Scientists in California shooting nearly 200 lasers at a cylinder holding a fuel capsule the size of a peppercorn have taken another step in the quest for fusion energy, which, if mastered, could provide the world with a near-limitless source of clean power.

Last year on a December morning, scientists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (LLNL) managed, in a world first, to produce a nuclear fusion reaction that released more energy than it used, in a process called “ignition.”

Now they say they have successfully replicated ignition at least three times this year, according to a December report from the LLNL. This marks another significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

For decades, scientists have attempted to harness fusion energy, essentially recreating the power of the sun on Earth.

After making their historic net energy gain last year, the next important step was to prove the process could be replicated.

Brian Appelbe, a research fellow from the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London, said the ability to replicate demonstrates the “robustness” of the process, showing it can be achieved even when conditions such as the laser or fuel pellet are varied.

Unlike nuclear fission — the process used in the world’s nuclear plants today, which is generated by the division of atoms — nuclear fusion leaves no legacy of long-lived radioactive waste. As the climate crisis accelerates, and the urgency of ditching planet-heating fossil fuels increases, the prospect of an abundant source of safe, clean energy is tantalizing.

Nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the sun and other stars, involves smashing two or more atoms together to form a denser one, in a process that releases huge amounts of energy.

There are different ways of creating energy from fusion, but at NIF, scientists fire an array of nearly 200 lasers at a pellet of hydrogen fuel inside a diamond capsule the size of a peppercorn, itself inside a gold cylinder. The lasers heat up the cylinder’s outside, creating a series of very fast explosions, generating large amounts of energy collected as heat.

The energy produced in December 2022 was small — it took around 2 megajoules to power the reaction, which released a total of 3.15 megajoules, enough to boil around 10 kettles of water. But it was sufficient to make it a successful ignition and to prove that laser fusion could create energy.

Since then, the scientists have done it several more times. On July 30, the NIF laser delivered a little over 2 megajoules to the target, which resulted in 3.88 megajoules of energy — their highest yield achieved to date, according to the report. Two subsequent experiments in October also delivered net gains.

“These results demonstrated NIF’s ability to consistently produce fusion energy at multi-megajoule levels,” the report said.

There is still a very long way to go, however, until nuclear fusion reaches the scale needed to power electric grids and heating systems. The focus now is on building on the progress made and figuring out how to dramatically scale up fusion projects and significantly bring down costs.

At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, US climate envoy John Kerry launched an international engagement plan involving more than 30 countries with the aim of boosting nuclear fusion to help tackle the climate crisis.

“There is potential in fusion to revolutionize our world, and to change all of the options that are in front of us, and provide the world with abundant and clean energy without the harmful emissions of traditional energy sources,” Kerry told the climate gathering.

In December, the US Department of Energy announced a $42 million investment in a program bringing together multiple institutions, including LLNL, to establish “hubs” focused on advancing fusion.

“Harnessing fusion energy is one of the greatest scientific and technological challenges of the 21st Century,” said US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in a statement. “We now have the confidence that it’s not only possible, but probable, that fusion energy can be a reality.”

Ella Nilsen and René Marsh contributed to reporting

New images captured by two of NASA’s space telescopes showcase how the light from young stars can deck the cosmos with holiday cheer.

Groupings of stars resembling a Christmas tree aglow with lights and a scintillating snow globe shine in new observations taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope, respectively.

NGC 2264, which is about 2,500 light-years from Earth, is also called the “Christmas Tree Cluster,” where a group of young stars surrounded by the gaseous cloud of a nebula call to mind a cosmic evergreen decorated with twinkling lights.

The stars are between 1 million and 5 million years old, and vary in size — some are smaller and some larger than our sun. The new composite image, rotated clockwise by 160 degrees so that the top of the tree is upright, includes different wavelengths of light detected by Chandra as well as ground-based surveys.

In an animated version of the image, blinking blue and white lights represent the X-ray light from young stars detected by Chandra. Meanwhile, the cloud of gas resembling the festive tree glows in green optical light, as seen with the National Science Foundation’s WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert.

