Middle East

Israeli forces have killed at least 109 Palestinians in attacks across the Gaza Strip, medical sources told Al Jazeera, even as United States President Donald Trump claimed that Israel had agreed to “the necessary conditions” to finalise a 60-day ceasefire.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social site on Tuesday that the US would work “with all parties” to end the war on Gaza during the ceasefire, and called on Hamas to agree to the deal.

Trump’s comments came after a particularly bloody day in Gaza, as Israeli attacks destroyed clusters of homes in the north and south of the enclave, amid fears of yet another looming ground invasion.

The attacks come ahead of a planned visit next week by Netanyahu to Washington, DC. Trump said on Tuesday that the Israeli prime minister wanted to end the war on Gaza, even as his forces ramp up attacks in Gaza.

Among the Palestinians killed were 16 hungry aid seekers who died when Israeli soldiers attacked crowds at aid distribution hubs run by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to medical sources.

They are the latest victims in a wave of daily killings at these sites, which have killed nearly 600 Palestinians since GHF took over limited aid deliveries in Gaza in late May amid a crippling Israeli blockade.

More than 170 major international charities and nongovernmental organisations have called for an immediate end to GHF, which rights groups say is operating in violation of international principles.

“Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” a joint statement read.

GHF brings “nothing but starvation and gunfire to the people of Gaza,” it added.

Israeli forces also attacked Gaza City in the north, where it recently issued forced evacuation orders for residents of the area, which has already been bombarded into rubble. At least five people were killed when an Israeli quadcopter struck a gathering of people, local news agency Wafa reported.

At least 82 percent of Gaza is now an Israeli-militarised zone or under forced displacement threats, according to the United Nations, warning people have nowhere to go.

Ismail, a resident of the Sheikh Radwan suburb of Gaza City, said that newly displaced families were setting up tents in the road, after fleeing from areas north and east of the city and finding no other ground available.

“We don’t sleep because of the sounds of explosions from tanks and planes. The occupation is destroying homes east of Gaza, in Jabalia and other places around us,” he said.

‘Waiting room for death’

In Khan Younis and its al-Mawasi area in the south, at least 12 Palestinians were killed when a home belonging to the al-Zanati family was targeted. Separately, a child was killed and several others wounded when an Israeli air strike struck a displacement camp.

Several more were killed in an Israeli attack west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to sources at al-Awda Hospital, while two others were killed and several wounded in a separate attack on a UN-run school sheltering displaced families in the al-Maghazi refugee camp.

In a statement, the Israeli army said it attacked Gaza more than 140 times in the past 24 hours, claiming all those hit were “terror targets” and “militants”.

The attacks come as hospitals in the devastated enclave struggle to cope with the influx of people amid a severe shortage of medical supplies and much-needed fuel.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said critical services at the al-Shifa Hospital – which has come under attack and besieged several times throughout Israel’s assault on Gaza – will soon come to a halt.

“Critical services at al-Shifa Hospital have either stopped or will stop in the coming hours as backup generators are running out of fuel,” Mahmoud said.

“This hospital was once the largest healthcare facility in Gaza, but has slowly turned into a waiting room for death, not just because of the war wounds, but because of a lack of fuel that keeps everything running,” he said.

Hope for deal ‘next week’

The desperate situation in Gaza is increasing the pressure on world leaders to secure a deal that would end the war.

Trump continues to maintain that a ceasefire deal is close, and that he hopes one will be secured “sometime next week”, during Netanyahu’s White House visit.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a close Netanyahu ally, is in Washington this week for talks with senior officials on a Gaza ceasefire, Iran and other matters.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said pressure by Trump on Israel would be key to any breakthrough in stalled ceasefire efforts.

“We call upon the US administration to atone for its sin towards Gaza by declaring an end to the war,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, said there is “cautious optimism” in Israel regarding a ceasefire.

“But there are still a lot of concerns, especially among family members of Israeli captives who have been calling for a deal,” Salhut said, adding that Netanyahu “has never signalled he wants to end the war”.

But Hamas has insisted it would not agree to any deal that does not include a full Israeli withdrawal from the Strip and a permanent halt to the war, which has so far killed more than 56,000 Palestinians since it began in October 2023.

Meanwhile, key mediator Qatar has reportedly sent an updated proposal to Hamas and Israel. According to Axios, the proposal includes a 60-day truce and the release of 10 captives, and would serve as the basis for negotiations aimed at a permanent end to the war and new governance for Gaza.

In the predawn darkness of June 13, Israel launched a “preemptive” attack on Iran. Explosions rocked various parts of the country. Among the targets were nuclear sites at Natanz and Fordo, military bases, research labs, and senior military residences. By the end of the operation, Israel had killed at least 974 people while Iranian missile strikes in retaliation had killed 28 people in Israel.

Israel described its actions as anticipatory self-defence, claiming Iran was mere weeks away from producing a functional nuclear weapon. Yet intelligence assessment, including by Israeli ally, the United States, and reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed no evidence of Tehran pursuing a nuclear weapon. At the same time, Iranian diplomats were in talks with US counterparts for a possible new nuclear deal.

But beyond the military and geopolitical analysis, a serious ethical question looms: is it morally justifiable to launch such a devastating strike based not on what a state has done, but on what it might do in the future? What precedent does this set for the rest of the world? And who gets to decide when fear is enough to justify war?

