Category: Global

At least 35 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza since the early hours of Saturday, as reported by hospital sources cited by Al Jazeera.

Among the deceased are at least eight individuals reportedly waiting for aid. Medical facilities in the region are facing difficulties managing the increasing number of injured as Israeli forces persist in targeting various locations.

Hamas on Friday said it was ready to start talks “immediately” on a proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, where the civil defence agency said Israel’s ongoing offensive killed more than 50 people.

The announcement came after it held consultations with other Palestinian factions and before a visit on Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, where President Donald Trump is pushing for an end to the war, now in its 21st month.

“The movement is ready to engage immediately and seriously in a cycle of negotiations on the mechanism to put in place” the terms of a draft US-backed truce proposal received from mediators, the militant group said in a statement.

Hamas ally Islamic Jihad said it supported ceasefire talks, but demanded “guarantees” that Israel “will not resume its aggression” once hostages held in Gaza are freed.

Trump, when asked about Hamas’ response aboard Air Force One on Friday, said: “That’s good. They haven’t briefed me on it. We have to get it over with. We have to do something about Gaza.”

The genocide against the Palestinians by Israel worsened after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which led to a massive Israeli offensive and has killed more than 57,000 innocents civilians in Gaza.

Two previous ceasefires brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have seen temporary halts in fighting, coupled with the return of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Netanyahu earlier on Friday vowed to bring home all the hostages held in Gaza, after coming under massive domestic pressure over their fate.

“I feel a deep commitment, first and foremost, to ensure the return of all our abductees, all of them,” he said.

Trump said on Thursday he wanted “safety for the people of Gaza”.

“They’ve gone through hell,” he said.

– 60-day truce proposal –

A Palestinian source familiar with the negotiations told AFP earlier this week that the latest proposals included “a 60-day truce, during which Hamas would release half of the living Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip” — thought to number 22 — “in exchange for Israel releasing a number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees”.

Out of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the October 2023 attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

Nearly 21 months of genocide have created dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has recently expanded its military operations.

The military said in a statement it had been striking suspected Hamas targets across the territory, including around Gaza City in the north and Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south.

– Civil defence says aid-seekers killed –

Gaza civil defence official Mohammad al-Mughayyir said Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least 52 people on Friday.

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports, except for a handful of incidents for which it requested coordinates and timeframes.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency.

In a separate statement, the Israeli military said a 19-year-old sergeant “fell during combat in the southern Gaza Strip”.

Mughayyir said the Palestinians killed included five shot while waiting for aid near a US-run site near Rafah in southern Gaza and several who were waiting for aid near the Wadi Gaza Bridge in the centre of the territory.

They were the latest in a spate of deaths near aid distribution centres in the devastated territory, which UN agencies have warned is on the brink of famine.

The US- and Israeli-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distanced itself from reports of deadly incidents near its sites.

– Displaced civilians –

Mughayyir told AFP that eight people, including a child, were killed in an Israeli air strike on the tents of displaced civilians near Khan Yunis on Thursday.

The civil defence official said eight more people were killed in two other strikes on camps on the coast, including one that killed two children early Friday.

The Israeli military said it was operating throughout Gaza “to dismantle Hamas military capabilities”.

Palestinian officials and witnesses said on Wednesday that an Israeli strike killed the director of the Indonesian Hospital, a key clinic in the north of war-ravaged Gaza.

Doctor Marwan Al-Sultan was killed in his apartment in Gaza City along with his wife, daughters and son-in-law, a relative who said he found them, Ahmed al-Sultan, told AFP.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said seven people were killed in the strike early Wednesday afternoon, including Sultan, his wife and at least three of his children.

The doctor’s body was taken to the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where mourners gathered around it, AFP journalists reported.

“His face was unrecognisable, we could barely identify him,” the director of that facility, Mohammad Abu Salmiya, told AFP.

Surviving daughter Lubna Sultan paid tribute too her father at the hospital.

“His whole life was devoted to medicine and the struggle to treat patients,” she told AFP.

“There is no justification for targeting him and his martyrdom.”

The killing drew condemnation from Hamas and the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, where Israeli forces are battling to crush the Palestinian militant group.

“We strongly condemn this heinous crime against our medical personnel, and we ask Allah to grant him and his family mercy, after a long journey of service,” the ministry said.

The Israeli army told AFP: “The claim that as a result of the strike uninvolved civilians were harmed is being reviewed.”

It said it “struck a key terrorist from the Hamas terrorist organization in the area of Gaza City” on Wednesday.

The Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, the group that runs the hospital, called the killing of the doctor and his family “a flagrant violation of humanitarian principles and a grave act of injustice”, saying those responsible “must be held accountable”.

An Israeli military operation targeted the Indonesian Hospital in mid-May, when the Gaza health ministry said the facility’s electricity generators were deliberately destroyed.

India’s attempt to secure a direct reference to Pakistan in a joint statement issued by Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), the four-member group comprising of the United States, India, Japan, and Australia on the April 22 Pahalgam attack fell short, as the alliance condemned the incident but refrained from naming any country.

The foreign ministers of QUAD met in Washington, D.C. on June 25, 2025 and issued a statement denouncing the attack in Pahalgam, located in Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir. The attack resulted in the deaths of 26 people, including one Nepali national.