White stars gleaming throughout the image were revealed by observations in infrared light with the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which operated between 1997 and 2001. Studying young stars such as those within the Christmas Tree Cluster offers insight into their volatile nature. Young stars can release strong flares more powerful than those of our sun, and astronomers are still investigating the phenomena.

A starry snow globe

The Hubble Space Telescope had to search a little farther to find a celestial winter wonderland. Hubble observed the billion stars that sparkle within a dwarf galaxy named UGC 8091, which is 7 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo constellation.

The galactic arrangement of the stars looks a bit like hopelessly tangled strings of lights that were hastily put away at the end of a holiday season. The disorder is a result of UGC 8091 being an irregular galaxy that lacks the structured appearance of a spiral or elliptical galaxy.

No two irregular galaxies look the same, and they appear in a range of sizes and shapes. An irregular galaxy’s shape can be the result of interactions with other galaxies, as well as internal turbulence caused by celestial objects such as exploding stars.

Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys observed  UGC 8091 in different wavelengths of light. The data was collected between 2006 and 2021.

The blue light revealed in a composite image from these observations comes from newborn stars, while the glowing pink-red splotches may be hydrogen molecules that have heated after interacting with the light from the young, energetic stars. Meanwhile, other gleaming features in the image include older stars and distant background galaxies.

Dwarf galaxies were common early in the history of the universe and eventually merged to create larger, more structured galaxies. Astronomers can learn about galactic evolution by studying distant dwarf galaxies and their stars.

It was one of the first, and most searing, viral videos to emerge as the October 7 attack unfolded. A cell phone video released by Hamas shows 19-year-old Naama Levy being dragged by her hair at gunpoint by a terrorist in Gaza. Her hands are bound, her ankles cut. Her pants are soaked in blood.

Her mother, Dr. Ayelet Levy Shachar, describes the video as “beyond upsetting” and says she “can’t watch it in continuity.” But she thinks it’s important for the world to see.

“This is what happened to my daughter. It’s a short film that totally does not represent anything about her except the cruelty of those moments and the moment where our lives just stopped and froze.  And it’s been October 7th ever since.”

Despite the release of 110 hostages so far – most of whom have been women and children – Naama still remains in Hamas captivity.

Levy Shachar, a doctor for the Israeli women’s national soccer team, is desperately worried about her daughter going without the medical attention she needs. “She’s injured on her legs… The days are passing and every day that passes, it’s even harder.”

In a recent op-ed, Levy Shachar set out the reasons for her concern. “There’s a reason why women and children were prioritized first for release: younger women are at greater risk for further trauma. Just as women and girls are more vulnerable to more forms of violence, they are also more vulnerable to suffering from infections and pregnancy from sexual violence. The longer Naama is held in captivity, the more violence she is subjected to, the more likely she will suffer the consequences of lifelong post-traumatic stress.”

Levy Shachar feels let down by the initial lack of acknowledgement and condemnation from international bodies and womens’ groups, like the UN and UN Women, of the sexual assaults and violence committed by Hamas on October 7, despite mounting evidence.  It took nearly two months for the UN secretary-general to issue a statement on X, calling the accounts of sexual violence abhorrent acts of terror that must be investigated, followed two days later by a condemnation from UN Women.

This week Levy Shachar traveled to New York to meet with international officials and try to pressure women’s rights organizations like UN Women to do more to secure her daughter’s release. She says she wishes she could stay home in Israel, a 13-hour flight away, and wait for her daughter to come home. But action is required now.

“I want to just stay home and by the door and by the phone, and wait for that call and open the door and go out and get her. That’s all I want,” says Levy Shachar. “I don’t want to travel anywhere. But I’m doing it because I think the United States has the most power here and I want to influence whoever I can.”

Right before she left home last Friday came the stunning announcement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that three hostages had been shot and killed by its soldiers. “I was shocked,” she says, drawing a deep breath. “The fear that I feel all the time just got worse at that point. It broke my heart.”

With war still raging, Levy Shachar pleads for her daughter to finally be brought home. And she wants the world to know Naama is much more than the young woman in that horrific video from October 7.

