United Kingdom

Thirty-two charities in England and Wales have donated at least £28m to Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law, an MP has said.

Labour’s Melanie Ward said that if gift aid were claimed against the donations in the usual way, it would mean taxpayers had subsidised illegal settlements to the tune of £5.6m, a situation she described as deplorable. The foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced on Tuesday that the Charity Commission has been tasked with investigating UK charities’ links to settlements.

Ward, formerly the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, set out the details of their recent activities in a letter to the commission in which she urges the regulator to take action by investigating them and removing them from the charity register.

She writes: “The existence and growth of Israeli settlements in the state of Palestine is globally recognised as one of the major impediments to peace. Any activity which supports the maintenance and the expansion of Israeli settlements – such as that funded by these 32 ‘charities’ – is extremist and not of benefit to the UK public. Further, it risks being materially and financially used in pursuance of breaches of international law.”

‘There’s wee girls inside’: panic as masked men storm house in Belfast

On a residential street draped in loyalist flags near Belfast’s Shankill Road, the masked men approached a house with a boarded-up window and a security camera stationed outside.

As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down. With the air thick with smoke from fireworks, they attacked the downstairs windows with bricks.

As they stormed the property, some claimed to be “liberating” it. Graffiti nearby demanded “local homes for local people”. A woman in the crowd said to her friend: “There’s wee girls inside.”

Nearby, a car was set on fire. As the chaos unfolded, a man in a skull face mask told people to put their phones away. Helicopters circled overhead, and two police officers looked on from their car as smoke billowed towards the sky – but appeared to conclude that it was not safe to intervene.

By the time reinforcements arrived in four police vans, most of the hundreds-strong crowd had melted away, leaving only a few stragglers in their wake.

• Anti-immigration protesters torched buildings and vehicles in Belfast on Tuesday evening and blocked roads, a day after a stabbing allegedly by a Sudanese refugee, captured in a graphic video that shocked the country.
• British prime minister Keir Starmer described the attack, which took place in north Belfast late on Monday evening, as “sickening”. Video of the incident was shared widely on social media.
• Police charged a Sudanese man late Monday over a knife attack that left one person with serious neck and head wounds. The suspect, whose name has not been released, was with attempted murder, possession of a bladed weapon in a public place and making threats to kill. The 30-year-old man is due to appear in court on Wednesday.
• Michelle O’Neill, the first minister of Northern Ireland, slammed the protests and urged calm. “Groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice,” she said on X. “Racism, intimidation and violence are wrong wherever they occur. There can be no excuse and no justification for these attacks tonight. No one wants to see this on our streets and I again appeal for calm”.
• The leaders of Northern Ireland’s five main political parties issued a joint statement condemning the incident, saying “there is no place in our society for this kind of brutality”.
• US tech billionaire Elon Musk had earlier retweeted a post by anti-immigration activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – also known as Tommy Robinson – adding: “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!”.
• As anti-immigration figures, including Reform party leader Nigel Farage and Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe, demanded details about the attacker, the interior ministry confirmed he was a Sudanese refugee with a residence permit valid until 2028. Northern Ireland police chief Jon Boutcher said he had arrived in the UK in 2023 via Paris and Dublin.
• Tensions were already high in Britain after violent skirmishes last week in Southampton, southern England, over the police handling of the murder of a young white student stabbed to death by a British Sikh man.