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Multiple people were injured after a man shouting “free Palestine” tossed Molotov cocktails at a gathering in support of Israeli hostages in Colorado, authorities said.

Police said eight people were injured in the attack at the Pearl Street Mall, a popular outdoor space in Boulder, about 30 miles (48km) from Denver.

The FBI called it a suspected terror attack and said the suspect used a makeshift flamethrower, Molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices.

Footage of the attack shows the suspect, who was shirtless, screaming at the group and had what appears to be Molotov cocktails in each hand when he was arrested.

The attack unfolded during a weekly scheduled demonstration put on by Run for Their Lives, a pro-Israeli group that that holds walks in the outdoor pedestrian mall in solidarity with Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Police got calls around 13:26 local time (20:26 BST) about a man with a weapon and people being set on fire, Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said at a news conference.

Witnesses told authorities that the suspect used a “makeshift flamethrower and threw an incendiary device into the crowd, ” said Mark Michalek, who heads the FBI’s Denver office.

Redfearn added those devices included Molotov cocktails being tossed at the crowd.

He identified the suspect as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45.

Soliman is an Egyptian national, government officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

In 2022, Soliman arrived in California on a non-immigrant visa that expired in February 2023, multiple sources have told CBS News. He had been living in Colorado Springs.

Officers who responded found multiple people injured, including those with burns.

Footage that appeared to be from the attack showed a chaotic scene: smoke filling the air, people running in multiple directions, spots of grass on fire and people injured on the ground.

Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

In images and videos posted online, but not yet verified by the BBC, a man appearing to be the suspect is seen without a shirt and holding bottles with liquid with a piece of red cloth inside. He can be heard yelling at the crowd and appears to be advancing on them as some rush to flee.

As he screams, one woman is on the ground and appears injured. People surround her and one man pours water on her body.

Footage shows police rushing to the scene and arresting the suspect. Police say he was taken to the hospital with injuries.

“It is clear that this is a targeted act of violence and the FBI is investigating this as an act of terrorism,” Mr Michalek said. “Sadly, attacks like this are becoming too common across the country.”

The attack is the second high-profile act of violence in the US in the last two weeks related to the conflict in Gaza.

A man who shouted “free Palestine” fatally shot two Israeli embassy employees outside a Jewish museum in Washington DC on 22 May. The incident happened at a networking event organised by a Jewish organisation.

Colorado’s Attorney General Phil Weiser said that from what officials know the attack “appears to be hate crime given the group that was targeted”.

“People may have differing views about world events and the Israeli-Hamas conflict, but violence is never the answer to settling differences,” Weiser said in a statement on Sunday. “Hate has no place in Colorado.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said he was “shocked” by the incident and called the attack “pure antisemitism”.

“Shocked by the terrible antisemitic terror attack targeting Jews in Boulder, Colorado,” he wrote on X. “This is pure antisemitism, fueled by the blood libels spread in the media.”

Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, similarly was saddened over the attack, calling it “terrorism” and asking for “concrete action” in response.

In a post on X, the ambassador said that Jewish protesters were brutally attacked”.

“Terrorism against Jews does not stop at the Gaza border – it is already burning the streets of America,” he said.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Final vote count gives conservative candidate 50.89 percent, while his liberal rival receives 49.11 percent, AP reports.

Conservative eurosceptic Karol Nawrocki is expected to win Poland’s presidential run-off election with all votes now counted, according to media reports.

The Associated Press news agency, citing the final vote count, reported on Monday that Nawrocki won 50.89 percent of votes in the tight race against liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who received 49.11 percent.

The Polish news website, Onet, reported the same results on its website.

The Polish Electoral Commission said on its website that it had counted all of the votes. The commission had said earlier that official results would be out on Monday morning.

Nawrocki, 42, a historian and amateur boxer who ran a national remembrance institute, campaigned on a promise to ensure economic and social policies favour Poles over other nationalities, including refugees from neighbouring Ukraine.

While Poland’s parliament holds most power, the president can veto legislation, and the vote was being watched closely in Ukraine as well as Russia, the United States and across the European Union.