“Naama is young. She’s 19, but she’s done quite a lot. She’s a very fun-loving girl, but very serious, determined. She was a part of a Hands of Peace program (a non-profit peace initiative for Israeli and Palestinian youth). Really – a peace seeker.

“When she comes back, she will make the world a better place.”

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify details of Levy Shachar’s meetings with officials in New York. 

Opposition lawmakers are accusing India’s government of an attack on democracy after dozens of them were suspended from parliament this week, the latest twist in a historic dispute between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a newly formed alliance that is seeking to unseat them next year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP has a majority in both houses and is now expected to legislate almost unopposed for the remainder of the session that ends Friday.

The suspensions come as parliament is set to debate a controversial criminal reform bill, which Mallikarjun Kharge, chief of the main opposition Congress party, has said could “unleash draconian powers and impede citizen’s rights.”

Modi’s government “does not want the people of India to hear out the Opposition, while these Bills are debated and deliberated,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The suspensions were enacted following a major security breach in parliament last week when two men stormed the chamber, chanting slogans and releasing colored gas. The opposition lawmakers demanded a parliamentary debate on the breach – only to be suspended by their respective house speakers for causing disorder.

“For the first time in my parliamentary career of nearly 15 years, I too entered the well of the House holding a placard calling for a discussion on the recent security breach,” Shashi Tharoor, a suspended Congress lawmaker, wrote on X. “I did so out of solidarity with my (Congress) colleagues, who have been unjustly suspended for demanding accountability from the government.”

Jairam Ramesh, another suspended Congress lawmaker, described the suspensions as a “complete purge.” The removal of opposition lawmakers occurred “so that draconian bills are passed without meaningful debate,” he claimed on X.

Describing the suspensions as a “record number,” the New York-based Human Rights Foundation said it “strongly condemns India’s ongoing crackdown on the opposition and critics,” in a statement posted on X on Tuesday.

Most of the suspended MPs are part of an alliance known as INDIA, a coalition of opposition parties that is looking to defeat Modi and the BJP in next year’s general election, expected in May.

The BJP has been repeatedly accused by its critics of stifling opposition and undermining democracy in parliament. It has repeatedly denied the allegations.

In an interview with a Hindi-language newspaper on Sunday, Modi said the security breach was a serious matter that should be investigated, but one that does not require a parliamentary debate.

An Australian businessman has been found guilty by a Melbourne court of covertly working for the Chinese Communist Party, the first verdict of its kind under the country’s foreign influence laws.

Di Sanh Duong, 68, a prominent figure in the Chinese community in Melbourne, was convicted by a jury Tuesday of preparing for or planning an act of foreign interference, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

He is the first person to be convicted under laws introduced by the Australian government in 2018 to counter foreign influence in domestic politics. The legislation, which came after a series of scandals involving Beijing’s alleged attempts to influence Australian politics, deepened tensions with China, the country’s largest trading partner.

Duong was charged in 2020 by Victoria state police. On Tuesday, the County Court of Victoria ruled that he had attempted to secretly influence former federal government minister Alan Tudge with a large donation to the Royal Melbourne Hospital three years ago.

Photographs from an event at the hospital on June 2, 2020, show Duong presenting Tudge with a novelty check for 37,450 Australian dollars ($25,000). The money was raised by the Oceania Federation of Chinese Organizations from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, a Chinese diaspora group headed by Duong.

Federal prosecutors alleged Duong had used the donation to curry favor with Tudge. Tudge was not accused of any wrongdoing.

Lawyers for the government relied in part on an intercepted phone call between Duong and an associate in April 2020. In the recording, the court heard Duong discussing the value of a relationship with Tudge, who he considered as a potential future prime minister of Australia.

Prosecution lawyer Patrick Doyle argued in court that Duong, a former member of the Victorian state branch of Australia’s Liberal Party, would be an “ideal target” for China’s United Front Work Department.

The United Front is a vast organization run by the ruling Chinese Communist Party that is tasked with cultivating relations with elites outside the party, including the Chinese diaspora. It has long been accused by researchers and Western nations, including the United States, of plotting global foreign influence operations on behalf of the Chinese government.

“A main goal of this system is to win over friends for the Chinese Communist Party, it involves generating sympathy for the party and its policies,” Doyle told the court.

