Category: 2. World

At least 51 Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Wednesday including 21 aid seekers.

Medical sources told Al Jazeera that the casualties include 21 people who died during a chaotic incident at an aid distribution centre in southern Gaza.

The latest mass-casualty event occurred at a GHF (Global Humanitarian Foundation) facility in Khan Younis, where a stampede broke out. Most victims died from being trampled or suffocated, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said.

The ministry disputed an earlier claim from the GHF, which had alleged without evidence that “armed elements affiliated with Hamas” triggered the chaos. GHF also claimed one of its US contractors had been threatened with a gun and that weapons were visible among the crowd.

Palestinian authorities and witnesses have strongly rejected that account, stating the panic began after tear gas was fired at desperate civilians waiting for aid.

An earlier GHF statement said 19 people were trampled and one was stabbed in the melee. However, Gaza’s Health Ministry has since confirmed 21 deaths, noting that 15 died as a result of a stampede and suffocation.

The United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said the humanitarian toll continues to worsen, with 10 children per day losing one or both legs as a result of the conflict. More than 134,000 people, including over 40,500 children, have sustained war-related injuries since the conflict began.

OHCHR added that more than 35,000 people are believed to suffer from significant hearing loss due to explosions, warning of long-term medical and psychological trauma for Gaza’s civilian population.

The Israeli military has announced the opening of a new corridor in southern Gaza that divides the Khan Younis area into eastern and western zones.

Called the Magen Oz Corridor, the 15km route connects to the Morag Corridor, which was created in April to separate Khan Younis from Rafah.

Read: EU signals possible action against Israel over Gaza humanitarian crisis

According to a military statement, the corridor is intended to increase pressure on Hamas and dismantle the remaining brigade operating in the city.

Military analysts say the development signals a deepening Israeli campaign in southern Gaza, while humanitarian organisations warn the move could worsen civilian displacement and obstruct access to aid.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Ministry of Defence has submitted a revised plan to Netanyahu for “humanitarian city” in southern Gaza.

The new plan would cost 4 billion shekels ($1.2bn) and be completed within two months, Army Radio reported. The site would house 600,000 displaced Palestinians in tents, with access to water, food and electricity.

An earlier version of the plan, introduced by Defence Minister Israel Katz, was reportedly rejected by Netanyahu as too costly and logistically difficult.

Human rights organisations have condemned both iterations of the plan, calling it an attempt to forcibly relocate Palestinians into a confined zone drawing comparisons to a concentration camp.

Israeli media reports ‘dramatic progress’ in Gaza ceasefire talks

Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Doha, Qatar, have made what Israeli media described as “dramatic progress” over the past 24 hours.

Talks, which began on 6 July, aim to secure a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange deal. According to Israel’s Channel 13, the breakthrough came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Security Cabinet agreed to ease some of their demands—particularly on the military’s continued presence in Gaza.

Unnamed officials told the outlet that the current framework includes a 60-day pause in Israeli operations, after which combat could resume. While Netanyahu has reportedly approved “additional flexibility” to move the process forward, he remains opposed to ending the war entirely.

Channel 13 quoted one Israeli official as saying “the road to a deal is now paved,” though no concrete timeline was offered for its conclusion.

Israel’s war on Gaza

Israel has carried out a devastating military campaign in Gaza since late October 2023, killing nearly 58,500 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children.

The relentless bombardment has levelled much of the besieged enclave, creating severe food shortages, collapsing health infrastructure, and fuelling the spread of disease.

In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.

The EU has been accused of a “cruel and unlawful betrayal” of Palestinians and European values after failing to take action to impose sanctions on Israel over the war in Gaza.

The stinging rebuke from Amnesty International, echoed by other human rights organisations, came after EU ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday declined to endorse any measures to sanction Israel over the brutal war in Gaza and endemic violence in the West Bank.

The EU’s most senior diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said the bloc would keep “options on the table” to pressure Israel’s government if there was no improvement in the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in Gaza. According to several diplomatic sources she did not endorse any one of 10 sanctions options drawn up by her team, after an earlier EU review found “indications” Israel was in breach of human rights commitments.

