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Here’s where things stand on Friday 26 June 2025:
- Gaza’s Government Media Office says at least 549 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces while trying to access humanitarian supplies in the past four weeks, and a further 4,066 were injured at or near US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution sites.
- At least 47 people have been killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza since the early hours of this morning, hospital sources tell us.
- Israel targets Nabatieh in south Lebanon, killing at least one woman and wounding 20 others, after killing two in drone strikes yesterday.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 56,331 people and wounded 132,632, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7 attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Netanyahu submits fresh request to delay corruption trial hearings
The Israeli prime minister’s lawyer has submitted a new request for the next two weeks’ hearings to be scrapped, after the first attempt was rejected, according to the Israeli media.
Amit Hadad said he submitted Netanyahu’s schedule to the court to demonstrate “the national need for the prime minister to devote all his time and energy to the political, national and security issues at hand”.
As we reported earlier, the Jerusalem district court had rejected Netanyahu’s initial request to postpone giving testimony in his corruption trial.
The decision comes after Netanyahu’s lawyer on Thursday asked the court to excuse the leader from hearings over the next two weeks, saying he needed to concentrate on “security issues” after Israel’s 12-day war with Iran.
Toddler burned alive in ongoing attacks in Gaza today
In the past few hours, we have recorded a surge of Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling in multiple locations across Gaza.
Israeli fighter jets struck the Osama bin Zayed School in the northern part of Gaza. It was sheltering displaced families. So far, we know that eight Palestinians were killed in the strike, including a female toddler who, according to witnesses, was completely burned alive.
In central Gaza, in particular in Bureij refugee camp, which is only 6km (about 3.7 miles) away from where we are, the Israeli military struck a group of civilians, and five of them have been confirmed killed. Their bodies were transported to al-Awda Hospital.
In Khan Younis in the past hour, we saw huge plumes of smoke coming from different directions.
Gaza’s civil defence says 62 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since dawn
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson from the emergency service, has told the AFP news agency that six people were killed in southern Gaza near one of the aid distribution sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and one more in a separate incident in the centre of the territory, where the army denied shooting “at all”.
Another three people were killed by a strike while waiting for aid southwest of Gaza City, Bassal said.
He said that 10 people were killed in five separate Israeli strikes near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, east of which he said “continuous Israeli artillery shelling” was reported on Friday.
Basal added that 30 people were killed in six separate strikes in northern Gaza, including a fisherman who was targeted “by Israeli warships”. He specified that eight of them were killed “after an Israeli air strike hit Osama bin Zayed School, which was housing displaced persons” in northern Gaza.
In central Gaza’s al-Bureij refugee camp, 12 people were killed in two separate Israeli strikes, Basal said.
Israeli army denies instructing soldiers to deliberately shoot civilians near Gaza aid points
The Israeli army has “strongly rejected” the accusation raised by Israeli soldiers in a report published in the Haaretz newspaper that they were instructed to deliberately shoot at Palestinian civilians at aid points in Gaza.
The military statement published on Telegram in English claimed that the army “directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians”.
“Any allegation of a deviation from the law or [military] directives will be thoroughly examined, and further action will be taken as necessary. The allegations of deliberate fire toward civilians presented in the article are not recognized in the field,” it said.
People in Iran are ‘mourning and angry’: Journalist
Iranian journalist Fatima Karimkhan says some in Iran, Israel and the US believe that the US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities has seriously damaged them, while others think the opposite.
She said that without the IAEA confirmation, it is not possible to know if Iran’s nuclear programme was destroyed as Trump said, or if some facilities still exist to continue.
Karimkhan said that the Iranian parliament passed a bill asking the Iranian government to suspend its work with and commitment to the IAEA.
“This is different from pulling out of the [nuclear nonproliferation treaty],” she said, when asked about French President Macron’s remarks warning Iran not to withdraw from the treaty on nuclear weapons.