The prosecutors argued that Duong had been in contact with Chinese state security officials. In the recording of another wiretapped phone call played in court, Duong was heard telling an associate: “When I do things it never gets reported in the newspaper, but Beijing will know what I’m doing.”

Duong will be sentenced next year.

Australian Federal Police issued a statement Tuesday welcoming the verdict.

“The AFP thanks its partners in the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce during this complex investigation. Foreign interference remains a significant national security priority for the AFP,” the statement said.

In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, opposition home affairs spokesperson James Paterson said he welcomed the guilty verdict in “Australia’s first ever foreign interference case.”

“Successful prosecutions are key to deterring further attempts to interfere in our democracy. The AFP and prosecutors should continue to enforce the law robustly,” he said.

On the roof of the O2 Arena, one of London’s largest indoor venues, there’s a small cluster of very peculiar wind turbines.

They look nothing like the tall, imposing ones that are increasingly deployed both inland and offshore around the world — at less than six feet (1.8 meters) in height, they’re a fraction of their size, and produce much less energy.

But being small gives them a strategic advantage: they can be deployed almost anywhere, and were designed to be retrofitted onto existing streetlights, where they can be powered not just by the wind, but also by the artificial breeze created by passing vehicles.

“If you stand next to the road and a bus comes past, you feel that airflow,” says Barry Thompson, CEO of Alpha 311, the company that designed the turbines. “Why is nobody harnessing the energy that cars are generating when they drive past?”

Now, after the successful trial at the O2, Alpha 311 is preparing to launch a refined version of the turbine that will be suitable for commercial installations.

Like an F1 car

Alpha 311 was founded by Thompson and mechanical engineer John Sanderson, after they built a prototype of the turbine in Thompson’s backyard during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020. They then produced a more polished version with the help of an external company, and posted pictures of it on Thompson’s LinkedIn profile.

After it was featured in local news reports, it attracted the attention of the O2. “The facilities manager actually saw it and said, ‘Can we have these on the O2?’ He purely wanted to help a startup and provide some real-world testing,” Thompson says.

Three of the turbines were installed on the O2, although one was removed after storm Eunice, which damaged the venue in 2022.

Made of carbon fiber, the same material as an F1 car, each turbine is 5.9 feet (1.8 meters) tall and weighs about 88 pounds (40 kilograms), but the section that actually turns only weighs just over 30 pounds. “We designed a wind turbine that is very, very light,” Thompson says. “It turns so much more easily than a heavier glass fiber or metal wind turbine. And we use streetlights for the road installation because the pole is already connected to the grid.”

He adds that because the cabling in streetlights was designed for traditional lighting fixtures, which required far more energy than current LED bulbs, the infrastructure necessary to handle the electricity produced by the turbine is already in place. The energy can be used immediately to power the streetlight, and the excess can be sold back into the grid, providing a revenue stream for the local authority that manages or owns the road.

The turbine can capture the wind, but it’s intended to harness the air movement of passing vehicles. Thompson says that a small car passing the turbine at 50 miles per hour displaces air at 12 miles per hour, enough for the turbine to rotate. On a highway installation, each turbine can produce 30 times the power of a 300W solar panel, on average, and the equivalent of about 14 panels while on a building.

For the past year, Thompson has been working on a scalable, commercial version of the turbine. “We’ve been doing computational fluid dynamics and redesigning the turbine to be most efficient,” he says. “We’re now going into the wind tunnel with a UK university, and then we’ll start selling that product.”

He says he has received interest from over 900 entities in 117 countries, between private companies and local authorities, with around 70 proposals already in place for actual installations. Among them are stadiums, factories, warehouses, bridges, toll roads and gas stations.

The first public road with an Alpha 311 installation will be in the borough of Telford and Wrekin, near Birmingham in England. The company expects to install up to 181 turbines in the first half of next year, which it says will render the council’s 20,000 streetlights carbon neutral.

Extra sensors

According to Alasdair McDonald, a professor at the School of Engineering of the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, who is not involved with Alpha 311, the idea is intriguing, but he notes that there are constraints with the size and location of the turbines. “Small wind turbines generally produce less per area of rotor, because they are lower down than big wind turbines and hence see less wind at every moment in time,” he says.

