Penny Wong warns there are ‘increasingly few safe places’ for civilians in Gaza as conflict spreads

Australian foreign minister also endorses US defence secretary’s comments on Israel-Hamas war that ‘you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians’

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The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has acknowledged “there are increasingly few safe places” for civilians in Gaza and has joined the US in warning that Israel risks “strategic defeat”.

Wong conceded on Thursday that her language about the conflict did not go “as far as some might want” but said this “does not diminish our concern for the numbers of civilian casualties that we are seeing”.

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