Chinese naval drills put Indo-Pacific on edge plus inside Gaza's 'killing fields'
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The Telegraph.

They're treated like a hostile force. No crowd control measures, no tear gas, just live fire with everything imaginable. Heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end. Right now, all eyes are on Washington. But who's actually watching Europe at the moment?

To the Middle East now, and more than 50,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began. That's according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry. I'm Venetia Rainey, and this is Battle Lines. It's Monday, 30th of June, 2025. For the last few weeks, two Chinese aircraft carrier strike groups have been conducting unprecedented drills in the Western Pacific, sailing further from Beijing than ever before.

What message is China trying to send to the world? And what can we learn about its Navy's capabilities? I'll be looking at that later on in this episode. Before we get going, I also want to quickly acknowledge some of the feedback that we've had on my interview with former Trump advisor Katie McFarland on Friday's episode. You guys do not like her. One listener wrote in to apologise on behalf of all Americans and described her as pushing the propaganda of an authoritarian government.

Another accused her of uttering the same tango man nonsense. Look, all I'll say is we like to get lots of different perspectives on the show and she certainly represents the MAGA voice in America right now. So even if you don't agree with her, I do think it's a valuable insight into Trumpland. We always read all your emails, so please do keep sending them in. Okay, so on with the show.

While the world, and this podcast, frankly, has been focused on the war between Israel and Iran, the Gaza war has continued unabated. And that's where we're going to start today, specifically with an explosive report published in the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz over the weekend. So incendiary that it's actually drawn the ire of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

So Haratz has spoken for the first time to Israeli soldiers who have been operating around the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Fund aid sites. This is the first time that we've heard Israeli soldiers talking about what has been going on there. And the soldiers describe the sites as killing fields where Israeli troops have been ordered to shoot unarmed Gazans, even if they pose no threat.

For the last month, these GHF sites have become the only source of aid amid a near-total blockade that was imposed on the Strip at the beginning of March. More than 500 people have been killed near these aid sites since the end of May, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

It's not clear how many of those have been killed directly by the Israeli army or by militias that are helping to run security. But until this Haaretz story, it's been hard to understand exactly why there have been so many shocking mass casualty events every day. So I think it's worth sharing a few details with you. The aid sites typically open for just one hour every morning and the timers are published on Facebook, despite the fact that not everyone has access to the Internet.

Officers and soldiers working in those areas said the army fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching and then after the centres close again to disperse them. Here's what one soldier told Haaretz. We voiced up their words. We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred metres away and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces.

I'm not aware of a single instance of returned fire. There's no enemy, no weapons. Then, once the centre opens, the shooting stops and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire. It's a killing field. Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day.

A Gaza humanitarian fund has acknowledged some deaths, but it said not all of the numbers reported are associated with distribution at their sites. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz have issued a joint statement calling the Haaretz report blood libel.

They've described the allegations as malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world. All of this comes against the backdrop of a war that is intensifying, despite Trump's fresh calls for a deal. So what's actually going on inside Gaza? To find out, I spoke to the chief spokesperson for UNICEF, James Elder. He recently drove across the entire Strip to meet children affected by the war. Journalists are not allowed into Gaza, but NGO workers such as him are.

He told me about 3am bombardments, hospital visits and what it's like travelling around the Strip.

I was in Gaza for two weeks. It was my fifth mission. I spend every day basically what we would call in the field. Within that, there is an immense privilege because people under attack for nearly two years now are willing to share what's occurring to them and they do so with eloquence and dignity. But they also every now and then will say things like, look, we understand that international law and humanitarian law doesn't apply to us anymore. They seem painfully disloyal.

aware of just how many atrocities are allowed to continue to befall them. So when we talk about wherever I go and the access I do have, which is a lot of access to hospitals, to people in camps, to pretty much most places, as long as you put in the requests, I cannot go to those distribution sites because they are combat sites and they're not de-conflicted and therefore we can't access them.

