“Gaza doctors save baby from womb of mother killed in Israeli airstrike,” said the headlines. The pictures on television showed the feeble newborn delivered at 30 weeks via an emergency caesarean section prostrate in an incubator at a hospital in Rafah.

This extraordinary human story arose from an ongoing conflict in the Middle East, where Israel continues to hit back at Hamas in Gaza following its deadly terrorist attack inside Israeli territory last October. Last week Iran mounted a series of drone attacks on Israel after it had in turn attacked the Iranian embassy in Syria on April 1.

Meanwhile, the Herald reported that Australia will, beginning this week, take part in an annual military exercise that will send thousands of Philippine and American military personnel to conduct drills close to Taiwan and in contested waters in the South China Sea.

Defence spending announced last week is to soar to $100 billion a year within a decade – double current levels – as the Albanese government directly identifies China’s unprecedented military build-up as the biggest threat of conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

And on top of all of this, the Russian-Ukraine war continues to rage into its third year.

That the world is a precarious place with the long shadow of war omnipresent is increasingly evident as we commemorate the 93rd Anzac Day dawn service (the first official dawn service took place in 1929 and only missed 1942 due to the Second World War and 2020 due to COVID).

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has just learnt first-hand with mud on his boots the past atrocities of war. He has just walked sections of the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea where Australians were in close combat with the Japanese in appalling conditions in World War II. Approximately 625 Australians were killed and more than 1600 wounded.

There are no veterans left from the First World War, but a “memorial horse” reminiscent of the Australian Light Horse of the mounted infantry will join the Anzac Day march at which some 10,000 veterans are expected.