Al-Mawasi in Rafah in 2023 (left) and 2026, with huge tented camps lining much of the shoreline. Composite: Google
Satellite imagery shows further destruction of homes, businesses and places of worship since fragile ceasefire
An update to Google Maps has revealed the extent of devastation during the three-year Gaza war and the severity of the continuing humanitarian crisis faced by the territory’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
The images were taken in June this year and show further destruction of homes, businesses, places of worship and infrastructure since a fragile ceasefire came into effect almost 12 months ago.
They show huge tented camps lining much of the shoreline, often within a few metres of the sea. Gaza’s once busy main port, now badly damaged and empty of fishing boats, is surrounded by makeshift accommodation. Any available open space in Gaza City is packed with shacks, tents and huts.
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More than 2.1 million displaced people are living in tents and temporary shelters in Gaza, where about 82% of structures – roughly 200,000 buildings – have been damaged, with about two-thirds of those destroyed, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.
A recent UN assessment estimated that the number of destroyed structures across Gaza had increased by 9% since the declaration of a ceasefire in October 2025.
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An image of Venezuela’s former president Hugo Chávez in Mario Silva’s home studio in La Guaira. Photograph: Andrea Hernández Briceño/The Guardian
Diehard Hugo Chávez supporters struggle to comprehend ideological U-turn being executed by Delcy Rodríguez’s interim administration
He was one of the most passionate propagandists for Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution: a feisty leftist TV personality who spent more than two decades singing the movement’s praises on his state-funded show, The Razorblade.
Mario Silva’s devotion was such that he often hosted his programme with Chávez’s portrait behind him and he had El Comandante’s curly signature tattooed on to his left wrist.
But nine months after Venezuela’s political landscape was scrambled by Donald Trump’s abduction of Chávez’s heir, Nicolás Maduro, Silva’s show has been cancelled, and its host is livid about the revolution’s direction under Maduro’s former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez.
“[I feel] a lot of disappointment – depressed … and sometimes I wake up and feel like the world is collapsing around me,” the 66-year-old said during a rare interview at his home studio in the mountains outside the capital, Caracas.
Silva has spent recent weeks railing against Rodríguez’s interim administration on YouTube, his home since his programme on state TV was axed, berating those he blames for Venezuela’s “shameful and utterly illegitimate surrender” to the US.
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Prime Minister Andy Burnham (left) with Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey on the main stage during the Labour Party Conference at the ACC Liverpool, September 28, 2026
If ministers fail to bring bills down, ‘people will get ill and some will die,’ campaigners warn. ‘Every one of those avoidable cases will be on this Chancellor’s watch’
CAMPAIGNERS and unions have demanded the government cap killer energy prices amid predictions of a 16 per cent hike in fuel bills in the new year.
The demand came as a 4 per cent increase to energy regulator Ofgem’s price cap — equivalent to an extra £5 a month kicked-in — bringing the typical annual bill to £1,723.
Experts have now warned the hike could be just the tip of the iceberg, as US President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attacks on Iran continue to send international energy prices — and oil giants’ profits — soaring.
Energy analysts at Cornwall Insight say the bills could be set for the biggest rise in three years with a 16 per cent hike on January, bringing the typical annual bill to an eye-watering £1,999.
With over 10 million UK households spending more than 10 per cent of their incomes on domestic fuel, and prices having already soared by a staggering 27 per cent this year, the End Fuel Poverty Coalition called on Chancellor John Healey to use his budget to enforce an “emergency heat tariff.”
Taking at swipe at the energy profiteers, End Fuel Poverty Coalition co-ordinator Simon Francis said: “Households did not cause this crisis and cannot escape it, yet a handful of energy firms have announced over £6 billion in profits on UK operations in this year alone.
Wind turbines in a field. Credit: Alamy / Chris Rout.
The UK has avoided the need for gas imports worth £5.9bn since the start of the Hormuz crisis as a result of record generation from wind and solar, reveals Carbon Brief analysis.
While gas prices are surging to levels not seen since the 2022 energy crisis, the UK has been generating record amounts of power from wind and solar, up 14% year-on-year.
This unprecedented clean-power generation is directly cutting the need for gas-fired electricity, which is down by nearly 10% year-on-year in 2026 to date.