in an AV with personal protection gear over your body. But that's where civilians are pushed to, to try and get meagre amounts of tin food. Your trip started in Rafah, I assume, or where did you enter the Gaza Strip? The days of going in through Rafah are long, long gone. So you start in Jordan and go in through Israel and then come in through one of the border crossings. So pretty much in the middle of the Gaza Strip. And when you first enter,

complete and utter destruction. And you continue to see that now. There are still bombardments going on in areas where there are no people. There are tank shells that are deliberately hit to keep destroying buildings. So you enter into just an empty scape. You hear about

a devastation of various sectors of Gaza, the economy, agriculture, education. Then you see those things, and you see the damage. Everyone talks rightly of the damage done systematically to hospitals, and then you see it done to universities and to teaching colleges, which is particularly hard to look at when you become aware of the

the pride of Gaza and that it has such a high literacy rate, one of the highest in the world. And that's all born on the back of no matter how many crises have befallen Gazans over the past 20 years, moms, dads, grandparents have kept kids educated. Anyway, so that's the entry into Gaza. You go through areas, it's no man's land. Then you go into areas where there are

hundreds if not thousands of people who come running to the car window, knocking on the car window, tapping, you know, teenage boys, universal sign for hunger, putting hand to mouth. Some teenage boys would lift their shirt to show their ribs. That's what you first see as you go into Gaza, that level of desperation. I'm always looking to see how it has changed because I know I'll be asked as to how does it look compared to when I was last there. And then June 5th, a couple of days later, you visit Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.

It's a hospital that's been bombed a few times. It's one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza. It's really key for southern Gaza. What state was it in? To what extent is it still functioning? Yeah, NASA's been a big part of all my time in Gaza. NASA was where I was in November when there was a six-day ceasefire, I guess. Remembering all these ceasefires, every single time there's proper negotiations, that's when hostages go home. That's when that horrors ends. I think it's 150 people.

have gone home during ceasefires, less than 10 under military means, but that's 18 months ago. So the hospital now is a scene of immense tension. Everywhere around it, and by that I mean 50 metres down any side, is a red zone, meaning it's considered a combat zone. Now the vast, vast majority, more than 80% of the Gaza Strip right now, is an evacuation zone, making it impossible for

For families, these things lose somewhat of their meaning. When you meet little children like I have who were staying in their home, well, a family friend's home because theirs was bombed and they'd been displaced three times and then they get another evacuation order and I'm speaking here to a specific

to a specific little boy, Abiode, who was 11. They got an evacuation order and I met him in Nassau and he was carrying his mattress to get out of the red zone and that's when the airstrike hit, which put shrapnel through his head. Everyone is terrified, but no one knows where to go because they've learned a long time ago that there is no such thing as a safe zone. That is a cynical, contradictory term.

So NASA is tense. NASA is the last hospital producing oxygen for all the field hospitals. It's the last functional hospital in the South. That means it serves a million people. Because it's had a full invasion before, doctors are well aware of how many doctors get arrested these times. So when I was there, around a third of doctors were not coming in. Firstly, because they have to travel through a combat zone. Once you're in a combat zone, if you're shot, the reason given is, hey, you're in a combat zone.

So firstly because of that and secondly because they're fearful of if there is an invasion of the hospital, then they, like many others, may end up in some type of arbitrary detention for some unknown period of time. So it's tense. It's very tense with civilians. It's wall to wall with injuries. It is, again, the thing I notice, I guess, most. Venetia, I'm unfortunately now very used to seeing people

Seeing walking over children with the wounds of war and being in a room of five kids, you know, a little girl with a double amputation of the hips, another little girl paralyzed at the hips, you know, airstrike on her shelter as she was cleaning her teeth. Little Jenna lay there paralyzed, watched her friend die as she lay paralyzed on the ground.

All these children sharing a room, what is different this time, and unfortunately that is no longer different to me, no longer different to watch a child lying there with fourth degree burns. This time around, it was that I heard those things as well as saw them. That is that you hear children's screams, that the sheer lack of painkillers means that not only seeing these horrific wounds of war on little girls and boys, but you hear the blood curdling screams.