Six people are being treated for injuries after a man “started setting people on fire” at a mall in Boulder, Colorado, on Sunday, police say. A peaceful event in support of the Israeli hostages was taking place when the attack occurred. Authorities say the suspect was seen throwing Molotov cocktails, and using other devices to hurt people. The victims, aged between 66 and 88, are being treated for a range of minor and serious injuries – with at least one in critical condition. The FBI says they are investigating the incident as a “suspected act of terrorism”.

Ukraine says it completed its biggest long-range attack of the war with Russia on Sunday, after using smuggled drones to launch a series of major strikes on 40 Russian warplanes at four military bases.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said 117 drones were used in the so-called “Spider’s Web” operation by the SBU security service, striking “34% of [Russia’s] strategic cruise missile carriers”. SBU sources told BBC News it took a year-and-a-half to organise the strikes.

Russia confirmed Ukrainian attacks in five regions, calling them a “terrorist act”.

The attacks come as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are heading to Istanbul, Turkey, for a second round of peace talks on Monday.

The talks are expected to start around 13:00 local time (10:00 GMT) at the Ciragan Palace.

Expectations are low, as the two warring sides remain far apart on how to end the war.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities reported a massive drone and missile attack on its territory over the weekend.

At least six people, including a seven-year-old child, were injured following a strike in Kharkiv in the early hours of Monday, the region’s governor said.

Elsewhere, Russia’s state news agency Ria said the country’s security service thwarted an attempted arson attack in the east.

It said two residents in the Primorye region were attempting to sabotage a railway track on Ukraine’s orders.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed in 2014.

SBU sources earlier told BBC News Sunday’s attack involved drones hidden in wooden mobile cabins, with remotely operated roofs on trucks, brought near the airbases and then fired “at the right time”.

In several posts on social media late on Sunday, Zelensky said he congratulated SBU head Vasyl Maliuk with the “absolutely brilliant result” of the operation.

He said that each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot.

“The most interesting thing – and we can already say this publicly – is that the ‘office’ of our operation on Russian territory was located right next to the FSB of Russia in one of their regions,” the Ukrainian president said.

The FSB is Russia’s powerful state security service.

Zelensky also said that all the people involved in the operation had been safely “led away” from Russia before the strikes.

The SBU estimated the damage to Russia’s strategic aviation was worth about $7bn (£5bn), promising to unveil more details soon.

The Ukrainian claims have not been independently verified.

Sources in the SBU earlier on Sunday told the BBC in a statement that four Russian airbases – two of which are thousands of miles from Ukraine – were hit:

• Belaya in Irkutsk oblast (region), Siberia
• Olenya in Murmansk oblast, Russia’s extreme north-west
• Dyagilevo in central Ryazan oblast
• Ivanovo in central Ivanovo oblast

The SBU sources said that among the hit Russian aircraft were strategic nuclear capable bombers called Tu-95 and Tu-22M3, as well as A-50 early warning warplanes.

They described the whole operation as “extremely complex logistically”.

“The SBU first smuggled FPV drones into Russia, followed later by mobile wooden cabins. Once on Russian territory, the drones were hidden under the roofs of these cabins, which had been placed on cargo vehicles,” the sources said.

“At the right moment, the roofs were remotely opened, and the drones took off to strike the Russian bombers.”

Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev confirmed drones that attacked the Belaya military base in Sredniy, Siberia, were launched from a truck.

Kobzev posted on Telegram to say that the launch site had been secured and there was no threat to life.

Russian media outlets have also reported that other attacks were similarly started with drones emerging from the lorries.

One user is heard saying that the drones were flying out of a Kamaz truck near a petrol station.

Russian media were reporting the attack in Murmansk but said air defences were working. The attack in Irkutsk was also being reported.

In a post on social media later on Sunday, the Russian defence ministry confirmed that airbases in the country’s five regions were attack.

It claimed that “all attacks were repelled” on military airbases in the Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions. The latter base was not mentioned by the SBU sources.

In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, “several aircraft caught fire” after drones were launched from nearby areas, the ministry said.

It said all the blazes were extinguished and there were no casualties. “Some of the participants in the terrorist attacks have been detained,” it added.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities say 472 drones and seven ballistic and cruise missiles were involved in a wave of attacks on Ukraine last night.

This would appear to be one of the largest single Russian drone attacks so far. Ukraine says it “neutralised” 385 aerial targets.