Kallas said Israel needed to “take more concrete steps to improve the humanitarian situation on the ground”, which earlier in the day she had described as catastrophic. She was meeting EU foreign affairs ministers days after announcing a potentially significant agreement with Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, where 2.1 million people face famine and drought caused by the collapse of water systems.

EU sources say the flow of aid into the territory has increased to about 80 trucks a day, but distribution remains problematic. With no clear signs that new aid inflows were reaching people over the weekend, Palestinians have continued to risk their lives queueing for food and water at sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed logistics group. Officials iin Gazareported that in one 24-hour period over the weekend, 139 people were killed, including women and children queueing for food. The UN said about 850 Palestinians in the enclave had been killed while waiting to receive aid since May, both at GHF distribution points and elsewhere.

Ministers were not expected to endorse any of the 10 sanctions options, which include full suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement, a trade and cooperation deal. Suspending this deal is widely seen as a non-starter as it requires unanimous support of member states.

Israel’s closest EU allies – Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic – oppose sanctions, especially now Israel has struck the humanitarian deal with the EU. Hungary also continues to veto EU sanctions on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Even countries strongly supportive of the Palestinian cause, such as Ireland, have not called for any specific measures, but await proposals from Kallas. Only Spain has come out clearly for a suspension of the association agreement.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said refusal to suspend the agreement with Israel “is a cruel and unlawful betrayal of the European project and vision, predicated on upholding international law and fighting authoritarian practices, of the European Union’s own rules and of the human rights of Palestinians”.

She added: “This will be remembered as one of the most disgraceful moments in the EU’s history.”

Claudio Francavilla, the acting EU director of Human Rights Watch in Brussels, said: “Once again, EU ministers have failed. Not enough support for any measure to hold Israel to account, traded away for the illusory promise of a few more trucks.”

Earlier in the day, Kallas said there were positive signs on border crossings, arrival of humanitarian aid trucks, reconstruction of electricity lines and water, but “of course we need to see more in order to see real improvement for the people on the ground”. She said the EU would keep a “close watch” on how the agreement was implemented, with updates to European diplomats once a fortnight.

According to the EU, the agreement with Israel means “the substantial increase of daily trucks for food and non-food items to enter Gaza” among other measures, including the repair of power supplies to Gaza’s critical water desalination facility.

Kallas said member states had a discussion on the options paper, but she did not take ownership of any proposal. “These are the choices that member states have to make,” she told reporters. “We will keep these options on the table and stand ready to act if Israel does not live up to its pledges. The aim is not to punish Israel. The aim is to improve the situation in Gaza.”

Speaking on Monday, Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, expressed confidence the EU would not take any action, saying: “There’s no justification whatsoever.”

Hadja Lahbib, the EU commissioner for humanitarian aid, struck a more urgent tone, saying it was clear the agreement was not yet fully implemented: “My message to the Israeli authorities is very clear. Put this agreement into action now. Stop killing the people. We need humanitarian aid: food, water, fuel to reach the people in need.”

Lahbib, who briefed ministers about the aid deal, added that “it was important to know what we can do if the agreement is not fully implemented” and that the situation would need to have improved before the next formal gathering of foreign ministers in October. “Every minute lost is a life lost,” she said.

President Donald Trump’s ultimatum to Russia to accept a peace deal in Ukraine within 50 days or face bruising sanctions on its energy exports has given the Kremlin extra time to pursue its summer offensive.

The dogged Ukrainian resistance, however, makes it unlikely that the Russian military will make any quick gains.

President Vladimir Putin has declared repeatedly that any peace deal should see Ukraine withdraw from the four regions that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured. He also wants Ukraine to renounce its bid to join NATO and accept strict limits on its armed forces -– demands Kyiv and its Western allies have rejected.

A chronic shortage of manpower and ammunition has forced Ukrainian forces to focus on holding ground rather than launching counteroffensives.

But despite a renewed Russian push — and an onslaught of aerial attacks on Kyiv and other cities in recent weeks — Ukrainian officials and analysts say it remains unlikely that Moscow can achieve any territorial breakthrough significant enough in 50 days to force Ukraine into accepting the Kremlin’s terms anytime soon.