That was something that certainly struck me this time. And then doctors, yes, just saying, look, you know, patients are choosing their own destiny here. We're having patients taking children out who are on oxygen because they're so terrified of an attack on the hospital and they take their children out and they're like, those children will die within two or three days in a tent because they're no longer on oxygen.

decisions are made on a daily basis by families that should not be even countenanced in the most horrific kind of imaginary sense. But that's what mum and dad's constantly having to juggle these impossible choices in an arena where

grave violations against girls and boys have just become the norm. You mentioned Jenna who was paralysed. What is UNICEF able to do to help little kids like Jenna? Jenna and many others I could mention by name, they're all on medical evacuation lists. So they're critical. They cannot receive the help that they need there and their situation will deteriorate

In some ways, what that deterioration means is that a child who's had an amputation, Venetia, has another amputation. It's almost like watching children get slowly undone. So you hear of a little girl, or I see a girl who had an amputation, and then medical evacuation doesn't happen for two more weeks, and then suddenly they need to have their right arm amputated as well for some reason. In Jenna's case...

The doctors just made it very clear that they don't have the ability in terms of manpower, if nothing else beyond medicines, to treat whatever the spinal injury was that she's got. So she needs a medical evacuation. So medical evacuations are a key part of the United Nations does is trying to get these children to host countries. And it's a very important part because right now, previously, the problem was that Israel was simply not giving approval for children to leave. This

ultimate, ultimate salt into wounds that a child like Jenna survives an attack on her home as a shelter, is unable to get the medical care she needs in the hospital because it's denied entry into Gaza and then is unable to leave. Now there is loosenings there and there's more chance for those children to leave. The reason more kids like little Jenna are not getting out is because

there are not enough countries around the world accepting them. So the European Union of 27 countries has taken around 130 children, okay, less than four or five per country. The United Kingdom, to the best of my understanding, has taken two. UNICEF,

We have two big parts around. One is, of course, advocacy, public, like we're doing now, and private, behind closed doors. The other is our program, what we actually do, the lifesaving work on the ground. But we don't have many of the tools in our toolbox like major member states do, which is that political influence, diplomatic influence, all sorts of influence. That's not being utilized. So at the very least, then they could be opening their doors to

slash hearts to children who will die without medical evacuation. And that's happening at a lethally low level for member states around the world. We know that it's 50,000 girls and boys now either wounded or killed. When UNICEF calls this an issue, when we call it a war on children, we don't do that based on a headline. We do that on clear evidence. One of those children was a six-year-old little girl, Dana,

Dana, in late 2023, her home was struck and it killed her mum and her dad and her siblings. When I first heard those stories, I never imagined such a thing. Now it's no longer remarkable in terms of numerical sense. It's abhorrent and staggering, but it's not remarkable.

She had the most beautiful pink nail polish. So you just see the attention someone, the love someone was providing. And I thought, why is she in hospital again? And so basically it had taken six months for the little Dana to speak again after what she had seen. Because so many of these children, when they lose loved ones, they often see them killed as well.

This little girl didn't speak for six months. She lived with aunts and uncles and they brought her back in some kind of psychological way. Very difficult, as psychologists will tell me, to help children in that level of trauma when traumas are ongoing. And then two weeks earlier, that family home was struck.

Eight to ten of her family members were killed again. And now she's got quite bad wounds to her head. She's lying there. I am realizing that those children who may have survived some attack that you can't imagine to happen to a girl or boy, it's now happening to the same child a second time. So a couple of nights later, while you're in, I think, Khan Yunus, you experience some really heavy bombing and you send a voice note to your team at around 3 a.m.

Night after night I can hear the screams from tents. Air attacks, bombs, tank fire. Kids being burned in their tents. Those kids will get to a hospital, maybe, maybe the ones that are horrendously burnt. Limbs burning off there, there'll be no medicines, no painkillers because they're denied entry. Those children will lie there screaming in pain as they are right now.

and they'll be not denied denied the ability to leave here bombed in their tents somehow survive writhing pain denied painkillers denied medicines and then denied a chance of life by the night life and you can really hear the emotion in your voice how did you feel in that moment i'm in a building it's a very basic building but it's meant to be de-conflicted meaning that

Israeli authorities know where it is. But of course, more United Nations workers have been killed in Gaza than any war since World War II. I don't feel fear for myself anymore. We felt that when the ceasefire first broke in November 2023, that sense of what was unfolding, but very quickly realised if you're going to be functional, if you're going to be useful to those people who are trying to share their stories, then there's no point being debilitated by that. It's a mix of

Anger, because I can look out my window as I do and I just see a sea of tents.