A dangerous moral gamble

Ethicists and international lawyers draw a critical line between preemptive and preventive war. Pre-emption responds to an imminent threat – an immediate assault. Preventive war strikes against a possible future threat.

Only the former meets moral criteria rooted in the philosophical works of thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas, and reaffirmed by modern theorists like Michael Walzer — echoing the so-called Caroline formula, which permits preemptive force only when a threat is “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation”.

Israel’s raid, however, fails this test. Iran’s nuclear capability was not weeks from completion. Diplomacy had not been exhausted. And the devastation risked — including radioactive fallout from centrifuge halls — far exceeded military necessity.

The law mirrors moral constraints. The UN Charter Article 2(4) bans the use of force, with the sole exception in Article 51, which permits self-defence after an armed attack. Israel’s invocation of anticipatory self-defence relies on contested legal custom, not accepted treaty law. UN experts have called Israel’s strike “a blatant act of aggression” violating jus cogens norms.

Such costly exceptions risk fracturing the international legal order. If one state can credibly claim pre-emption, others will too — from China reacting to patrols near Taiwan, to Pakistan reacting to perceived Indian posturing — undermining global stability.

Israel’s defenders respond that existential threats justify drastic action. Iran’s leaders have a history of hostile rhetoric towards Israel and have consistently backed armed groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently argued that when a state’s existence is under threat, international law struggles to provide clear, actionable answers.

The historical scars are real. But philosophers warn that words, however hateful, do not equate to act. Rhetoric stands apart from action. If speech alone justified war, any nation could wage preemptive war based on hateful rhetoric. We risk entering a global “state of nature”, where every tense moment becomes cause for war.

Technology rewrites the rules

Technology tightens the squeeze on moral caution. The drones and F‑35s used in Rising Lion combined to paralyse Iran’s defences within minutes. Nations once could rely on time to debate, persuade, and document. Hypersonic missiles and AI-powered drones have eroded that window — delivering a stark choice: act fast or lose your chance.

These systems don’t just shorten decision time — they dissolve the traditional boundary between wartime and peacetime. As drone surveillance and autonomous systems become embedded in everyday geopolitics, war risks becoming the default condition, and peace the exception.

We begin to live not in a world of temporary crisis, but in what philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls a permanent state of exception — a condition where emergency justifies the suspension of norms, not occasionally but perpetually.

In such a world, the very idea that states must publicly justify acts of violence begins to erode. Tactical advantage, coined as “relative superiority”, leverages this compressed timeframe — but gains ground at a cost.

In an era where classified intelligence triggers near-instant reaction, ethical scrutiny retreats. Future first-move doctrines will reward speed over law, and surprise over proportion. If we lose the distinction between peace and war, we risk losing the principle that violence must always be justified — not assumed.

The path back to restraint

Without immediate course correction, the world risks a new norm: war before reason, fear before fact. The UN Charter depends on mutual trust that force remains exceptional. Every televised strike chips away at that trust, leading to arms races and reflexive attacks. To prevent this cascade of fear-driven conflict, several steps are essential.

There has to be transparent verification: Claims of “imminent threat” must be assessed by impartial entities — IAEA monitors, independent inquiry commissions — not buried inside secret dossiers.

Diplomacy must take precedence: Talks, backchannels, sabotage, sanctions — all must be demonstrably exhausted pre-strike. Not optionally, not retroactively.

There must be public assessment of civilian risk: Environmental and health experts must weigh in before military planners pull the trigger.

The media, academia, and public must insist that these thresholds are met — and keep governments accountable.

Preemptive war may, in rare cases, be morally justified — for instance, missiles poised on launchpads, fleets crossing redlines. But that bar is high by design. Israel’s strike on Iran wasn’t preventive, it was launched not against an unfolding attack but against a feared possibility.  Institutionalising that fear as grounds for war is an invitation to perpetual conflict.

If we abandon caution in the name of fear, we abandon the shared moral and legal boundaries that hold humanity together. Just war tradition demands we never view those who may harm us as mere threats — but rather as human beings, each worthy of careful consideration.

The Iran–Israel war is more than military drama. It is a test: will the world still hold the line between justified self-defence and unbridled aggression? If the answer is no, then fear will not just kill soldiers. It will kill the fragile hope that restraint can keep us alive.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Iran’s embassy in Berlin swiftly rejects allegation after man is arrested in neighbouring Denmark.

A Danish man has been arrested on suspicion of spying in Germany on behalf of Iran, an allegation swiftly denied by the Iranian embassy in Berlin.

German prosecutors on Tuesday said the man, identified only as Ali S under German privacy law, was suspected of conducting the surveillance “in preparation of further intelligence activities in Germany, possibly including terrorist attacks on Jewish targets”.

It added that the individual was suspected of receiving the espionage orders from “an Iranian intelligence service”.

German and Danish authorities said the man had been arrested in Denmark but would be extradited to Germany.

The Iranian embassy in Berlin decried what it called “unfounded and dangerous accusations”.

“Previous discussions with relevant German authorities have already highlighted that certain third parties are attempting to divert public perceptions from the actual events through artificial staging,” the embassy said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, said Iran’s ambassador had been summoned after the arrest.