Since spring, Russian troops have accelerated their land gains, capturing the most territory in eastern Ukraine since the opening stages of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Russian forces are closing in on the eastern strongholds of Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region, methodically capturing villages near both cities to try to cut key supply routes and envelop their defenders — a slow offensive that has unfolded for months.

Capturing those strongholds would allow Russia to push toward Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, setting the stage for the seizure of the entire Donetsk region.

If Russian troops seize those last strongholds, it would open the way for them to forge westward to the Dnipropetrovsk region. The regional capital of Dnipro, a major industrial hub of nearly 1 million, is about 150 kilometers (just over 90 miles) west of Russian positions.

The spread of fighting to Dnipropetrovsk could damage Ukrainian morale and give the Kremlin more leverage in any negotiations.

In the neighboring Luhansk region, Ukrainian troops control a small sliver of land, but Moscow has not seemed to prioritize its capture.

The other two Moscow-annexed regions — Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — seem far from being totally overtaken by Russia.

Early in the war, Russia quickly overran the Kherson region but was pushed back by Ukrainian forces from large swaths of it in November 2022, and retreated to the eastern bank of the Dnieper River. A new attempt to cross the waterway to seize the rest of the region would involve massive challenges, and Moscow doesn’t seem to have the capability to mount such an operation.

Fully capturing the Zaporizhzhia region appears equally challenging.

Moscow’s forces captured several villages in northeastern Ukraine’s Sumy region after reclaiming chunks of Russia’s Kursk region from Ukrainian troops who staged a surprise incursion in August 2024. Ukraine says its forces have stopped Russia’s offensive and maintain a presence on the fringe of the Kursk region, where they are still tying down as many as 10,000 Russian troops.

Putin recently described the offensive into the Sumy region as part of efforts to carve a “buffer zone” to protect Russian territory from Ukrainian attacks.

The regional capital of Sumy, a city of 268,000, is about 30 kilometers (less than 20 miles) from the border. Putin said Moscow doesn’t plan to capture the city for now but doesn’t exclude it.

Military analysts, however, say Russian forces in the area clearly lack the strength to capture it.

Russian forces also have pushed an offensive in the neighboring Kharkiv region, but they haven’t made much progress against fierce Ukrainian resistance.

Some commentators say Russia may hope to use its gains in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions as bargaining chips in negotiations, trading them for parts of the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control.

“A scenario of territorial swaps as part of the talks is quite realistic,” said Mikhail Karyagin, a Kremlin-friendly political expert, in a commentary,

Ukrainian commanders say the scale and pace of Russian operations suggest that any game-changing gains are out of reach, with Moscow’s troops advancing slowly at a tremendous cost to its own forces.

While exhausted Ukrainian forces are feeling outnumbered and outgunned, they are relying on drones to stymie Moscow’s slow offensive. Significant movements of troops and weapons are easily spotted by drones that are so prolific that both sides use them to track and attack even individual soldiers within minutes.

Russian military commentators recognize that Ukraine’s drone proficiency makes any quick gains by Moscow unlikely. They say Russia aims to bleed Ukraine dry with a strategy of “a thousand cuts,” using relentless pressure on many sectors of the front and steadily increasing long-range aerial attacks against key infrastructure.

“The Russian army aims to exhaust the enemy to such an extent that it will not be able to hold the defense, and make multiple advances merge into one or several successes on a strategic scale that will determine the outcome of the war,” Moscow-based military analyst Sergei Poletayev wrote in an analysis. “It’s not that important where and at what speed to advance: the target is not the capture of this or that line; the target is the enemy army as such.”

Ukrainian troops on the front express exasperation and anger about delays and uncertainty about U.S. weapons shipments.

Delays in U.S. military assistance have forced Kyiv’s troops to ration ammunition and scale back operations as Russia intensifies its attacks, Ukrainian soldiers in eastern Ukraine told The Associated Press.

The United States will sell weapons to its NATO allies in Europe so they can provide them to Ukraine, according to Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Included are Patriot air defense systems, a top priority for Ukraine.