And I know in those tents, there are children who know these sounds. They know these sounds because these are the sounds that took down their houses. And I've spoken to mums who have said, you know, they can't promise their child they'll wake up in the morning. And I've certainly seen children who look into their parents' eyes and they just know that my parents lost the ability to protect me. It's a level of anger because it's such a broad level of bombardment. You know people are being killed at that point. You know it's civilians. We're at 17,000 reported girls and boys killed.

And honestly, at that point, Venetia, in those moments, you get the weirdest senses of guilt in Gaza. You get guilt when you're eating a meal because there's just such a lack of food. I started to

to realize that if I turned on a fan in my room, just the white noise, then I could actually with a pillow of my head, not hear the bombs because it's so critical to get four hours sleep. Otherwise it's very hard to function the next day, given where we will go and what we will see and who we'll speak to. So then you lie there and there's a, there's a, you know, there's a real sense of guilt in that of,

of literally removing yourself from that reality, which is unavoidable for children 100 metres away. So it's a whole range of emotions, many of which can't be articulated. How frequent was that level of bombing while you were there? You can hear in the voice note, it's really, really heavy. It's nightly. It's absolutely nightly. So that clip you played, that is the soundscape of...

of Gaza for Palestinian families. One of these distribution points is GHF sites that are very much within hearing distance. So I got very used to, you know, around one, two o'clock hearing small arms fire and the odd tank in those areas as well, which was another horrendous thing to kind of imagine. Over the next few days, you travel up to northern Gaza, to Gaza City. What was that journey like? How did you make that journey? It's a similar thing. It's...

You're in an AV, several vehicles. You wear your personal protection gear in the AV. You get deconfliction, meaning that Israel knows where you are and they give approval for that mission. You sit at holding points and you wait. You drive up through a coastal road and as you go into Gaza City, I've seen it before, so you are seeing an immense devastation of a city. The coast is stunning. You're seeing this beautiful coastline, but it's...

The beaches and all the surrounding areas are just tense now. Very, very, very hot for people who once had homes with ACs or with fans. It becomes quite dystopian for a moment in that you drive through and there's all these old oil barrels where they're seeking to make an addition to sort of oil and fuel to add into petrol to create any sort of fuel that they can. So you drive through, you know,

huge flumes of smoke, and then into Gaza City proper, you know, similar things, see colleagues, see what they've been enduring. Saw some very good programs, which is always an immense relief. And then you visit al-Shifa Hospital, which was famously besieged very early on in the war by the Israeli army, who said Hamas was running a command and control center there. Israeli forces raided it again last year. They detained its director for seven months,

What state is that hospital in now? It's extraordinary. Part of it's rebuilt. This is where I cannot have but hope that if this was to end, the ability of Palestinians, I guess because of everything they've been through, things bounce back immediately. So Shifa Hospital, entire wings had been rebuilt, which was incredible.

But at the same time, they're desperately short of the ICU that they need. They're desperately short of doctors. They've lost a lot of doctors who have been killed, detained, or who have fled in the earlier stages. You walk over areas and suddenly realize that you're very close to walking on unmarked graves because they've had to bury huge numbers of people in three different settings that you just

that you wouldn't picture as unmarked graves. There were bodies out the front of the hospital of people who'd been killed in the last hour or two. So there's a general stress perpetually. But then you go and talk to hospital administrators, you know, in their office and have a cup of tea and they run you through exactly what they're doing as if it could be any hospital in the UK and they're giving you a clear sense of their needs and what they're dealing with and how they're managing.

And yet this is a doctor who's living in a tent, whose family's living in a tent, who starts the day at five o'clock, having probably endured the sounds of a bombardment like we spoke of, starts the day by going, where do I get water for my family? Goes to hospital. They tend to do 24-hour shifts and a day off. Has a shift at the same time with the back of their mind the entire time that they're very conscious of their family is...

is in a tent and may or may not see an airstrike and at the very best is just hot and absolutely without all the things that they would like to be doing, such as studying or working. And yet there's that doctor running through the sense of where they stand on medicines, on patients, on trauma, on their coming days. It's utterly remarkable. You mentioned mass graves. I know you sent a voice note to your team when you went to go and visit them. So I'm just going to play that for people now.