“If this suspicion were confirmed, it would be an outrageous incident that would once again demonstrate that Iran is a threat to Jews all over the world,” Wadephul said during a visit to Odesa, Ukraine, shortly after visiting a synagogue there.

Alleged spying

According to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, the suspect took photos of at least three buildings in Berlin in June.

They included the headquarters of the German-Israeli Society, which has lobbied the European Union to list Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a “terrorist” organisation, and a building where the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, was said to occasionally stay.

Der Spiegel reported that investigators believe the suspect was working on behalf of the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the IRGC.

He was arrested in the Danish city of Aarhus by local police last week and was awaiting extradition to Germany.

During the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said his country was preparing “in case Iran targets Israeli or Jewish institutions”.

He did not provide further details at the time.

Berlin has been a key ally of Israel and vocally supported the attacks on Iran, which began with surprise strikes on June 13.

Riyadh-based club Al Hilal and the Saudi Pro League (SPL) have made a habit of making international headlines in recent years, but almost exclusively it’s been for off-field matters involving money and player transfers.

Whether it was Brazilian superstar Neymar’s 90-million-euro ($98m) blockbuster signing in 2023 and subsequent departure 17 months later after playing just seven games, or their unsuccessful attempts to lure other big names like Mohamed Salah and Victor Osimhen, the club and league are never far from the headlines at this time of year as the summer transfer window kicks into gear.

And now, once again, the whole world is talking about Al Hilal – but for an entirely different reason.

For once, they’re talking about the football because Al Hilal has only gone and defeated Manchester City – a star-studded side that has won four of the past five English Premier League titles and a UEFA Champions League title two year ago – in the Round of 16 at the newly expanded FIFA Club World Cup (CWC) in the United States.

As far as world football’s elite clubs go, Pep Guardiola’s side sit right near the very top. But on this night in Orlando, now etched in Saudi football folklore, they were no match for Al Hilal; the thrilling, see-sawing encounter ending 4-3 after a simply remarkable 120 minutes of football that heralded the arrival of Middle East club football onto a global stage.

Al Hilal’s historic victory makes them the first Asian club to beat a European club in a FIFA tournament.

Al Hilal’s coach, Simone Inzaghi, who only joined the club a few weeks after guiding Inter Milan to the UEFA Champions League final in May, likened the challenge to climbing the world’s tallest mountain.

“The key to this result was the players, and the heart they put on the pitch tonight,” the 49-year-old Italian said.

“We had to do something extraordinary because we all know Manchester City, that team. We had to climb Mount Everest without oxygen and we made it.”

Heroes across the park

Towards the end of the game, the Everest metaphor was apt because Al Hilal’s stars were completely exhausted; the hot and humid weather conditions, along with the enormity of the occasion, conspiring to sap almost every last ounce out of their being.

But they simply refused to give in or give up. Despite conceding three goals to City, goalkeeper Yassine Bounou was a brick wall between the sticks, making numerous heroic saves to keep Al Hilal in the contest during the first half.

Striker Marcos Leonardo could barely walk by the end of the game, but his iconic celebration of what proved to be the match-winning goal will be remembered by Al Hilal fans for a long time to come.

Key midfielders Ruben Neves and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic may as well have worn gladiator armour, such was their fight and determination, while unheralded Saudi players such as Nasser al-Dawsari and Moteb al-Harbi made a name for themselves on the sport’s biggest stage.

“All the players were exceptional in everything, in the possession phase, the non-possession phase,” Inzaghi continued.

“It is barely three weeks that we are together and you can see the level of application, they really put the effort in. As a coach clearly that is very satisfying.

“The lads delivered that performance, they have reached the quarterfinals.”

Pre-match, few pundits gave Al Hilal more than a puncher’s chance of victory against the defending CWC champion Manchester City, who had a perfect 3-from-3 winning record in the group stage.

City, a super team known around the world, had multiple opportunities to win the match but failed to capitalise at key points late in the contest. Their stunning defeat to Al Hilal will likely be the subject of post-tournament revisionism that attempts to downplay the importance of the CWC to mega clubs at the end of a gruelling, 10-month 2024-25 campaign.

But what of Al Hilal? They, too, were at the end of a long, and ultimately unsuccessful campaign, finishing second in the SPL behind Al Ittihad and falling at the semifinal stage of the AFC Champions League Elite.

Like their City counterparts, when you include international football, many of Al Hilal’s stars had played more than 50 games this season and faced three taxing CWC fixtures in the intense heat of an US summer.

But they also came into this game devoid of three of their regular starting XI, including two of their most important attacking threats in Aleksandar Mitrovic and Salem Al-Dawsari.

Together, they combined for 55 goals and 25 assists in all competitions this past season, leaving an unbelievable void in attack; while Hassan al-Tambakti, a central defender who is the preferred partner of Kalidou Koulibaly in the heart of defence, was also sidelined after injuring his knee in training on the eve of the game.

It meant Neves, their best midfielder, was deployed in the heart of defence, forcing other reshuffles across the pitch.

Against a stacked Manchester City side that had replenished its stocks significantly ahead of this tournament, this was a game that Al Hilal would ordinarily have had no right winning.

But this is also why football is the beautiful game; the impossible made possible.