In total, wind and solar have generated a record 41% share of the UK’s electricity needs in 2026 to date, compared with 25% from gas, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis.
The figure below shows that wind and solar has avoided the need for UK gas imports worth £5.9bn, since the outbreak of war between the US and Iran in February 2026.
These avoided gas imports would have required the UK to secure the equivalent of more than 100 additional tanker deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The £1.3bn import saving in September 2026 to date is the result of record wind and solar output, at nearly 10 terawatt hours (TWh), combined with surging gas prices.
The latest analysis updates figures published by Carbon Brief in April and May.
Wholesale gas prices in the UK have remained elevated ever since Russia cut off supplies to Europe in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Gas averaged 90p per therm from 2023 until the start of this year, roughly three times above 2019 prices, before the Covid and Ukraine crises.
Since the outbreak of war in the Middle East in March, gas prices have climbed higher still, averaging 134p per therm or nearly four times the level seen in 2019.
In September 2026 to date, gas prices have averaged 189p per therm, reaching their highest level since the global energy crisis in 2022, as shown in the figure below.
UK gas prices are spiking again because winter is approaching – meaning higher demand for heating – and there is no end in sight for the Hormuz crisis.
At the same time, European gas stocks are low. This means Europe will have to compete with Asia to secure the cargoes of LNG needed to keep warm.
In the UK, high wholesale gas prices are hitting household gas bills under the price cap set by energy regulator Ofgem, whereas electricity bills have barely increased.
From this Thursday, 1 October, typical household gas bills will be 33% higher than they were in April, some £200 per year, according to thinktank Nesta.
In contrast, household electricity bills will only have risen 4%, according to Nesta’s analysis, as a result of growing generation from clean-energy sources.
Andrew Sissons, director for sustainable future at Nesta, explained in a social media post that “the link between electricity and gas prices has already begun to break”.
The UK and other fossil-fuel importing nations are being hit not only by high gas prices, but also by high prices for oil, diesel and other refined fuels.
The EU has reportedly had to pay an extra €100bn for fossil-fuel imports since the start of the crisis. Higher import bills have fallen particularly hard on low and middle-income countries, according to separate analysis.
In the UK, diesel prices have hit record levels of around £2 per litre. In contrast, recent Carbon Brief analysis shows that electric cars are up to nine times cheaper to drive.
In her speech to the Labour party conference, energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh said that energy bills were high because the UK is “exposed to global fossil-fuel markets”.
In his own conference speech, prime minister Andy Burnham said the expansion of clean energy was easing the impact of high gas prices on electricity bills. He said:
“We are already taking more control of our electricity prices with a massive expansion of home-grown renewables and nuclear. I have asked Miatta to speed up the breaking of the link between what we pay for power at home and the international gas market, to get bills down.”
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
A large billboard depicting an armed member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) standing with one foot on American REMUS 600 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) at Venek Square in central Tehran, Iran, on September 28, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]
Tehran said on Wednesday it had received a US response to its proposal to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, days after US President Donald Trump said he had rejected the plan.
Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi presented the US response to President Masoud Pezeshkian during a cabinet meeting.
Iran submitted the proposal last week, calling for reciprocal steps to be taken within seven days. These included the United States lifting its blockade of Iranian ports in return for Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz to shipping.
Trump said on Sunday that he had rejected the Iranian proposal, but Araghchi said at the time that Tehran had not received an official response.
Reuters quoted a source familiar with the talks as saying Qatari mediators briefed Araghchi on the US response on Tuesday during a stop in Doha on his way back from New York.
The source said the two sides broadly agreed on the steps required, but still disagreed over the order in which they should be implemented.
Pezeshkian said any agreement should be based on a “win-win” strategy.
An Iranian official said the main disagreement between Iran and the United States concerned the sequence of the steps, rather than the elements of the seven-day plan.
Axios, citing informed sources, reported that there had been no tangible progress in Monday’s talks, with neither the United States nor Iran showing a willingness to make concessions.
US officials told Axios that Trump could order a return to large-scale military operations after the midterm elections.
Iranian officials stressed that Tehran would consider making concessions only after Washington agreed to return to the memorandum of understanding.
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Prime Minister Andy Burnham (left) with Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey on the main stage during the Labour Party Conference at the ACC Liverpool, September 28, 2026