This is a mass grave. Just behind me, this is a mass grave at Sheba Hospital. Behind this mass grave is another mass grave, then another mass grave. Life is hell for children, for families in Gaza. But even in death, people here are not able to do the farewell that is such an important part of this culture and cultures around the world, to...

to farewell loved ones in a way that their families and their culture deems impossible. Most people here have never been identified and never will. These are not the lone unmarked graves across Gaza. There are many, many just like this.

A few days later, on June 12th, there is yet another report of a massacre at an aid distribution site run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. On this particular day, at least 36 people were reported to be killed and 208 wounded by Israeli forces. That's according to the Hamas-run Territories Health Ministry.

What is your sense of what is going wrong with that distribution setup? I know the UN is very against it. Can you talk our listeners through why and what you think is going wrong? Yeah, what goes wrong is in the most foundational sense that you can't have an aid distribution site in a militarized zone. You never do. Aid has to be in an area where it's

being delivered by organizations that are impartial, not party to the conflict to make sure that everyone is receiving aid. But obviously you can't also invite people into a combat site. It's not some unwillingness with the United Nations not to support to make it work. There's two parts to that. Firstly, you simply cannot make aid distribution work in a combat site because what we see is people are told to go there. It's the only place for food.

And then there is a mass casualty event and the justification is, well, it was a combat site. So that is an utterly, utterly lethal, ludicrous catch-22. The argument is, what's the alternative? Well, the alternative, and I have this said to me, you know, but isn't it better than nothing? Firstly, no, because it's a false equivalent. The other option is not nothing. The other option is what was happening several months earlier, which is 400 distribution points.

So the United Nations, when it was allowed 500, 600 trucks a day with commercial trucks in, 400 distribution points. This has four. So 400. Why do you do that? You do that because humanitarian aid is based on needs. You assess the needs. You then go to where the people are because you're aware it's a war zone. So you've got to make sure that the elderly can access it. You've got to make sure the injured, quite a lot of injured in Gaza. You've got to make sure mums with kids can access it. And it's interesting because all

All these principles or messages, if you will, was what we were trying to push before this thing opened. And then it did. And then you have mass casualty events increasing by the day, but equally these simple things about like access so that people can get there as well.

I then meet people who are like the talking head of a key message, if you will. Grandmothers in tears say, but how can I go? It's five miles away. How can I possibly go? That's five, not 30 for someone up in Gaza City. So,

They can't access it. It's not safe. It's always the same people who get aid. Invariably, as a grandfather said to me, it's men with knives. I've met 30-year-old men who went seven times and never received anything. It is designed to force a population from the north to the south.

Now, the reason given for that is based on looting and aid diversion. They are the reasons given. Well, looting is the economics of scarcity. If you allow sufficient aid in, there is no black market in a market. You don't have looting. All right, so that's that problem solved. And then you move on to aid diversion. Well, the reply is really simple, frustrating, but simple. Just where's the evidence?

Seriously, where's the evidence? At no point in 2021 months have we had any precise claims, let alone evidence presented of meaningful aid diversion. Just imagine that, none. And yet the narrative that is shared is that it's ubiquitous. And then you look at logic. You go, well, okay, but what's the logic for Hamas around incubators for preemies or vaccines or breastfeeding kits or hygiene kits for women? So evidence, not there. Yeah.

Evidence shared, never. Logic, not there. And if we have to state it again, the Geneva Convention's crystal clear. You know, starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, if that were to be proven, is, of course, prohibited. There is no need to replace the system. And unfortunately, we are now seeing the worst case scenario of, as someone said to me in my first days, the Hunger Games. And...

exasperating as it is, this structure is being used to circumvent an effective aid system that's been proven to work, not just in Gaza, but in multiple conflicts since, I guess, since World War II. You mentioned starvation being used as a weapon of war. How bad did the

malnutrition situation, Sam, while you were there? Malnutrition, never worse. We're now averaging 100 children admitted for treatment every day this year, 50% increase in cases from April to now.

Now, and the thing with malnutrition that's really critical is that when a child gets malnourished, it's unusual that they die of malnutrition. They are 10, 11 times more likely to die of a simple childhood illness, of diarrhea, of a pneumonia, or a mosquito bite, right? That's what kills a child. And that's what will be killing children because you don't get those cases going to hospitals because like NASA hospital, it's in a red zone. You can't get to it.