In a separate development, Ukraine’s land forces said 12 of its military personnel were killed and more than 60 injured in a Russian missile strike on a training centre.

Ukraine’s head of land forces, Maj Gen Mykhailo Drapatyi, tendered his resignation shortly afterwards.

He said his decision was “dictated by my personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy”.

Students could face subject “cold spots” if universities are not allowed to work together more to deliver courses, according to a new report.

The review by Universities UK, which represents 141 institutions, found universities were reluctant to collaborate because of concerns around breaking business laws designed to promote healthy competition between them.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it wanted to support collaboration where possible in a “very challenging” financial situation for the sector.

A government review of how higher education will be funded in the long term is under way in England, and is expected to be published later this year.

The Universities UK report said greater collaboration between universities could be a solution for institutions who are struggling to cut costs and become more efficient.

Some universities are already delivering courses this way, to the benefit of students.

Mature student Joe Vincent, 33, lives at home in Devon with his partner and baby while studying in Plymouth for a masters degree in pharmacy from the University of Bath, over 130 miles away.

“It’s everything for me”, he says, adding that being able to study and qualify locally “is the difference between me having this career, and not having this career”.

In 2018, he trained as a pharmacy technician at a nearby college, because there was no local university course available to become a pharmacist.

This close collaboration between universities is also intended to meet a shortage of community pharmacists in the South West.

Sir Nigel Carrington, who led the review for Universities UK, said more clarity was needed to prevent universities having to make decisions about which courses to close, or merge, in isolation from one another.

He told the BBC there was a risk of “cold spots emerging in which there will be no opportunity for prospective students to study the subjects they want to study in their home cities or their home regions”.

He said neighbouring universities should be allowed to look at which subjects they recruit the fewest students for and agree that only one of them should teach that course, “divvying up other courses between them” and working out where delivering a subject would be most cost effective.

After the University of Cardiff announced job losses earlier this year, vice-chancellor Prof Wendy Larner told The Times newspaper she was “deeply frustrated” by legal advice not to consult other universities on the impact of course closures, adding the system was “set up to enhance competition, not collaboration”.

The CMA enforces the existing law, which applies across different sectors to protect consumers, in this case students.

In a blog post published on Friday, it said it recognised the financial problems facing universities and that it wanted to support collaboration where possible.

The CMA said ideas such as sharing back-office functions, or discussing possible mergers with other universities, were unlikely to raise competition law concerns.

Juliette Enser, executive director of competition enforcement at the CMA, said: “We know universities are interested in collaborating on courses they offer and we are working to understand how this fits with overall plans for higher education reform.”

It would be for the government to change the law, or how universities are regulated, to allow up-front conversations to be had about whether some subjects need a different kind of collaboration in different regions.

University budgets have been strained by a 16% drop in international students – who pay higher fees than domestic students – after changes to visa rules came into force last January.

University income in the form of fees has also failed to keep up with inflation, rising for the first time in eight years this autumn from £9,250 to £9,535.

The higher education regulator in England, the Office for Students, has said four in 10 universities are heading for a financial deficit by this summer, despite thousands of job losses already having been announced.

Course cutbacks or closure announcements have also followed one after the other this year, from the University of East Anglia to Sheffield, Durham, Bournemouth and many more.

It has become a patchwork of individual institutional decisions, largely driven by market forces, including how many students want to sign up for individual subjects.

The government said it had been clear that universities needed to increase opportunities for students and contribute more to growth in the economy.

In response to the review, Jacqui Smith, the Skills Minister, said: “I am pleased to see the sector taking steps to grip this issue as we restore our universities as engines of opportunity, aspiration and growth.”

A review of the longer term future of higher education in England is expected to be published before the summer.

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‘Lots of resentment’

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Decision paves way for the country’s largest Muslim party to participate in the next general election, expected by June next year.

Bangladesh has restored the registration of the country’s largest Muslim party, more than a decade after it was banned by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government.

Sunday’s Supreme Court decision means the Jamaat-e-Islami party can now be formally listed with the Election Commission, paving the way for its participation in the next general election, which the interim government has promised to hold by June next year.

Jamaat-e-Islami lawyer Shishir Monir said the ruling would allow a “democratic, inclusive and multiparty system” in the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people.