The scenes of celebration in the dressing rooms, and across the cafes and streets of Riyadh in the early hours of Tuesday morning, were reminiscent of another of Saudi football’s recent milestone moments – their 2-1 win over Argentina at the World Cup in Qatar.

The shockwaves of this result will reverberate around the football world in the same way. After two years of distraction about money and potential star acquisitions at Al Hilal, this match was the coming-out party for club football in Saudi Arabia.

“Law is interpreted for friends and applied to enemies,” Italian statesman Giovanni Giolitti once said.

There are few better examples of this than the way the European Union bends over backwards to avoid addressing Israel’s severe breaches of international law and the terms of its association agreement with the bloc.

On May 20, the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) voted to conduct a review of whether Israel was denying Palestinians’ human rights by preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.

A month later, the same body concluded: “There are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.” Indications …

On June 26, EU heads of government at a European Council meeting concluded that they “noted” those indications and invited the FAC to “continue discussions” in July.

It is understandable that some initially welcomed the vote to review the EU-Israel Association Agreement back in May. It is only human to hold on to anything that gives hope that action will finally be taken to protect the human rights of the Palestinian people.

Unfortunately, the entire “debate” over the EU-Israel Association Agreement is simply a sham. It does not represent serious action on by the EU to address the atrocities Israel is committing in Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territory. It deflects growing criticism by giving the impression that the EU may finally be thinking of doing something. More importantly, it distracts from the obligations which the EU and its members are legally bound to fulfil.

Human rights pretences

Twenty months into Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, Israel’s breaches of human rights and international law are so extensive that there can be no doubt about their relevance to the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

They are so numerous that they must be organised into categories to capture the depth and breadth of destruction wrought onto every aspect of life in Gaza.

Israel has been accused of intentionally creating conditions calculated to destroy the possibility for Palestinian life in the Strip, which amounts to genocide. This includes domicide and the laying to waste of Gaza’s urban landscape; medicide – systematically dismantling the healthcare system; scholasticide – destroying schools, universities and libraries; ecocide – wiping out Gaza’s agriculture and nature; econocide – the devastation of Gaza’s economy; and unchilding – making childhood impossible.

More than 90 percent of Gaza’s population, or 1.9 million people, have been displaced, and in the past three months alone, over 600,000 people have been displaced again, as many as 10 times or more. A full blockade was imposed by the Israelis since March 2, and meagre aid deliveries were reinstated only in late May. Famine is widespread; 66 children have died of starvation, and more than 5,000 were hospitalised with acute malnutrition in May alone.

Under pressure from European public opinion, which is increasingly rejecting European support for Israel, the EU finally decided to do something. But that something involved a fair bit of talking and – so far – no action.

The bloc decided to vote on reviewing the EU-Israel Association Agreement. But this was nothing out of the ordinary because all association agreements should be subject to regular reviews, which can trigger either advances or scaling back the depth and breadth of relations.

In fact, those who called for the vote knew very well that suspension of the agreement requires a unanimous vote by 27 member states, which is currently impossible. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and member states, such as Germany, Italy and Hungary, have made crystal clear their unwavering support for Israel. In these circumstances, hoping for a unanimous vote to suspend the agreement is close to delusional. A qualified majority vote might suspend parts of the agreement on trade, but that is the most one can hope for.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the Union’s commitment to human rights and “fundamental values”. Instead, public invocations by governments and officials of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which states that all areas covered by the agreement itself “shall be based on respect for human rights”, are no more than empty rhetoric.

In reality, the EU never intended for these human rights conditionalities to be taken seriously. It is easy to see why; it never specified by what criteria human rights should be assessed, and it chose not to make these assessments routine, compulsory, and public.

In this way, the EU leaves itself enough space to claim it values “human rights and fundamental values” while, in fact, “interpreting away” its own rules to avoid having to take any significant action.

Empty rhetoric

Some European states have decided to take individual action, but what they have done has been just as meaningless as the EU agreement review.

The United Kingdom suspended trade talks with Israel, but not trade. Its recent communique alongside France and Canada was trumpeted as “tougher” than the EU’s statements. Yet, the communique opposes only Israel’s “expansion of military operations in Gaza”: It takes issue only with the extension and intensification of Israel’s assault, not with the devastation wrought upon the Strip so far.

Nor does it mention the war crimes Israel has been accused of, or declare a commitment to uphold the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

In fact, despite the UK summoning Israel’s ambassador after its “tough” joint statement with France and Canada, it continued its surveillance flights over or close to Gaza’s airspace, which are suspected of gathering intelligence for the Israeli army.

France, for its part, declared it would recognise a Palestinian state in June. June came and went without recognition.

In October 2023, Spain claimed that it stopped selling weapons to Israel. In May, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared, “We do not do business with a genocidal state.” And yet, a Barcelona-based think tank revealed recently the existence of more than 40 contracts between Spanish state institutions and Israeli defence companies.

Germany, France, the UK and Italy also continue to supply weapons in breach of the spirit of international law.

Legal obligations

If European governments were serious about responding to Israel’s crimes, they could do that by simply abiding by their legal obligations under the various EU treaties and international law.

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Lisbon Treaty require the bloc to embed respect for “democracy, human rights and fundamental values” into all EU policies. This is why all association agreements have human rights conditionalities in the first place.