And certainly if you do get to it, the priority cases are the trauma cases. Because this is manmade, because this is denial, because there's hundreds of trucks just on the other side, because we're not needing airdrops, because you're not 300 miles away from anything, it can be turned around very, very quickly. That's what the ceasefire did. We saw that with these 400 distribution points. We saw malnutrition drop. We saw disease drop. We saw access to medicines increase. But malnutrition is hitting record levels.

on top of, and this is what's really terrifying, a water crisis. In the most simple sense in Gaza, fuel is water. When the electricity was turned off after the horrors of the 7th of October, that meant the production, the treatment, and the distribution of water was largely based on fuel. There are several lines that Israel controls. They're either damaged or they limit the amount of water that enters them. So fuel is the treatment, the production, and the distribution through trucks of water.

Not a single truck of fuel has been allowed to enter Gaza for more than 100 days. So we are weeks away from entire systems shutting down. Every single street I drive through, when you talk about what's it like to drive up north,

Every single person has something to carry water in case a water truck comes through. We're seeing now donkeys doing that distribution. Every person in Gaza is without a doubt way below a minimum emergency level of water. So somehow water doesn't create the same attention because nutrition has that global body, the IPC, and you get a famine warning.

Well, this is a man-made drought. It's not going to get the attention. It's certainly not going to get the attention now with what's happening with Iran. But for those people in Gaza, yeah, holding on to life in Gaza has never been more perilous now. Bombarded, denied access to a meaningful level of hospital care and a population that cannot leave. I've never known before a population can't at least vote for their feet and seek safety. You are trapped.

in that hellscape. So yeah, it's terrifying, and particularly for a very well-versed population in Gaza, that they are aware that they are falling off the world's radar. Finally, is there a child story that you'd like to leave us with, something that stuck with you from your trip? I had gone to a hospital deliberately seeking children who'd gone down to this Gaza Humanitarian Foundation because it was at a point where

where the press, the media was being told that no one was injured. It was all random fire or Hamas fire or something. And I met a little 13-year-old boy, Abdullah Rahman, striking little kid because he's writhing in pain. He had been given money by his dad to go and buy bread.

last money, last food, go and buy bread. As he'd gone out onto the streets, he just saw a clear flood of people heading down to these distribution points. So he's clearly just thought, this is my moment. I follow these guys, whatever happens, go to this place that they're all just hearing about. I get a box of whatever it is, a box of food. And I come back, not just with bread, but imagine the sense of helping your starving family.

And he went and it was the same story now I've heard a dozen times. He went, they're queued almost in these cattle pens as the language shared. Barbed wire, chaos ensued. There's firing, there's fire. He doesn't know where it's coming from. There's quadcopters as well. Everyone runs. People are being trampled. Obviously he leaves with nothing. Suddenly a tank shell is shot and the shrapnel from that rips through his stomach.

His little boy is there, he's a sweet little guy. His family asked me to do a video for him because they were pushing so heavily for medical evacuation, thinking that attention may make a difference. His mom was, you know, his mom was so sharp and she'd done everything right. Like, okay, this has happened to my son getting us food, now get him out of here.

he's screaming every now and then um and his dad's in tears as he recounts the story because he's seeing you know what he's his little boy just went to get the food for his family and he's now looking at him in this state and as i do the video even though he's got injuries his stomach and his pancreas and he hasn't he's explaining he's desperate for painkillers but hasn't had any since the morning and this is now seven hours past the morning he had five meals he sits up

Venetia, he sits up and he holds onto my arm. It's this amazing stoicism of a little boy. Just he wants, I guess, it's his dignity.

We tell his story and we go back to see him a week later and he's fading badly because he's not getting the care. Despite doctor's best efforts, they are, this is a war zone. They're 20 months into this. They don't have the things they need. And the day I go to leave, which is a full two weeks later, you're sort of sitting there and about to go and get in the AV and go through all of that. And, and it's the last message I get before I lose connectivity that this little guy, Abdullah Rahman has, has lost his fight and,

and has died. This little boy, this little guy like anyone's son just went, okay, I'm not following your instructions, dad. I'm going to bring you guys back some proper food. I'm sick of watching my family in this amount of pain. And the effort for him to go and get food for his family at one of these sites, that cost him his life. And that story is probably being retold time and again. That was James Elder, UNICEF's Chief Spokesperson.