“We hope that Bangladeshis, regardless of their ethnicity or religious identity, will vote for Jamaat and that the parliament will be vibrant with constructive debates,” Monir told journalists.

The party had appealed for a review of a 2013 high court order cancelling its registration after Hasina’s government was ousted in August by a student-led nationwide uprising.

Hasina, 77, fled to India and is now being tried in absentia over her crackdown last year, described by prosecutors as a “systematic attack” on protesters, which according to the United Nations, killed up to 1,400 people.

Key leader freed

The Supreme Court decision on Jamaat-e-Islami came after it overturned a conviction against ATM Azharul Islam, one of the party’s key leaders, on Tuesday.

Islam was sentenced to death in 2014 for rape, murder and genocide during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Jamaat-e-Islami supported Pakistan during the war, a role that still sparks anger among many Bangladeshis today.

“We, as individuals or as a party, are not beyond making mistakes,” Jamaat-e-Islami leader Shafiqur Rahman said after Islam’s conviction was overturned without specifying what he was referring to.

“We seek your pardon if we have done anything wrong,” he said.

The party’s members were rivals of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League, who would become Bangladesh’s founding president.

Hasina banned Jamaat-e-Islami during her tenure and cracked down on its leaders.

In May, Bangladesh’s interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, banned the Awami League, pending the outcome of legal proceedings over its crackdown on last year’s mass protests.

World number one Scottie Scheffler continued his stunning form with a four-shot victory at the Memorial Tournament in Columbus, Ohio.

The American shot a two-under-par 70 to beat compatriot Ben Griffin, whose challenge faded on the back nine.

After bogeys on the 12th and 13th, Griffin eagled the 15th and birdied the 16th to move to within a stroke of Scheffler.

But he double-bogeyed the 17th to ease the pressure on his rival, who went on seal his third win from his previous four tournaments.

The victory follows his triumph in the PGA Championship in May, Scheffler’s third major win.

He dropped just one shot in his final round when he bogeyed the 10th hole, but made birdies on the seventh, 11th and 15th.

Scheffler’s victory makes him just the second player to win the Memorial in consecutive years, following Tiger Woods’ victories in 1999, 2000 and 2001.

Last week, a prominent Saudi Sheikh, Mohammed Al-Issa, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation, which signalled the end of the Nazi Holocaust. Although dozens of Muslim scholars have visited the site, where about one million Jews were killed during World War Two, according to the Auschwitz Memorial Centre’s press office, Al-Issa is the most senior Muslim religious leader to do so.

Visiting Auschwitz is not a problem for a Muslim; Islam orders Muslims to reject unjustified killing of any human being, no matter what their faith is. Al-Issa is a senior ally of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who apparently cares little for the sanctity of human life, though, and the visit to Auschwitz has very definite political connotations beyond any Islamic context.

By sending Al-Issa to the camp, Bin Salman wanted to show his support for Israel, which exploits the Holocaust for geopolitical colonial purposes. “The Israeli government decided that it alone was permitted to mark the 75th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Auschwitz [in modern day Poland] in 1945,” wrote journalist Richard Silverstein recently when he commented on the gathering of world leaders in Jerusalem for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Holocaust event.

READ: Next up, a Saudi embassy in Jerusalem 

Bin Salman uses Al Issa for such purposes, as if to demonstrate his own Zionist credentials. For example, the head of the Makkah-based Muslim World League is leading rapprochement efforts with Evangelical Christians who are, in the US at least, firm Zionists in their backing for the state of Israel. Al-Issa has called for a Muslim-Christian-Jewish interfaith delegation to travel to Jerusalem in what would, in effect, be a Zionist troika.

Zionism is not a religion, and there are many non-Jewish Zionists who desire or support the establishment of a Jewish state in occupied Palestine. The definition of Zionism does not mention the religion of its supporters, and Israeli writer Sheri Oz, is just one author who insists that non-Jews can be Zionists.

Mohammad Bin Salman and Netanyahu – Cartoon [Tasnimnews.com/Wikipedia]

We should not be shocked, therefore, to see a Zionist Muslim leader in these trying times. It is reasonable to say that Bin Salman’s grandfather and father were Zionists, as close friends of Zionist leaders. Logic suggests that Bin Salman comes from a Zionist dynasty.