The Genocide Convention imposes a preventive duty to use “all means reasonably available” to prevent genocide. Already in January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accepted that Palestinians’ right to be protected from genocide may be being violated.

The actions EU states can take include, but are not limited to: halting arms contracts with the Israeli government and Israeli companies; suspending intelligence cooperation; and cutting commercial, cultural and research exchanges with and funding for Israeli private and public institutions on occupied Palestinian land. They should also support the rigorous application of international law, including backing the case against Israel at the ICJ and enforcing arrest warrants issued by the ICC.

Currently, the EU is in flagrant violation of its legal duties and its own rules. That is a direct consequence of decades of ignoring gross abuses by Israel and other associated states, including Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt.

No amount of “interpreting” law or hiding behind procedure can mask the fact that the EU is in flagrant violation of its legal obligations and the spirit of its own rules. It has a track record of ignoring continued human rights abuses in associated states, including Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Jordan. This track record has reached an ignominious peak since October 2023.

Inaction on Gaza reveals the limits of Europe’s commitment to its self-proclaimed values: by sacrificing Palestine, Europe betrays itself.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order lifting US sanctions on Syria and requesting a review of terrorism designations related to the nation. Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna looks at how the decision aims to facilitate rebuilding post-war Syria.

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice says the acting director of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a fundamentalist Christian who shares some of Israel’s objectives. Hundreds of unarmed Palestinians have been killed at aid sites led by GHF.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, July 1:

Fighting

• The Russian-installed governor of the occupied Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, Leonid Pasechnik, said that Russian troops are now in full control of the entire region.
• If confirmed, that would make Luhansk the first Ukrainian region fully occupied by Russia after more than three years of war. Luhansk is one of four regions that Russia now claims as its own.
• Russia’s state media and war bloggers also said that Russian forces have taken control of the first village in the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk.
• This came as Moscow-appointed officials said Ukrainian forces attacked the city of Donetsk in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, killing at least one person, damaging several buildings and setting a market on fire.
• Also in Donetsk, Russian forces have occupied one of Ukraine’s most valuable lithium deposits near the village of Shevchenko, The Kyiv Independent reported, citing Roman Pohorilyi, the founder of the open-source mapping project Deep State Map.
• The Ukrainian Air Force, meanwhile, said it detected 107 Russian Shahed and decoy drones in the country’s airspace overnight, a day after the country experienced the biggest aerial attack from Russian forces since 2022.
• Russian strikes in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region left two civilians dead and eight wounded, including a 6-year-old child, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
• Outside the immediate region, Bloomberg reported an explosion on an oil tanker near Libya, in the latest unexplained blast on vessels that had previously called at Russian ports.

Politics and diplomacy

• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged the United States to consider whether new sanctions on Russia would help the Ukraine peace effort after a top Republican senator said he had received US President Donald Trump’s blessing to move forward on a bill introducing punitive measures against Moscow.
• US envoy Keith Kellogg responded to Peskov’s comments, describing them as “Orwellian”. “Russia cannot continue to stall for time while it bombs civilian targets in Ukraine,” Kellogg said in a post on X.
• German Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul, speaking during a visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of making “pure mockery” of peace talks.
• “His apparent readiness to negotiate is only a facade so far,” Wadephul said, adding that Germany was trying to help Ukraine get to a point where it could “negotiate more strongly”.
• The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Moscow was introducing “reciprocal measures” restricting access to 15 media outlets from the European Union, in retaliation for the latest round of EU sanctions on Russia.
• In North Korea, images on state television showed leader Kim Jong Un draping coffins with the country’s national flag in what appeared to be the repatriation of soldiers killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine, according to the Reuters news agency.
• Norway said it would deploy F-35 fighter jets to Poland to protect Polish airspace and a key logistical hub for aid to Ukraine, a day after Warsaw scrambled aircraft in response to Russian air attacks on western Ukraine, near the border.

Economy

• The International Monetary Fund said it would provide $500m to Ukraine, after completing a routine review of its $15.5bn four-year support programme.

Iran has taken an unequivocal stance against the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with the country’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi summarily dismissing its chief Rafael Grossi’s request to visit nuclear facilities bombed by Israel and the United States during a 12-day conflict earlier this month.

“Grossi’s insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent,” said Araghchi on X on Monday. “Iran reserves the right to take any steps in defence of its interests, its people and its sovereignty.”

In tandem, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that Tehran had halted cooperation with the IAEA due to what he called Grossi’s “destructive” behaviour towards Iran, his office said.

“The action taken by parliament members … is a natural response to the unjustified, unconstructive, and destructive conduct of the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Pezeshkian told Macron in a phone call, according to a presidency statement.

Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said the Iranian leadership is making it clear that the IAEA is an “international body with defined responsibilities and these responsibilities are not political but technical”. But, he added, Tehran views the nuclear agency as an international body “under immense [political] pressure from Israel and the United States”.

Iranian lawmakers on Wednesday voted in favour of a bill to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, citing Israel’s June 13 attack on Iran and later strikes by the US on nuclear facilities.

A ceasefire between Iran and Israel took hold on June 24.