The journalist said people in Iran are “angry and devastated”, not only because of Israel’s killing of popular military figures, but over the citizens who were killed during these attacks.
“People are mourning and angry,” she concluded.
Drugs found in flour bags distributed by US-Israeli aid centres in Gaza: Media Office
Gaza’s Government Media Office has expressed its “deep concern and condemnation” over the discovery of “narcotic pills of the type ‘Oxycodone’” inside flour bags distributed by the US- and Israeli-backed aid centres in the enclave.
“We have so far documented four testimonies from citizens who found these pills inside flour bags. More serious is the possibility that some of these narcotic substances were deliberately ground or dissolved in the flour itself, which raises the scope of the crime and transforms it into a serious attack directly targeting public health,” said the statement published by the Media Office on Telegram.
“We hold the Israeli occupation fully responsible for this heinous crime of spreading addiction and destroying the Palestinian social fabric from within, as part of a systematic policy that constitutes an extension of the genocide it is waging against our Palestinian people,” it added.
“The Israeli occupation’s use of drugs as a soft weapon in a dirty war against civilians, and its exploitation of the blockade to smuggle these substances as ‘aid and assistance’, constitute a war crime and a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” the statement said.
‘Controlling the crowd by fire’ at Israeli aid sites: Haaretz journalist
Killings of Palestinians at US, Israeli aid distrubution sites in Gaza are part of an Israeli military directive to “control” crowds, according to Nir Hasson, a journalist at Israeli outlet Haaretz, who revealed this finding today in a report alongside his colleagues.
“It’s actually a practice of … controlling the crowd by fire, like if you wanted the crowd to run off [from] a place, you shoot them at them, even though you know they are unarmed … You use fire to move people from one point to another,” Hasson told Al Jazeera, speaking from West Jerusalem.
While the journalist and his colleagues do not know the name of the commander who might have issued such a directive, Hasson said that he would likely hold a position high up in the army.
Despite this practice at these sites, most Israelis and the army’s troops still believe the war on Gaza is just, even while some cracks are emerging in this understanding, the journalist said.
“[There are] more and more people who are asking themselves if this war is necessary, but also what is the humanitarian price that the Gazan population is [paying] for this war?” Hasson said.
Still, mainstream media in Israel largely only covers the war from the Israeli army’s perspective, and often don’t report on the humanitarian issues of the war, he added.
Photos: Pro-Palestinian protesters gather in Yemen’s Sanaa
Israeli soldier confessions over killings at aid centres detail ‘war crimes’: Media office
“War crimes” are taking place at US and Israeli-backed aid distribution centres in Gaza, according to the enclave’s Government Media Office.
The statement referencing “the shocking confessions” of Israeli soldiers published by the Haaretz newspaper of “deliberately shooting starving Palestinian civilians” near the aid points said the testimonies are evidence of “war crimes”.
“The report’s direct military orders to fire on unarmed civilians who pose no threat, and the use of heavy machine guns, artillery, and shells against peaceful gatherings waiting for food, are further evidence that the Israeli occupation army is pursuing a systematic policy of genocide under the false guise of ‘relief’,” the media office said.
,Some Palestinian prisoners ‘hidden from the face of earth’: LawyerA lawyer for the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs says dozens of prisoners Israel detained in Gaza since October 7, 2023, have gone through “enforced disappearance” in Israeli jails with no information shared about their fate.“We are talking about elite Gazan detainees who have been detained by Israel since October 7,” lawyer Khaled Mahajna was quoted by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office (ASRA), adding that most of these prisoners are resistance fighters.“Their number is estimated at between 350 and 400, but no one knows anything about them – no names, no cases, no pictures, no news,” Mahajna stressed.“They are hidden from the face of the earth,” he added.Palestinian and international human rights organisations have called on the Israeli authorities various times to reveal the names and locations of these detainees, and to allow their lawyers to visit them and review their health and legal conditions.
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