CEASEFIRE NEEDED IN GAZA ‘AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE’ FOLLOWING AID CONVOY ATTACK, SAYS LABOUR’S DARREN JONES

LABOUR’S Darren Jones said a ceasefire in Gaza needs to be implemented “as quickly as possible”, in response to the attack on a convoy in Gaza that killed seven aid workers, including three Britons.

The Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury said on GB News: “This should not have happened. Aid workers are supposed to be protected. They should not be targeted by military forces in a war zone.

“Their vehicles, their convoy, were clearly marked, the route they were taking had been pre-notified, and Israel now has to answer questions as to how this unimaginable circumstance could have happened in the first place, and they should do so quickly.

“The difficult thing then is that the consequence of this is that it makes it harder for aid to be made available to people who so desperately needed in Gaza, because this puts the aid workers at more risk than they should be under and it closes off routes that people thought might have been available to them to help.

“We have to get to a position to have a sustainable ceasefire as quickly as possible and for a political dialogue to resume.”

Asked if arms sales to Israel should be limited in response, in a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he said: “We wait to see what the Government says about that in due course. In terms of arms licences, there is a process for licence control for the export of arms.”

He added: “If the evidence shows that those export licences, the terms of those export licences have been breached, then the consequences that flow from that should flow from that and we would expect…more detail on that in due course and [the Government] should be transparent about that with relevant parliamentary committees.”