Speeded-up weapons shipments from European allies are crucial to allowing Ukraine to stem the Russian attacks, according to analysts.

“The rate of Russian advance is accelerating, and Russia’s summer offensive is likely to put the armed forces of Ukraine under intense pressure,” Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute in London said in a commentary.

But most of the capabilities that Ukraine needs — from drones to artillery systems — can be provided by NATO allies in Europe, he said.

“In the short-term, Europe can cover most of Ukraine’s needs so long as it can purchase some critical weapons types from the U.S.,” Watling said.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

What do we know about the cost of the secret Afghan scheme?published at 11:33 British Summer Time

11:33 BST

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, EPA

We’re looking into the Afghan data leak story, which was revealed yesterday after a court ruling was lifted.

The previous Conservative government set up a resettlement scheme – the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) for Afghans affected by the data breach and its existence was kept secret until yesterday, when it was closed by the government.

There have been various claims about how much it could end up costing the government, with figures as high as £7bn. We’ve been trying to get to the bottom of them.

Defence Secretary John Healey told the Commons yesterday that the £7bn figure “was a previous estimate”, covering not only the ARR, but the “total cost of all government Afghan schemes for the entire period in which they may operate”.

He gave a lower overall figure of “between £5.5 billion and £6 billion” because of “policy decisions”. He didn’t specify what those were but earlier in July two other Afghan schemes were closed.

The specific cost of bringing 900 people and 3,600 family members to the UK under the ARR scheme is about £400m, with similar additional costs for those who still to arrive, Healey said.

But this does not include the legal costs of keeping the case out of the media, nor does it include potential compensation claims by Afghans whose lives may have been put at risk by the data leak.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Clashes raged in the southern Syrian city of Sweida on Wednesday after a ceasefire between government forces and Druze armed groups collapsed and Israel threatened to escalate its involvement in support of the Druze religious minority.

Syria’s Defense Ministry blamed militias in Sweida for violating a ceasefire agreement that had been reached Tuesday, causing Syrian army soldiers to return fire and continue military operations in the Druze-majority province.

“Military forces continue to respond to the source of fire inside the city of Sweida, while adhering to rules of engagement to protect residents, prevent harm, and ensure the safe return of those who left the city back to their homes,” the statement said.

A rebel offensive led by Islamist insurgent groups ousted Syria’s longtime despotic leader, Bashar Assad, in December, bringing an end to a nearly 14-year civil war. Since then, the country’s new rulers have struggled to consolidate control over the territory.

The primarily Sunni Muslim leaders have faced suspicion from religious and ethnic minorities. The fears of minorities increased after clashes between government forces and pro-Assad armed groups in March spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks in which hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs, were killed.

Reports of killings and looting in Druze areas

The latest escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province, a center of the Druze community.

Government forces that intervened to restore order have also clashed with the Druze, while reports have surfaced of members of the security forces carrying out extrajudicial killings, looting and burning civilian homes.

No official casualty figures have been released since Monday, when the Syrian Interior Ministry said 30 people had been killed. The U.K.-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 250 people had been killed as of Wednesday morning, including four children, five women and 138 soldiers and security forces.

The observatory said at least 21 people were killed in “field executions.”

Israel has launched a series of airstrikes on convoys of government forces since the clashes erupted, saying that it is acting to protect the Druze.

The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

Israel threatens to scale up its intervention

In Israel, the Druze are seen as a loyal minority and often serve in the military. In Syria, the Druze have been divided over how to deal with the country’s new leaders, with some advocating for integrating into the new system while others have remained suspicious of the authorities in Damascus and pushed for an autonomous Druze region.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the Israeli army “will continue to attack regime forces until they withdraw from the area — and will also soon raise the bar of responses against the regime if the message is not understood.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Tuesday night that Israel has “a commitment to preserve the southwestern region of Syria as a demilitarized area on Israel’s border” and has “an obligation to safeguard the Druze locals.”

Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria’s new leaders since Assad’s fall, saying it doesn’t want Islamist militants near its borders. Israeli forces have seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria.