Britain’s main opposition leader Keir Starmer has sought to defuse an internal row about his stance on Israel’s war with Hamas, after he refused to call for a permanent ceasefire, according to AFP.

Starmer, 61, described Hamas’s attack, which Israel says killed some 1,400 people, as “terrorism on a scale and brutality that few countries have ever experienced”.

“That must drive our response to these events, as must the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which again plays out on a previously unimaginable scale,” he said in a speech in central London.