{"id":40828,"date":"2019-09-12T13:22:58","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T13:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40828"},"modified":"2019-09-12T13:22:58","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T13:22:58","slug":"israel-strikes-hamas-after-new-gaza-rocket-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40828","title":{"rendered":"Israel strikes Hamas after new Gaza rocket fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"43\">\n<p>\nSYDNEY: Two Australians detained in Iran were named on Thursday as a travel-blogging couple who were arrested while making an overland trip from their home country to Britain.<br \/>Perth-based Jolie King and Mark Firkin had been documenting their journey on social media for the past two years but went silent after posting updates from Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan about 10 weeks ago.<br \/>\u201cOur families hope to see Mark and Jolie safely home as soon as possible,\u201d a statement released on behalf of their relatives said.<br \/>Before setting off, the couple had written on their blog that they \u201ccan\u2019t wait to share all of our experiences and the beauty of all the different destinations and countries we will be visiting.\u201d<br \/>Australia first revealed on Wednesday that three of its citizens had been seized by authorities in Tehran.<br \/>The Times of London reported the third person was a British-Australian academic who studied at Cambridge University and was working as a lecturer in Australia when she was arrested in Iran nearly a year ago.<br \/>News of the arrests came after Australia announced it would join a US-led mission to protect shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, with tensions high in the Gulf region.<br \/>The Times also reported that King and the other woman were being held in Tehran\u2019s Evin prison and that one of them had been told she was being held as part of a plan to facilitate a prisoner swap.<br \/>Already difficult relations between Iran and the US \u2014 and American allies \u2014 have threatened to boil over since President Donald Trump in 2018 abandoned a deal to limit Tehran\u2019s nuclear program, and Iran resumed some proscribed nuclear activities.<br \/>Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison last month announced a \u201cmodest\u201d Australian contribution to the US-led Gulf mission \u2014 including a frigate, a P8 maritime surveillance aircraft and support staff \u2014 which will also involve British forces.<br \/>Asked about detained Australians, Morrison said Thursday the government would \u201ccontinue to pursue these matters in the interests of the Australians at the center of these cases.\u201d<br \/>\u201cWe will do that carefully and we will do that in close consultation through our officials who have been part of this process now for some time,\u201d he told reporters in Canberra.<br \/>Australia\u2019s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was providing consular assistance to the detained trio and has urged Australians to reconsider traveling to Iran.<br \/>Earlier this week, the Australian government updated its travel advice for Iran to \u201creconsider your need to travel\u201d and \u201cdo not travel\u201d to areas near the border with Iraq and Afghanistan.<br \/>It was not immediately clear if any of the three have been charged.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SYDNEY: Two Australians detained in Iran were named on Thursday as a travel-blogging couple who were arrested while making an overland trip from their home country to Britain.Perth-based Jolie King and Mark Firkin had been documenting their journey on social media for the past two years but went silent after posting updates from Kyrgyzstan and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":40829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}