This has been evident from his close relationship with Zionists and positive approaches to the Israeli occupation and establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, calling it “[the Jews’] ancestral homeland”. This means that he has no issue with the ethnic cleansing of almost 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, during which thousands were killed and their homes demolished in order to establish the Zionist state of Israel.

“The ‘Jewish state’ claim is how Zionism has tried to mask its intrinsic Apartheid, under the veil of a supposed ‘self-determination of the Jewish people’,” wrote Israeli blogger Jonathan Ofir in Mondoweiss in 2018, “and for the Palestinians it has meant their dispossession.”

As the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Bin Salman has imprisoned dozens of Palestinians, including representatives of Hamas. In doing so he is serving Israel’s interests. Moreover, he has blamed the Palestinians for not making peace with the occupation state. Bin Salman “excoriated the Palestinians for missing key opportunities,” wrote Danial Benjamin in Moment magazine. He pointed out that the prince’s father, King Salman, has played the role of counterweight by saying that Saudi Arabia “permanently stands by Palestine and its people’s right to an independent state with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.”

UN expert: Saudi crown prince behind hack on Amazon CEO 

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 13 News reported Bin Salman as saying: “In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.” This is reminiscent of the words of the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, one of the Zionist founders of Israel, that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Bin Salman’s Zionism is also very clear in his bold support for US President Donald Trump’s deal of the century, which achieves Zionist goals in Palestine at the expense of Palestinian rights. He participated in the Bahrain conference, the forum where the economic side of the US deal was announced, where he gave “cover to several other Arab countries to attend the event and infuriated the Palestinians.”

US President Donald Trump looks over at Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud as they line up for the family photo during the opening day of Argentina G20 Leaders’ Summit 2018 at Costa Salguero on 30 November 2018 in Buenos Aires, Argentina [Daniel Jayo/Getty Images]

While discussing the issue of the current Saudi support for Israeli policies and practices in Palestine with a credible Palestinian official last week, he told me that the Palestinians had contacted the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to ask him not to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem. “The Saudis have been putting pressure on us in order to relocate our embassy to Jerusalem,” replied the Brazilian leader. What more evidence of Mohammad Bin Salman’s Zionism do we need?

The founder of Friends of Zion Museum is American Evangelical Christian Mike Evans. He said, after visiting a number of the Gulf States, that, “The leaders [there] are more pro-Israel than a lot of Jews.” This was a specific reference to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, and his counterpart in the UAE, Mohammed Bin Zayed.

“All versions of Zionism lead to the same reactionary end of unbridled expansionism and continued settler colonial genocide of [the] Palestinian people,” Israeli-American writer and photographer Yoav Litvin wrote for Al Jazeera. We may well see an Israeli Embassy opened in Riyadh in the near future, and a Saudi Embassy in Tel Aviv or, more likely, Jerusalem. Is Mohammad Bin Salman a Zionist? There’s no doubt about it.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Kano governor declares day of mourning after athletes representing the state at a national sports event are killed.

A bus crash in Nigeria’s northern state of Kano has killed 22 athletes returning home from a national sports event, according to the local governor.

The bus, which was reportedly carrying more than 30 passengers, plunged off the Chiromawa Bridge on the Kano-Zaria expressway on Saturday, Kano Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf told The Associated Press news agency.

The exact cause of the accident was not known, but the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) said it “might have occurred as a result of fatigue and excessive speed” after a long overnight trip.

The survivors of the crash were taken to a local hospital for treatment.

Yusuf said the athletes, who were accompanied by their coaches and sporting officials, were representing Kano State at the Nigerian National Sports Festival, held about 1,000km (620 miles) to the south in Ogun State.

He declared Monday a day of mourning for the state. His deputy, Aminu Gwarzo, said the families of the victims would receive 1 million naira (about $630) and food supplies as support.

The National Association of Nigerian Students released a statement, Nigerian daily The Guardian reported, saying the “heartbreaking” incident had “cast a shadow of grief over the entire nation, particularly the youth and sports communities”.

Road accidents are common in Africa’s most populous country, in part due to poor road conditions and lax enforcement of traffic laws.