A reminder that Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas's 7th of October massacre, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 others taken hostage. Since then, more than 56,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry. Coming up after the break, why Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines are worried about China's latest naval exercise.

Welcome back. China has been busy flexing its naval muscles and countries in the Indo-Pacific are worried.

Beijing's two functional aircraft carriers, the Liaoning and the Shandong, have crossed into what's known as the Second Island Chain for the first time ever to carry out drills in the Western Pacific simultaneously. We'll explain exactly what the Second Island Chain is shortly, but basically this is an enormous show of power and ambition meant to challenge the US and its allies in the region.

And it comes as Britain's aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, has just arrived in the region for an eight-month deployment in the Indo-Pacific. I'm joined now by Philip Shatler-Jones, a Senior Research Fellow on Indo-Pacific Security at RUSI.

Philip, welcome to Battlelines. How significant is the fact that these aircraft carrier groups have ventured into the second island chain for the first time? Hello. Well, it's significant because it's another step on the way to the People's Liberation Army Navy, China's Navy, in becoming really a much more capable force.

in the region and rivaling the United States Navy for primacy in the region. Currently, the U.S. Navy has a number of carriers at sea, but of course they can't all be concentrated in the Western Pacific. They have tasks in the Middle East, in the Atlantic and elsewhere. So I think currently the U.S. Navy only has one

one of its larger carriers there. Can you explain to our listeners the first and second island chains and where does this concept come from? What does it actually mean? The first island chain is a chain of islands going down from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines, down to South China Sea. And if you look at that geography from China's point of view, you look out eastwards into the Pacific and

It's a kind of barrier which can be used to track Chinese ships and other, say, aircraft going across into the Pacific. And so it has a strategic value. And if you want to prevent that happening during wartime, then it's much easier to do that because you have

radar missile bases and ports along that chain. And it can kind of keep China bottled up, if you like, in that area between the chain and the Chinese coastline. The second island chain goes out further east from Japan to Guam.

And so it's still in the Western Pacific, but it's a much wider area than it goes down through the Marianas towards Australia. And the fact that they've ventured out into the second island chain, why has that got regional actors such as Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines so worried? Most analysts understand China's strategy is to get the capability of

keeping the US Navy and the US forces in general at a distance if they decide to have a military operation, for example, to take Taiwan. And so part of the operation is to keep the United States at arm's length and stop them coming into the theater. And there would be another part internally within that to carry out some kind of

blockade, quarantine or invasion of Taiwan, safe from US interference. So their ability to put carriers and air power out into the Pacific really complicates the job of the United States Navy in coming across the Pacific from the US mainland or from where Indo-Pacific Command is in Hawaii and bringing forces in at a large scale.

And these exercises, I mean, they're not illegal, right? They're in international waters. I believe they strayed briefly into Japan's exclusive economic zone with an aircraft. Does that sound right to you? I think I would broadly agree that there is nothing illegal about this kind of military exercise in the open sea. And in fact,

Countries differ in their interpretation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea about what kind of military activities are permitted within an exclusive economic zone. Some say it's fine, others say it's not allowed. So that's sometimes a controversial point. But broadly speaking, there's nothing illegal happening here.

So why have we seen, for example, Japan's government publish this map tracking China's aircraft carriers' activities? Quite a rare move for them to make such a public comment on this. Why are they reacting so strongly to this particular set of drills? Well, I think it's becoming less rare now for Japan to be more outspoken about their security concerns.

Japan is really one of the most exposed countries in terms of this power rivalry between the US and China, because it's where the bulk of US forward deployed military sits. And so that's obviously important in case there is a conflict. Japan will be involved with that because they're hosting US forces. But it's also important because if you're looking from Japan's point of view, you're worried about your own security.

it's very important that America has the freedom to bring in more forces across the Pacific and reinforce and supply the military that's based on Japan. So if China develops the ability to, if you like, cut off the Western Pacific to some extent by a combination of aircraft carriers, air power, and other means, then that really makes Japan feel very exposed. So it's understandable they're keeping very close eye on this development. And

And from these drills, does it look like they do have the capability to cut off the Western Pacific? What kind of exercises did we see them undertaking? I don't think so. The two aircraft carriers involved in these exercises, from most reports, are the older of the three carriers that China currently has.