“The wind also tends to be more turbulent, which can make it difficult to extract energy and can cause extra loads. There’s also a tension between extracting energy from vehicle wakes and from the general wind: roads are often purposely shielded from the wind.”

Alpha 311 says that each installation location is analyzed to determine traffic flow, the number and size of vehicles and the average traffic speed. It adds that if installed in the center of a highway, the airflow is effectively doubled, which means “up to eight times more volume of air that can be converted into energy.” The company also notes that many key roads that have trees or fencing to minimize noise can provide a tunneling effect on the wind, so the turbines can work even when the traffic is light, like late at night.

McDonald adds that the mounting onto lampposts is the innovative aspect of the turbine, but it could be challenging to retrofit them onto existing ones.

At £15,000 (about $18,000) each, the turbines are expensive, but can significantly reduce electricity bills for an organization that installs them, and then generate free electricity, producing a return on the investment in just a few years, according to Thompson.

On top of producing energy, the turbines can also be fitted with sensors to monitor the air quality or traffic flow. As for scaling up, Thompson expects to install 200 turbines next year, before moving into the thousands after manufacturing processes improve.

“Deploying renewable technologies such as ours locally has a direct benefit for the local communities,” he says. “That’s key if we’re going to move to a decentralized, renewable energy-driven society.”

Democratic Republic of Congo was holding presidential and legislative elections on Wednesday after a chaotic campaign marred by opposition allegations of fraud, electoral violence, and logistical setbacks that could prevent many from voting.

At stake is not just the legitimacy of the next administration. DRC election disputes often spark violent unrest with potentially far-reaching consequences. DRC is the world’s third largest copper producer, and the top producer of

cobalt, a battery component needed for the green transition.

Delays were reported in several towns in DRC’s rebel-plagued east and in the capital Kinshasa, voting materials had not arrived at polling stations and voter lists were not published.

“It is a total chaos,” said presidential candidate Martin Fayulu, runner up in the disputed 2018 presidential election.

Fayulu said that while the vote was well organized in the upmarket Gombe district in the capital where he voted, it was not the case in the rest of the country.

“If all the people don’t vote in all the polling stations indicated by the CENI (national election commission), we won’t accept these elections,” Fayulu warned, adding that he would be at the forefront of the protest.

In the eastern cities of Goma and Beni, some people struggled to find their names on voter lists, which were only made available at their polling stations on Wednesday morning, according to Reuters witnesses.

In Bunia, also in eastern Congo, security forces fired warning shots to disperse protesters after a voting center was vandalized and kits destroyed, a Reuters reporter said.

A provincial election commission official told journalists that people displaced by violence in the region had protested because they wanted to vote in their home towns.

For months, Congo’s national election commission has insisted it would deliver a free and fair vote as promised across Africa’s second-largest country, even as independent observers and critics flag irregularities they say will jeopardize the legitimacy of the results.

About 44 million Congolese are registered to take part in the voting, which also includes regional ballots.

As voting day neared, the authorities sought extra helicopters, raising concerns about the commission’s ability to open polling stations in areas otherwise unreachable due to bad roads or a lack of security.

Full provisional results are expected by December 31.

Electoral transparency

President Felix Tshisekedi is competing against 18 opposition challengers in the hope of a second term running the mineral-rich yet poverty-stricken nation.

“I have asked you to give me strength to continue the work that we have started,” Tshisekedi said in his final rally on Monday, promising to expand a free education policy if elected.

Opposition candidates have wooed voters with pledges to bring stability, peace, and the economic development they say was absent from Tshisekedi’s first term.

They and religious and civil society electoral observers have sounded the alarm about electoral transparency, highlighting issues including the voter list and illegible ID cards.

“It is evident that the greatest electoral fraud of the century is taking place,” Nobel Laureate and opposition candidate Denis Mukwege said on Monday. The election commission has repeatedly rejected the opposition’s allegations of fraud.

The election will be decided in a single round, requiring a simple majority of the vote to win. The final run-up to the vote has been particularly fraught.