Since the start of the conflict, Iranian officials have sharply criticised the IAEA not only for failing to condemn the Israeli and US strikes, but also for passing a resolution on June 12 accusing Tehran of non-compliance with its nuclear obligations, the day before Israel attacked.

‘Anger of Iranian public opinion’

In the meantime, France, Germany and Britain have decried “threats” made against Grossi.

“France, Germany and the United Kingdom condemn threats against the director general of the IAEA Rafael Grossi and reiterate our full support to the agency,” Foreign Ministers Jean-Noel Barrot, Johann Wadephul and David Lammy said in a joint statement.

“We call on Iranian authorities to refrain from any steps to cease cooperation with the IAEA,” they added. “We urge Iran to immediately resume full cooperation in line with its legally binding obligations, and to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety and security of IAEA personnel.”

While none specified which threats they were referring to, Iran’s ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper recently claimed documents showed Grossi was an Israeli spy and should be executed.

Iran has insisted no threats were posed against Grossi or the agency’s inspectors.

On Monday during his weekly press conference, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the Iranian parliament’s decision to halt cooperation with the IAEA reflected the “concern and anger of the Iranian public opinion”.

He further criticised US and European powers for maintaining what he described as a “political approach” towards Iran’s nuclear programme.

At least 935 people were killed during the recent conflict with Israel, Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said, citing the latest forensic data. The deceased included 132 women and 38 children, Jahangir added.

Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven nations said later on Monday they supported the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, and urged that negotiations resume for a deal to address Iran’s nuclear program, according to a joint statement.

“We reaffirm that Iran can never have nuclear weapons, and urge Iran to refrain from reconstituting its unjustified enrichment activities,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman has said the country is involved in efforts to reach an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue and a guarantee against a return to escalation by all parties.

Pezeshkian issued an official apology to the Qatari people in a phone call to Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani after the targeting of Al Udeid Air Base, the biggest US military base in the Middle East, he added.

British police have announced that the weekend performances by rap-punk duo Bob Vylan and the Irish-language band Kneecap at the Glastonbury Festival are subject to a criminal investigation after they led crowds in chants calling for “death” to the Israeli military and a “free Palestine”.

Police on Monday said the performances at the United Kingdom’s largest summer music festival “have been recorded as a public order incident”.

Rapper Bobby Vylan, who until the weekend was relatively unknown, led crowds in chants of “free, free Palestine” and “death, death” to the Israeli military.

The BBC said it regretted livestreaming the performance and it should have pulled it off the air.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other UK politicians condemned the chants, saying there was no excuse for such “appalling hate speech”. Starmer added that the BBC must explain “how these scenes came to be broadcast”.

Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, said it was “very concerned” about the BBC livestream and said the broadcaster “clearly has questions to answer”.

Meanwhile, the United States Department of State said it has revoked the visas for Bob Vylan to perform in the US after its “hateful tirade at Glastonbury”.

“Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in a social media post.

Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza has inflamed tensions around the world, triggering pro-Palestinian protests in many capitals and on college campuses. Israel and some of its supporters have described the protests as anti-Semitic while critics said Israel uses such descriptions to silence its opponents.

While maintaining a crippling siege on the bombarded enclave, Israeli forces have killed at least 56,531 people and wounded 133,642, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Bob Vylan, known for mixing grime and punk rock, tackles a range of issues in its lyrics, including racism, homophobia and the class divide, and has previously voiced support for Palestinians.

Its lead vocalist, who goes by the stage name Bobby Vylan, appeared to refer to the weekend performance in a post on Instagram, writing: “I said what I said.”

“Teaching our children to speak up for the change they want and need is the only way that we make this world a better place,” he added.

The duo played Saturday afternoon right before Kneecap, whose set was not livestreamed by the BBC but still found a huge online audience via TikTok. It is another band that has drawn controversy previously over its strongly pro-Palestine stance.

Kneecap led a crowd of tens of thousands in chants of “Free Palestine” at the festival. It also aimed an expletive-laden chant at Starmer, who had said he didn’t think it was “appropriate” for Kneecap to play Glastonbury after one of its members was charged under the Terrorism Act.

Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who is also known as Liam O’Hanna and performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged with supporting a proscribed organisation for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London last year.

Israel has faced sustained international opprobrium for the conduct of its war in Gaza. Weekly protests draw thousands of people around Europe and across the world in support of Palestinians.

Public pressure, in part, seemed to prompt the Israeli allies France, Canada and the UK to issue a sharply worded statement in May calling for Israel to stop its “egregious” military actions in Gaza and criticising Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank.

US Treasury says it removed 518 Syrian individuals and entities from its list of sanctions after president’s decree.

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle a web of sanctions against Syria, a move that will likely unlock investments in the country more than six months after the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.

Trump’s decree on Monday offers sanction relief to “entities critical to Syria’s development, the operation of its government, and the rebuilding of the country’s social fabric”, the US Treasury said in a statement.

The Syrian government has been under heavy US financial penalties that predate the outbreak of the civil war in the country in 2011.

The sprawling sanction programme, which included provisions related to the former government’s human rights abuses, has derailed reconstruction efforts in the country. It has also contributed to driving the Syrian economy under al-Assad to the verge of collapse.

Trump promised sanctions relief for Syria during his visit to the Middle East in May.