In March, at least six people died near the capital, Abuja, after a trailer crashed into parked vehicles and burst into flames.

Last year, Nigeria recorded 9,570 road accidents that resulted in 5,421 deaths, according to FRSC data.

The Nigerian National Sports Festival brings together athletes from the country’s 35 states every two years.

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu recently said the games, which include sports ranging from wheelchair basketball to traditional West African wrestling, represent “the unity, strength and resilience that define us as a nation”.

The 12-person crew, which includes climate activist Greta Thunberg, expects to take seven days to reach Gaza.

International nonprofit organisation Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) says one of its vessels has left Sicily to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, after a previous attempt failed due to a drone attack on a different ship in the Mediterranean.

The 12-person crew, which includes Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, Irish actor Liam Cunningham and Franco-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan, set sail on the Madleen from the port of Catania on Sunday, carrying barrels of relief supplies that the group called “limited amounts, though symbolic”.

The voyage comes after another vessel operated by the group, the Conscience, was hit by two drones just outside Maltese territorial waters in early May. While FFC said Israel was to blame for the incident, it has not responded to requests for comment.

“We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying, because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity,” Thunberg told reporters at a news conference before the departure. The Swedish climate activist had been due to board the Conscience.

She added that “no matter how dangerous this mission is, it is nowhere near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the lives being genocised”.

🇵🇸 ⛵️ Avec @GretaThunberg nous appelons à la mobilisation citoyenne pour soutenir massivement le navire humanitaire de @GazaFFlotilla ! C’est le seul moyen de garantir notre sécurité. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/5DUJbkRdPZ

— Rima Hassan (@RimaHas) June 1, 2025

The activists expect to take seven days to reach their destination, if they are not stopped.

The FCC, launched in 2010, is a non-violent international movement supporting Palestinians, combining humanitarian aid with political protest against the blockade on Gaza.

It said the trip “is not charity. This is a non-violent, direct action to challenge Israel’s illegal siege and escalating war crimes”.

United Nations agencies and major aid groups say Israeli restrictions, the breakdown of law and order, and widespread looting make it extremely difficult to deliver aid to Gaza’s roughly two million inhabitants.

The situation in Gaza is at its worst since the war between Israel and Hamas began 19 months ago, the UN said on Friday, despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries in the Palestinian enclave.

Under growing global pressure, Israel ended an 11-week blockade on Gaza on May 19, allowing extremely limited UN-led operations to resume.

On Monday, a new avenue for aid distribution was also launched: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by the United States and Israel, but with the UN and international aid groups refusing to work with it, saying it is not neutral and has a distribution model that forces the displacement of Palestinians.

The FCC is the latest among a growing number of critics to accuse Israel of genocidal acts in its war in Gaza, allegations Israel vehemently denies.

“We are breaking the siege of Gaza by sea, but that’s part of a broader strategy of mobilisations that will also attempt to break the siege by land,” said activist Thiago Avila.

Avila also mentioned the upcoming Global March to Gaza – an international initiative also open to doctors, lawyers and members of the media – which is set to leave Egypt and reach the Rafah crossing in mid-June to stage a protest there, calling on Israel to stop the Gaza offensive and reopen the border.

Officials say multiple military airbases deep inside Russia have come under drone attacks in a major Ukrainian operation ahead of peace talks due to start in Istanbul on Monday.

The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukraine had launched drone strikes targeting Russian military airfields across five regions on Sunday, causing several aircraft to catch fire.

The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. Air defences repelled the assaults in all but two regions – Murmansk and Irkutsk, the ministry said.

“In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire,” the ministry said.

The fires were extinguished and no casualties were reported. Some individuals involved in the attacks had been detained, the ministry said.

The Security Service of Ukraine said on Sunday that it had hit Russian military planes worth a combined $7bn in a wave of drone strikes on Russian air bases thousands of kilometres behind the front lines.

“$7 billion: This is the estimated cost of the enemy’s strategic aviation, which was hit today as a result of the SBU’s special operation,” the agency said in a social media post.

Targets included the Belaya airbase in Irkutsk, about 4,300km (2,700 miles) from the Ukrainian border, and the Olenya airbase in south Murmansk, some 1,800km (1,100 miles) from Ukraine.