Two parliamentary candidates were killed in separate incidents on Dec. 15 – part of a spate of election-related violence condemned by human rights groups and the European Union.

Ahead of election day in Kinshasa, some locals were not convinced their vote would count. “Every time we vote,  we are disappointed, but if I had to vote, it would be for a change,” said 43-year-old Lucie Mpiana, who is unemployed.

Polls are due to close at 1600 GMT (11 a.m. ET).

Blue Origin’s tourism rocket — designed to vault paying customers on brief trips to the edge of space — successfully launched Tuesday morning on an uncrewed science mission.

The New Shepard rocket lifted off at 11:43 a.m. ET from Blue Origin’s facilities on a private ranch in West Texas. The 33 science experiments on board experienced a few minutes of microgravity before safely returning to Earth.

The rocket booster touched down about seven minutes after launch, followed by a safe landing of the capsule about 10 minutes after launch.

The first launch attempt was scrubbed Monday due to teams working a ground system issue. But mission control didn’t appear to encounter any issues during Tuesday’s launch, and the test flight quickly worked its way through the team’s list of objectives.

Though no one was on board the flight, the success could tee up Blue Origin to restart its trips to space for thrill seekers.

“We look forward to flying our next crewed flight soon,” said Erika Wagner, senior director of emerging market development for Blue Origin, on the live launch broadcast at the conclusion of the flight.

The anticipated return to flight occurred after the Jeff Bezos-founded company spent more than a year recuperating from a failed uncrewed test flight.

A New Shepard rocket and spacecraft was set to launch a batch of science instruments on September 12, 2022. But one minute into flight, the rocket endured Max Q — an aerospace term that refers to a moment of maximum stress on a vehicle at a relatively low altitude where the atmosphere is still fairly thick, and the rocket is moving at nearly the speed of sound.

Around that time, the rocket appeared to emit a massive burst of flames. The New Shepard capsule, which rides atop the rocket, then initiated its launch abort system — firing up a small engine to blast itself safely away from the malfunctioning rocket. That system worked as intended, parachuting the capsule to a safe landing.

Blue Origin later revealed that the cause of the failure was a problem with the engine nozzle, a large cone that directs the flaming exhaust at the rocket’s bottom. Onboard computers accurately detected the failure and shut the engine down, according to the company.

Before the September 2022 failure, New Shepard rockets had flown 22 consecutive successful missions — including six with passengers on board. Bezos flew aboard the rocket in 2021.

New Glenn on the horizon

New Shepard’s return to flight comes as Blue Origin is racing to deliver on another key project: It’s developing a massive rocket called New Glenn that’s capable of hauling satellites and other large payloads into orbit.

That rocket is years overdue. And the same engines that will power New Glenn’s rocket booster, the BE-4 engines, will also fuel a new line of rockets developed by United Launch Alliance — a joint Lockheed Martin and Boeing venture. United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket is slated to launch its first mission, delivering a NASA-sponsored lander to the moon, in January.

New Glenn likewise has an important first launch on the horizon, potentially carrying a NASA satellite to study the magnetized area of space around Mars as soon as next year.

Bezos admitted during last week’s podcast interview that he is “extremely nervous” about the first launch of New Glenn.

“Every launch I go to, for New Shepard, for other vehicles, too, I’m always nervous for these launches,” he said. “A first launch — to have no nervousness about that — would be some sign of derangement.”

Moran, a UK member of parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon, said 300 people, including children, were inside the Holy Family Parish church in Gaza City as Israel’s bombardment of the enclave continues into its tenth week.

“These are Christians seeking sanctuary the week before Christmas, having been there for more than 60 days… who have been told by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that they need to evacuate (and) it’s unclear why or where – there are no churches outside Gaza City.”

The plight of those sheltering in the church has received growing international attention after the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem accused an Israeli military sniper of shooting dead a mother and a daughter there.

IDF tanks also targeted the convent of the Sisters of Mother Teresa, part of the church’s compound that also houses 54 disabled people, the patriarchate said. The building’s generator, fuel resources, solar panels and water tanks were also destroyed, it added.