“The United States is committed to supporting a Syria that is stable, unified, and at peace with itself and its neighbours,” the US president said in a statement on Monday.

“A united Syria that does not offer a safe haven for terrorist organisations and ensures the security of its religious and ethnic minorities will support regional security and prosperity.”

The US administration said Syria-related sanctions against al-Assad and his associates, ISIL (ISIS) and Iran and its allies will remain in place.

While the US Treasury said it already removed 518 Syrian individuals and entities from its list of sanctions, some Syria penalties may not be revoked immediately.

For example, Trump directs US agencies to determine whether the conditions are met to remove sanctions imposed under the Caesar Act, which enabled heavy penalties against the Syrian economy for alleged war crimes against civilians.

Democratic US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar had partnered with Republican lawmaker Anna Paulina Luna to introduce earlier this week a bill that would legislatively lift sanctions on Syria to offer long-term relief.

Real relief for the Syrian people requires repealing certain laws.

My bill with @RepLuna permanently repeals the sanctions and gives the post-Assad Syria a fighting chance. https://t.co/gExbLiKS7z

— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) June 30, 2025

As part of Trump’s order, the US president ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review the designation of interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”.

Moreover, the US president ordered a review of the status of al-Sharaa’s group, al-Nusra Front – now Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – as a designated “foreign terrorist” organisation. Al-Nusra was al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, but al-Sharaa severed ties with the group in 2016.

Al-Nusra later became known as Jabhat Fath al-Sham before merging with other rebel groups as HTS.

Al-Sharaa was the de facto leader of a rebel enclave in Idlib in northwest Syria for years before leading the offensive that overthrew al-Assad in December 2024.

Trump met with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May and praised the Syrian president as “attractive” and “tough”.

The interim Syrian president – who was previously known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani – has promised inclusive governance to allay concerns about his past ties to al-Qaeda.

But violence and kidnappings against members of al-Assad’s Alawite sect by former rebel fighters over the past months have raised concerns among some rights advocates.

Al-Sharaa has also pledged that Syria would not pose a threat to its neighbours, including Israel, which has been advancing in Syrian territory beyond the occupied Golan Heights and regularly bombing the country.

Sonia Dhamani, a fierce critic of President Kais Saied, has criticised him for practices against refugees and migrants.

A Tunisian court has sentenced Sonia Dhamani, a prominent lawyer and renowned critic of President Kais Saied, to two years in jail, lawyers have said, in a case that rights groups say marks a deepening crackdown on dissent in the North African country.

Dhamani’s lawyers withdrew from the trial after the judge refused to adjourn the session on Monday, claiming Dhamani was being tried twice for the same act.

The court sentenced Dhamani for statements criticising practices against refugees and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

Lawyer Bassem Trifi said the verdict was “a grave injustice”.

“What’s happening is a farce. Sonia is being tried twice for the same statement,” said lawyer Sami Ben Ghazi, another lawyer for Dhamani.

Dhamani was arrested last year after making comments during a television appearance that questioned the government’s stance on undocumented African refugees and migrants in Tunisia.

The case was brought under the nation’s controversial cybercrime law, Decree 54, which has been widely condemned by international and local rights groups.

Most opposition leaders, some journalists, and critics of Saied have been imprisoned since Saied seized control of most powers, dissolved the elected parliament, and began ruling by decree in 2021 – moves the opposition has described as a coup.

Saied rejects the charges and says his actions are legal and aimed at ending years of chaos and rampant corruption.

Human rights groups and activists say Saied has turned Tunisia into an open-air prison and is using the judiciary and police to target his political opponents.

Saied rejects these accusations, saying he will not be a dictator and seeks to hold everyone accountable equally, regardless of their position or name.

Earlier this year, the country carried out a mass trial in which dozens of defendants were handed jail terms of up to 66 years. Critics denounced the trial as politically motivated and baseless.

The defendants faced charges including “conspiracy against state security” and “belonging to a terrorist group”, according to their lawyers.

Among those targeted were figures from what was once the biggest party, Ennahda, such as the leader and former Speaker of Parliament Rached Ghannouchi, former Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, and former Minister of Justice Noureddine Bhiri.

Tunisia had been celebrated as perhaps the only democratic success of the 2011 “Arab Spring” revolutions, with strong political engagement among its public and civil society members, who frequently took to the airwaves and streets to make their voices heard.

The years that followed the revolution, which overthrew long-time autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, saw the growth of a healthy political system with numerous elections declared free and fair by international observers.

But a weak economy and the strengthening of anti-democratic forces led to a pushback, capped off by Saied’s dismissal of the government and dissolution of parliament.

The World Food Programme has sounded an alarm, saying it may have to reduce its aid operations for Sudanese refugees because of cutbacks in its funding.

Four million refugees are in countries neighbouring Sudan after fleeing from the ongoing civil war, and most of them rely on aid.

But that was put in jeopardy after United States President Donald Trump’s administration slashed overseas aid budgets this year.

The European Union, the United Kingdom and Germany have also cut their foreign aid as some nations switch funding to invest in defence.

So who else can step in to fill the gap?