And they were based on Russian build and design. And they have quite limited capabilities in terms of the number of aircraft they can get in the air, the type of aircraft they can get in the air, the number of sorties they can cycle through at a given time. So I think this is probably something we should see as China going up the learning curve, rather than China going up close to a point where they could actually keep the US Navy at a distance.

But they have a third carrier, which is currently undergoing sea trials. And that's a much more capable vessel. I would say it's somewhere between our Queen Elizabeth, Prince of Wales class carriers and the big American carriers like Nimitz Ford class. So it's closer to the US end of that spectrum than the end of our carriers. But of course, it's quite a complicated thing to compare because you have lots of

variable factors. As you mentioned, China only has three of these aircraft carriers and that third is being sea tested at the moment compared to more than 20 that the US has, right? US, I believe, has something more like 11 carriers in total.

It can be confusing because they have amphibious vessels which are almost of the same size. And so they can launch Marines and aircraft as well. So you're right that the U.S. naval aviation capability is more than just its carriers.

The US, of course, has also to spread its capabilities out much more widely. So if you think they have 11 carriers at any given time, probably half of those are in some kind of repair or preparing to go out or coming back.

You probably have one or two in the Middle East and the Atlantic, perhaps one on the west coast of the US. So between Hawaii and the west coast of the US. So that doesn't leave many in the Western Pacific. So it's significant at this moment, as I understand it, there is this exercise we're talking about here with the Chinese carriers. Japan has a small capability, which can come up to launching the same type of F-35B aircraft that we have.

And we have our own Royal Navy Prince of Wales carrier, which has just sailed from Singapore towards Australia. So if you look at that region, so between Hawaii and China and Australia,

The UK is a third of the presence there right now between China and Japan and the US. What do we know about what the Prince of Wales is going to be getting up to? There was some talk about it going through the Taiwan Strait. I think it's highly unlikely the aircraft carrier Prince of Wales will go through the Taiwan Strait.

In the past, ships that are part of the escort of the carrier strike group have gone through the Taiwan Strait, and that might happen this time. What we know about the purpose of the deployment, according to the Royal Navy, is it's to prove full operational capability. And they're doing that through the opportunity of the big exercises that are going on in the region. So the next one will be with Australia, and then the carrier group will sail up towards Japan.

And after that, we'll come back down and do more exercises with the five-pound defense arrangement around Singapore and Malaysia. These drills in the Western Pacific are just the latest example of China doing unprecedented things. They recently sent their navy to circle around Australia, right, which was also unprecedented.

Is this a China that is more confident and aggressive? Or is this a China that's just testing out its defensive capabilities more and flexing its muscles? Yes, I think China is...

developing these capabilities because like ourselves and like other countries who have an economy that depends very much on free flow of trade and goods and materials, it has a stake in making sure that its shipping gets to and from where it wants to. So they are

really coming up to the level that you would expect of a big economy with a big military. They're mostly acting, when it comes to the aircraft carriers, within what's considered normal international law and custom. There was an exception to that when there was a live fire exercise in the area between New Zealand and Australia. There were some questions raised about whether

advance notice was given for that exercise and that if it wasn't, it could have disrupted normal air traffic in the region. So there are some criticisms about the way they're doing their exercises and some speculation that they're doing that to, as you say, flex their muscles and show countries like Australia that if Australia sends ships near China and does things China doesn't like, like surveillance, then China can send their ships to Australia and do things that Australia won't like.

That was Philip Shetler-Jones, Senior Research Fellow on Indo-Pacific Security at RUSI. That's all for today's episode of Battlelines. We'll be back again on Friday. Until then, goodbye. Battlelines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Venetia Rainey and Roland Oliphant. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battlelines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it really helps others find the show.

To stay on top of all of our news, subscribe to The Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatches newsletter, or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine The Latest. You can get in touch directly by emailing battlelines at telegraph.co.uk or contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show notes. The producer is Peter Shevlin. The executive producer is Louisa Wells.

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