with “facts and complexities”.
Volker Turk looks on before the opening of the 60th session of the human rights council in Geneva, Switzerland. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA
12.36
Here are some of the latest images that are being sent to us over the newswires from Gaza:
Relatives of Palestinian people killed by Israeli gunfire mourn as the bodies are brought to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Relatives of one-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian child Ayman Muhammad Abd al-Ghafur, who lost his life due to severe malnutrition, oxygen deprivation, and muscle wasting, mourn as the body is taken from Nasser hospital. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Relatives of Palestinian people, who were reportedly killed by Israeli soldiers' gunfire while waiting for American aid in Rafah, perform funeral prayers as the bodies are brought to Nasser hospital in southern Gaza. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
12.15
Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza reaches 64,522, says health ministry
At least 64,522 Palestinian people have been killed and 163,096 others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
At least 65 Palestinian people were killed and 320 others injured in the last 24 hours alone, the ministry said.
12.06
Gaza’s health ministry said in a post on Telegram that over the past day it recorded six new deaths, including two children, caused by “famine and malnutrition”.
This brings the total number of Palestinian people who have died from famine and malnutrition to 393, including 140 children.
“Since the IPC declared famine in Gaza, 115 deaths have been recorded, including 25 children,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
Israel has been widely accused of using food as a political weapon and was accused of flagrantly breaking international law by collectively punishing the civilian population of Gaza by its total 11 week blockade of aid (which began in March), which was only slightly eased in response to international pressure, particularly from US senators.
Aid organisations were bringing somewhere between 500 and 600 aid trucks a day into Gaza during the ceasefire earlier this year, but now ongoing Israeli restrictions mean much less aid is being allowed into the territory and distributed.
In August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a globally recognised organisation that classifies the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition, said that an “entirely man-made” famine was taking place in Gaza’s largest city, Gaza City, and its surrounding area.
Palestinian children wait with empty pots as a charity distributes food in the Gaza Strip. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesUpdated at 12.08 BST4h ago11.30 BST
Six people killed in Jerusalem shooting attack, Israel's foreign minister says
Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar said six people were killed in the Jerusalem attack (not five as Israel’s ambulance service had said) after Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a crowded bus stop in the northern outskirts of the city.
Saar made the comments as he was speaking via a translator at a joint briefing with Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto in Budapest.
Saar described a “terrible terror attack”, adding: “We are in a war with radical Islamist terrorism. Europe and the international community, every country, must now make a clear choice. Are they on Israel’s side, or are they on the side of the jihadists?”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at the scene after the attack at the Ramot junction on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
As my colleagues note in this story, hundreds of members of the security forces were deployed at the scene to search for additional attackers or explosives that could have been planted around the area.
The Israeli military said it was encircling Palestinian villages on the outskirts of the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah in response to the attack.
Hamas praised two Palestinian “resistance fighters” who it said had carried out the attack but stopped short of claiming responsibility. Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group, also praised the shooting without claiming responsibility.
12.29
France and Germany have both condemned the deadly shooting attack in Jerusalem this morning in which at least five people were killed and seven seriously injured.
“France strongly condemns the terrorist attack that has just occurred in East Jerusalem”, French President Emmanuel Macron wrote in a post on X.
“The spiral of violence must come to an end. Only a political solution will bring back peace and stability for all in the region,” he added.
Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, meanwhile, said he was “deeply shocked” by the attack in East Jerusalem, describing it as a “cowardly terror attack”.
“My thoughts are with the victims’ families. I wish those who were injured a speedy recovery,” Wadephul wrote on X.