The two women had been walking to the convent when gunfire erupted. “One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety,” the patriarchate said. Seven others were also shot and wounded in the attack at the church complex, it said.

The IDF appeared to deny responsibility for the killings.

“Representatives of the church contacted the IDF regarding explosions that were heard near the church. During the dialogue between the IDF and representatives of the community, no reports of a hit on the church, nor civilians being injured or killed, were raised,” the IDF statement read. “A review of the IDF’s operational findings supports this.”

The IDF also said it “takes claims regarding harm to sensitive sites with the utmost seriousness — especially churches — considering that Christian communities are a minority group in the Middle East.”

“The IDF only targets terrorists and terror infrastructure and does not target civilians, no matter their religion… (and) takes vast measures to avoid harm to uninvolved civilians,” the statement added.

Growing criticism

Israel’s military has faced growing international criticism over the shootings.

“Unarmed civilians are targets for bombs and gunfire and this has happened even within the parish complex of the Holy Family, where there are no terrorists but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities,” Pope Francis said Sunday.

British Minister of State for the Middle East Tariq Ahmad also condemned the killings and called on Israel to abide by humanitarian law.

“Shocked that civilians taking refuge in a church in northern Gaza have been killed and others injured,” Ahmad said in a statement on Sunday.

“Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Civilians must be protected,” he added. “A sustainable ceasefire, leading to sustainable peace, is urgently needed.”

Several members of Moran’s extended family took refuge in the church in the first week after October 7.

Her family is down to their “last can of corn” as the situation deteriorates, Moran said, calling for the Israeli government and military to stop targeting the church.

She shared that she had already lost a family member, who died from dehydration.

“He was 81 and was fit and well before all of this and he passed away because he was not able to get to a hospital,” she said.

“I’m not sure (my remaining family members) are going to survive.

“I would simply say this to the Israeli government, this is the week before Christmas, is this the time you want to pick a fight with the Pope? Is this the time that you want to forcibly displace Palestinians from where they’ve chosen to seek sanctuary?”

Moran reiterated there had never been a Hamas presence at the church. “The assertion that Hamas is operating from that church is baseless.”

“There are children there. The women who are killed, if anyone dares to look at the pictures, could not look less like Hamas fighters,” she added.

The establishment of such a compound would allow some Palestinian civilians to move to northern Gaza once the Israeli military completes its current phase of military operations in northern Gaza, the sources said.

The planning for the compound is in its early stages and it was not yet clear how many people the compound could accommodate or whether it would ultimately come to fruition. But it marked the first indication that Israel is beginning to consider how Palestinian civilians could return to northern Gaza once the current phase of military operations there concludes.

Israel has informed the United States it is exploring the project and a senior Israeli official said Israel would seek assistance from other countries as well. The international humanitarian official also confirmed discussions about the project and said other countries and private entities could be involved.

Israeli military officials have said they believe they are close to defeating Hamas militants in Jabalya and Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighborhood, Hamas’ last remaining strongholds in northern Gaza.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday hinted at the possibility of allowing displaced civilians to return to northern Gaza once Israel achieves its military objectives there.

“In every area where we achieve our mission, we will be able to transition gradually to the next phase and start working on bringing back the local population. This can be achieved maybe sooner in the north rather than in the south,” Gallant said during a news conference alongside US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Nearly 85% of Gaza’s population has been displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas, but many of those displaced from northern Gaza will have no homes to return to – hence the need for the construction of shelters to allow some of the population to return.

By the end of November, about 80% of buildings in northern Gaza had been damaged or destroyed amid relentless Israeli bombardment, according to an analysis by the United Nations Satellite Centre published last week.

The Israeli government is exploring the project amid pressure from the United States to ramp down its military campaign in Gaza and establish more safe zones for Palestinian civilians.

The news that Israel is exploring the construction of shelters for Palestinians in northern Gaza follows visits by Austin and US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who both pressed Israeli officials for a timetable on ramping down the fighting and focusing more on special operations and providing humanitarian relief to Palestinian civilians.

Israel has also begun to explore the post-war reconstruction of the Gaza Strip with the United States and Gulf countries, the officials said.