“According to witnesses on the ground and local officials, these drones were launched from sites near the airbases. That means this was an elaborate operation … that involved a number of people inside Russia,” Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari said, reporting from Moscow.

“This is the single largest attack that we’ve seen in one day across multiple military airbases inside Russia since the war began in February of 2022,” Jabbari said, noting that the airbases are home to Russia’s strategic air bombers, which have been used to attack targets across Ukraine over the past three years.

Earlier on Sunday, multiple local media reports in Ukraine, including those by state news agency Ukrinform, cited a source within the SBU saying the coordinated attacks inside Russia were “aimed at destroying enemy bombers far from the front”.

They said the operation was carried out by the SBU using drones smuggled deep into Russia and hidden inside trucks. At least 41 Russian heavy bombers at four airbases were hit, the reports said, adding that the operation, dubbed “Spiderweb”, had been prepared for over a year and a half, and it was personally overseen by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, reporting from Kyiv, said it’s “an audacious strike, one that Ukraine has been waiting a long time and patiently to deliver, and it’s come after Russian air strikes into Ukraine have dramatically accelerated over the past couple of weeks”.

Meanwhile, at least seven people were killed and 69 injured when a highway bridge in Russia’s Bryansk region, neighbouring Ukraine, was blown up while a passenger train heading to Moscow was crossing it with 388 people on board.

No one has yet claimed responsibility. Russian officials said they were treating the incident as an “act of terrorism” but did not immediately accuse Ukraine.

The developments came as Russia also said it had advanced deeper into the Sumy region of Ukraine, and as open-source pro-Ukrainian maps showed Russia took 450sq km (174sq miles) of Ukrainian land in May, its fastest monthly advance in at least six months.

Moscow launched 472 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s Air Force said, the highest nightly total of the war so far. Russia had also launched seven missiles, the Air Force said.

Both parties sharply ramped up their attacks as Ukraine confirmed it will send a delegation to Istanbul led by its Defence Minister Rustem Umerov for talks on Monday with Russian officials. Turkiye is hosting the meeting, which was spurred by US President Donald Trump’s push for a quick deal to end the three-year war.

Zelenskyy, who previously voiced scepticism about the seriousness of the Russian side in engaging in Monday’s meeting, said he had defined the Ukrainian delegation’s position on the talks.

Priorities included “a complete and unconditional ceasefire” and the return of prisoners and abducted children, he said on social media.

Russia has said it has formulated its own peace terms, but refused to divulge them in advance. Russian President Vladimir Putin also ruled out a Turkish proposal for the meeting to be held at the leaders’ level.

By cracking down on immigration and defunding scientific research, the United States is slowly losing its position as the world leader in research and development, argues Holden Thorp, editor of Science journal and former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Thorp tells host Steve Clemons that the US government had made a concerted effort over the past 80 years to fund scientific research, but with the changes ushered in by the administration of President Donald Trump, Thorp predicts the results will be “bad for science in general, and also for the US role in innovation”.

Foreign ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE had planned the visit to discuss Palestinian statehood and end to war on Gaza.

Saudi Arabia has accused Israel of “extremism and rejection of peace” after it blocked a planned visit by Arab foreign ministers to the occupied West Bank.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud made the remarks during a joint news conference in Jordan’s capital, Amman, on Sunday with his counterparts from Jordan, Egypt, and Bahrain.

“Israel’s refusal of the committee’s visit to the West Bank embodies and confirms its extremism and refusal of any serious attempts for [a] peaceful pathway … It strengthens our will to double our diplomatic efforts within the international community to face this arrogance,” Prince Faisal said.

His comments followed Israel’s decision to block the Arab delegation from reaching Ramallah, where they were set to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had planned the visit as part of efforts to support Palestinian diplomacy amid Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

Israel controls the airspace and borders of the West Bank, and on Friday announced it would not grant permission for the visit.

“The Palestinian Authority – which to this day refuses to condemn the October 7 massacre – intended to host in Ramallah a provocative meeting of foreign ministers from Arab countries to discuss the promotion of the establishment of a Palestinian state,” an Israeli official had said, adding that Israel will “not cooperate” with the visit.