India has repeatedly accused Pakistan of orchestrating the incident, alleging financial and logistical support. However, despite repeated requests from Pakistan, India has not made any evidence public. The joint statement, released through the U.S. State Department, stopped short of naming Pakistan and instead referred more generally to “cross-border terrorism.”

“The terrorist attack in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025, is condemned in the strongest terms. We demand prompt justice for the individuals responsible, as well as those who orchestrated and funded this act,” the statement said.

Pakistan has rejected India’s allegations and called for an independent and impartial investigation into the matter. QUAD’s statement urged UN member states to cooperate with relevant authorities under international law and existing UN Security Council resolutions but avoided attributing blame.

The statement further added: “We unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism and violent extremism in all its forms and manifestations, including cross-border terrorism, and reaffirm our commitment to counterterrorism cooperation.”

The meeting was attended by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya.

Following the Pahalgam attack, tensions escalated between India and Pakistan. On May 7, the Indian Air Force launched airstrikes on civilian areas inside Pakistan, claiming to target militant infrastructure. Pakistan responded by downing several Indian fighter jets, including three Rafales. The exchange of fire between both sides continued for days, leading to military and civilian casualties and fears of an all-out war between the two nuclear-armed nations.

While India sought stronger language and an explicit reference to Pakistan, the final QUAD statement maintained a broader diplomatic tone, yet another blow to India’s diplomatic efforts to isolate Pakistan.

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi says Iran likely will be able to begin to produce enriched uranium “in a matter of months,” despite damage to several nuclear facilities from US and Israeli attacks, CBS News said Saturday.

Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear and military sites on June 13, saying it was aimed at keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition the Islamic republic has consistently denied.

The United States subsequently bombed three key facilities used for Tehran’s atomic program.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the extent of the damage to the nuclear sites is “serious,” but the details are unknown. US President Donald Trump insisted Iran’s nuclear program had been set back “decades.”

But Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said “some is still standing.”

“They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi said Friday, according to a transcript of the interview released Saturday.

Another key question is whether Iran was able to relocate some or all of its estimated 408.6-kilo (900-pound) stockpile of highly enriched uranium before the attacks.

The uranium in question is enriched to 60 percent — above levels for civilian usage but still below weapons grade. That material, if further refined, would theoretically be sufficient to produce more than nine nuclear bombs.

Grossi admitted to CBS: “We don’t know where this material could be.”

“So some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved. So there has to be at some point a clarification,” he said in the interview.

For now, Iranian lawmakers voted to suspend cooperation with the IAEA and Tehran rejected Grossi’s request for a visit to the damaged sites, especially Fordo, the main uranium enrichment facility.

“We need to be in a position to ascertain, to confirm what is there, and where is it and what happened,” Grossi said.

In a separate interview with Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” program, Trump said he did not think the stockpile had been moved.

“It’s a very hard thing to do plus we didn’t give much notice,” he said, according to excerpts of the interview. “They didn’t move anything.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday underscored Washington’s support for “the IAEA’s critical verification and monitoring efforts in Iran,” commending Grossi and his agency for their “dedication and professionalism.”

The full Grossi interview will air on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday.

Kim was an enthusiastic visitor this week to the sprawling site on the isolated country’s east coast, which is set to open its doors on July 1 to domestic tourists and maybe one day foreign ones.

Analysts have said Kim showed a keen interest in developing North Korea’s tourism industry in his early years in power, with the development of the Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area known to be a key focal point.

The nuclear-armed North reopened its borders in August 2023 after almost four years, having closed them because of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which time even its own nationals were prevented from entering.

Foreign tourism was limited though even before the pandemic, with tour companies saying around 5,000 Western tourists visited each year.

Kim on Tuesday attended a lavish inaugural ceremony for the tourist zone, which hosts accommodation for nearly 20,000 people and what Pyongyang claims is “a world-class cultural resort”, the Korean Central News Agency said.

Photos released by state media showed him sitting in a chair watching a man flying off a water slide and wearing a suit at the beach.

Wonsan Kalma houses “sea-bathing service facilities, various sports and recreation facilities” and is “equipped with all conditions… for providing the beauty of the scenic spot on the east coast in all seasons”, according to KCNA.

Kim, with “great satisfaction”, said the construction of the site would go down as “one of the greatest successes this year” and that the North would build more large-scale tourist zones “in the shortest time possible”, it added.

Kim was joined by his daughter, Ju Ae — considered by many experts to be his likely successor — and his wife, Ri Sol Ju.

South Korean media reported, based on images released by Pyongyang, that Ju Ae appears to be wearing a Cartier watch — despite such a high-end item being banned from import into North Korea under UN sanctions, imposed in response to the country’s nuclear and missile activities.

The North last year permitted Russian tourists — Pyongyang has close ties with Moscow — to return for the first time since Covid and Western tour operators returned in February this year.

Russia’s Tass news agency on Wednesday reported that a passenger train from Pyongyang had arrived in Moscow, marking the reopening of the direct rail route between the allies’ capitals after a five-year suspension.

A tourist train between Rason — home to North Korea’s first legal marketplace — and Russia’s Vladivostok resumed in May this year, according to an official from Seoul’s unification ministry.