And what will happen to the people who depend on aid to survive?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests

• Carl Skau, World Food Programme’s deputy executive director and chief operating officer
• Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation
• Kholood Khair, political analyst and founding director at the Confluence Advisory think tank

Pro-Palestine activists rallied outside Wimbledon on the first day of the tennis championships in London to protest tournament sponsorship by Barclays Bank, who they say helps to finance Israel’s war on Gaza. Barclays says it is not a ‘shareholder’ or ‘investor’ in defence companies supplying Israel.

Israel’s bombs have stopped, but grief and fear linger in Iran. As families search the rubble for loved ones, authorities are intensifying crackdowns, branding activists and minorities as Israeli agents. How can Iranians rebuild under tighter repression?

Israeli forces have bombarded multiple areas across the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least 85 Palestinians, including aid seekers and families sheltering in schools, and wounding many more in attacks that have also targeted a crowded hospital.

In the relentless attacks on Monday, 62 of the victims were in Gaza City and the north of the territory. The Israeli navy struck a port in Gaza City, where the military has stepped up its heavy strikes, killing at least 21 and wounding 30, many of them women and children.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said the attack was in the heart of a displacement centre near the Gaza seaport.

“This area serves as a refuge for many traumatised and displaced people, offering some relief from the oppressive heat of the tents,” he said.

Also on Monday, Israeli forces targeted the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, where thousands of families had sought shelter.

Videos circulating online and verified by Al Jazeera showed chaos at the hospital, with people fleeing for safety as tents sheltering displaced families appeared damaged by the attack.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from the scene of the hospital attack, said the army did not issue “any warnings” before the “huge explosion”.

“The site of the attack is about 10 metres [33ft] from our broadcast point. This is not the first time the hospital’s courtyard has been attacked. At least 10 times, this facility has been squarely targeted by Israeli forces,” Abu Azzoum said. “It’s a staggering concentration of attacks on medical facilities, adding further burden on barely functioning hospitals.”

In a statement, Gaza’s Government Media Office decried the attack by Israel, calling it a “systematic crime” against the Palestinian enclave’s health system.

“Its warplanes bombed a tent for the displaced inside the walls of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, resulting in injuries at the site of the bombing, material damage, and directly threatening the lives of dozens of patients,” it said.

Israel has repeatedly targeted dozens of hospitals during its 22-month war on Gaza. Human rights groups and United Nations-backed experts have accused Israel of systematically destroying the enclave’s healthcare system.

‘It felt like earthquakes’

Also in the south, at least 15 aid seekers looking for food at aid distribution hubs run by the controversial United States- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) were killed by an Israeli air strike in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, according to sources at Nasser Medical Complex. Fifty people were also wounded in the attack.

They are the latest victims in a wave of daily carnage at these sites that have killed nearly 600 Palestinians since GHF took over limited aid deliveries in Gaza in late May amid a crippling Israeli blockade.

The Israeli military acknowledged on Monday that Palestinian civilians were harmed at the aid distribution centres, saying that instructions had been issued to forces following “lessons learned” and firing incidents were under review.

This follows the Israeli news outlet, Haaretz, reporting that soldiers operating near the aid sites in Gaza have been deliberately firing upon Palestinians. According to the Haaretz report, which quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers, troops were told to fire at the crowds of Palestinians and use unnecessary lethal force against people who appeared to pose no threat.

Israeli forces are also carrying out home demolitions in Khan Younis, raising fears of a new ground invasion.

The Israeli military, meanwhile, has issued more forced evacuation threats to Palestinians in large districts in the northern Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces had operated before and left behind wide-scale destruction, forcing a new wave of displacement.

“Explosions never stopped; they bombed schools and homes. It felt like earthquakes,” said Salah, 60, a father of five children, from Gaza City. “In the news, we hear a ceasefire is near. On the ground, we see death and we hear explosions.”

Israeli tanks pushed into the eastern areas of Zeitoun suburb in Gaza City and shelled several areas in the north, while aircraft bombed at least four schools after ordering hundreds of families sheltering inside to leave, residents said.

Gaza’s health authorities said at least 10 people were killed in attacks on Zeitoun and at least 13 were killed southwest of Gaza City.

More than 80 percent of Gaza is now an Israeli-militarised zone or under forced displacement orders, according to the United Nations.

The attacks come as Israeli officials, including Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, were due in Washington, DC for a new ceasefire push by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Key mediator Qatar has confirmed that there are serious US intentions to push for a return to negotiations, but there are complications, according to a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman.

The spokesman said that it has become difficult to accept the continued human losses in the Gaza Strip, warning that the continued link between the humanitarian and military aspects in Gaza cannot be accepted.

The talks in the White House are also expected to cover Iran, and possible wider regional diplomatic deals.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet was expected to convene to discuss the next steps in Gaza.

On Friday, Israel’s military chief said the present ground operation was close to having achieved its goals, and on Sunday, Netanyahu claimed new opportunities had opened up for recovering the captives, 20 of whom are believed to still be alive.

Palestinian and Egyptian sources with knowledge of the latest ceasefire efforts also said that mediators Qatar and Egypt have stepped up their contacts with the two sides, but that no date has been set yet for a new round of truce talks.

Video shows an Israeli drone killing a Palestinian carrying a sack of flour in Gaza City. Israel has killed around 600 people trying to get food from sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been condemned as “an abomination” and “a death trap” by the United Nations.