Prince Faisal’s trip to the West Bank would have marked the first such visit by a top Saudi official in recent memory.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said blocking the trip was another example of how Israel was “killing any chance of a just and comprehensive” Arab-Israeli settlement.

An international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, is due to be held in New York from June 17 to 20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said the conference would cover security arrangements after a ceasefire in Gaza and reconstruction plans to ensure Palestinians would remain on their land and foil any Israeli plans to evict them.

Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries, which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.

Manchester United have agreed a deal with Wolves for the signing of Brazil striker Matheus Cunha.

The 26-year-old is set to become United’s first signing of the summer after the club activated a £62.5m release clause in Cunha’s Wolves contract.

The former Atletico Madrid forward will sign a five-year deal at Old Trafford, with the option of a further 12 months.

Cunha was in Manchester over the weekend to complete a medical with the club.

The deal, which is subject to visa approval and registration procedures, is expected to be completed once Cunha returns from international duty with Brazil later this month.

The forward has scored 31 goals in 76 appearances since completing a permanent move to Wolves in 2023.

At least 30 Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians waiting for aid near a distribution hub in Rafah, run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The attack comes amid disputes over the text of a US-backed ceasefire proposal.

Some 491 were arrested in Paris during post-match celebrations after Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League win.

Two people died and hundreds were arrested in France overnight as football fans celebrated Paris Saint-Germain’s (PSG) stunning UEFA Champions League final victory, the Ministry of the Interior said.

The epicentre of the euphoria was in Paris, which was a theatre of car horns, cheers, singing in the streets and fireworks throughout the night following PSG’s 5-0 triumph over Inter Milan in Munich.

The Interior Ministry said on Sunday that 491 people were arrested in the capital after crowds converged on the Champs-Elysees avenue and clashes broke out with officers.

Across France, a total of 559 people were arrested, it added.

The authorities reported two deaths amid celebrations. A man riding a scooter in Paris died after being hit by a car in the city’s southern 15th arrondissement, located about 2km (1.2 miles) from the Champs-Elysees.

In the southwestern town of Dax, a 17-year-old was fatally stabbed at a gathering feting the PSG victory, prosecutors said. His death occurred shortly after the match and “during the celebrations”, but the prosecutor’s office said it did not know whether it was related to the Champions League final. It added that the perpetrator was “on the run”.

The PSG team were to hold a victory parade on the Champs-Elysees on Sunday, with tens of thousands of supporters expected to gather to catch a glimpse of their returning heroes.

Overnight celebrations turn to violence

Overnight, though, AFP journalists saw police on the famed thoroughfare using water cannon to stop a crowd reaching the Arc de Triomphe that sits at the top of the Champs-Elysees.

“Troublemakers on the Champs-Elysees were looking to create incidents and repeatedly came into contact with police by throwing large fireworks and other objects,” police said in a statement.

Elsewhere, police said a car careered into fans celebrating PSG’s win in Grenoble in southeastern France, leaving four people injured, two of them seriously. All of those hurt were from the same family, police said.

The driver handed himself in to the police and was placed under arrest. A source close to the investigation said it was believed the driver had not acted intentionally.

The public prosecutor’s office said the driver had tested negative for alcohol and drugs.

The majority of fans celebrated peacefully, but police in Paris said scuffles broke out near the Champs-Elysees avenue, and around PSG’s Parc des Princes stadium, where 48,000 people had watched the 5-0 win on giant screens.

Most of those arrested in the capital were suspected of illegally possessing fireworks and causing disorder, police said.

The PSG victory meant the club won the biggest prize in European club football for the first time in their history.

PSG supporter Clement, 20, said: “It’s so good and so deserved! We have a song that talks about our struggles, and it hasn’t always been easy.

“But we got our faith back this year with a team without stars. They’re 11 guys who play for each other.”

French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said he would host the victorious players on Sunday to congratulate them.

In a message on X, Macron hailed a “day of glory for PSG”.

A total of 11.5 million people tuned in across France to watch the match, according to figures given by the Mediametrie audience-measurement company and one of the broadcasters, Canal+.

Two Russian bridges near Ukraine have collapsed within hours. In Bryansk, a bridge collapsed onto a train, killing at least seven people, while in Kursk, another bridge collapsed, derailing a freight train. Russia is investigating the incidents as possible sabotage.