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Here’s where things stand on Monday 29 June 2025:
- Israeli attacks across Gaza today have killed at least 63 people, including several aid seekers and children, according to medical sources.
- Israel’s attack on Evin Prison in Iran’s capital killed at least 71 people last week, Iranian judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir says, with the dead including family members of detainees.
- At least 66 children have died of malnutrition in Gaza over the course of Israel’s war, authorities in the territory say.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 56,500 people and wounded 133,419, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7 attacks, and more than 200 taken captive.
Glastonbury erupts in pro-Palestine chants as artists slam Israeli army
Israel’s war on Gaza has taken centre stage at Glastonbury, one of the world’s most well-known music festivals.
The event became a political flashpoint at the weekend as performers rallied thousands of fans with a defiant show of support for Palestinians.
The London-based punk duo Bob Vylan led crowds in chants against the Israeli army while Northern Ireland’s hip-hop trio Kneecap delivered a set that was part concert, part political statement to a crowd of 30,000.
Gaza death toll rises to 63
Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed at least 63 people today, according to medical sources.
At least 43 of them have been killed in strikes on northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where Israeli forces have stepped up its bombing campaign.
Israel launches new air raids on Gaza City
Our colleagues on the ground are reporting that Israeli jets have launched air strikes on Gaza City.
Israeli attacks across Gaza today have killed at least 47 people, including several aid seekers and children, according to medical sources.
Netanyahu: We have new opportunities to free captives
Netanyahu has claimed Israel has new opportunities to free the captives held in Gaza, according to a Channel 14 report.
Netanyahu visited a facility belonging to Shin Bet in southern Israel, where he was briefed on activities that included special operations in Gaza and the security technologies used during the recent war with Iran.
Netanyahu addressed personnel at the facility, telling them they had “removed a direct threat to our existence, two deadly threats in fact”.
“Following this victory, many opportunities have opened up for us – foremost among them is the liberation of the prisoners and resolving the Gaza issue by eliminating Hamas,” he said, adding that he believes the two goals are achievable.
“Broad regional opportunities have also emerged, and you are partners in most of them.”
Does Glastonbury represent a new ‘radical force in politics’?
The controversy over musical artists invoking Palestine during performances at the United Kingdom’s Glastonbury Festival reflects the event’s longstanding political character, says George McKay, a media studies professor at the University of East Anglia.
Since the 1980s, Glastonbury has been known for embracing progressive causes – from nuclear disarmament to labour rights, he said.
But its ties to mainstream British media, including the BBC and The Guardian, have given it a vast audience – and drawn added scrutiny, McKay told Al Jazeera.
Referencing Kneecap, the Irish-language hip-hop group that led fans in chants of “Free Palestine”, McKay asked: “Are they going to kind of take this on and become a radical force in politics… or is this the high point and then they’re going to crumble under a combination of legal action and a sense that they’ve gone too far and that’s the end of it?
“If it’s the latter, it doesn’t really sort of give you the sense that popular music is going to open up again and have an extraordinary new wave of radical politics,” said McKay, who authored a book on the Glastonbury Festival. “It may well be that the market wins and the politics takes a quieter turn.”
‘This is not humanitarian aid. It is slaughter.’
“People in Gaza are facing an unbearable dilemma: risk your family starving or risk your life to maybe get food at an Israeli-US distribution site,” said Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on X.
“This is not humanitarian aid. It is slaughter,” the group also said, apparently referring to frequent killings reported near aid distribution points of the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Gaza City hospital overwhelmed with casualties
Amid intensified Israeli attacks, patients were treated on the floor at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital.
Israeli leaflets threatening Palestinians to evacuate to the south precede relentless strikes, exacerbating civilian tolls.
Entire families are trapped under rubble as rescue efforts falter.
‘Fabricated’: Hamas denies reports of ceasefire
Hamas has denied reports carried by Sky News Arabia, which quotes a “Palestinian source” as saying the group has agreed to a prisoner-captive exchange and ceasefire in Gaza.
Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the report is “fully fabricated” and does not reflect the group’s actual position.
“We completely reject it,” he said in a statement.
Al-Risheq said the report is an attempt to distract from “war crimes” and incite against Palestinian resistance. Hamas reaffirmed that its conditions for any agreement are clear and public and dismissed “anonymous sources” as serving Israeli interests.
Among Hamas’s demands for a ceasefire is the complete withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from Gaza and an end to Israel’s war, which has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians.
If you’re just joining us
Let’s get you up to speed with the latest developments:
- Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn have killed at least 47 people.
- Hamas has slammed an incursion by illegal Israeli settlers into Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, saying it was a “desperate attempt to impose control over it”.
- A group of Israeli settlers stormed into the Palestinian town of Hizma, near Jerusalem, and fired shots at residents on the main street, wounding three people.
- Doctors in Gaza said cases of severe acute malnutrition have spiked dramatically in recent weeks, and food shortages are killing Palestinian children first.
- The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, the al-Quds Brigades, said its fighters destroyed an Israeli army vehicle in the east of Khan Younis.
What is going on under GHF’s watch is ‘inexplicable’
Geoffrey Nice, a human rights lawyer, told Al Jazeera that the killings going on around the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s activities are “inexplicable”.
“What is absolutely astonishing to outsiders is that it is in the business of apparently providing aid where it is desperately needed, and those providing aid with you end up shooting dead hundreds of people,” said Nice, who also took part in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
He stressed that to explain the situation, “you have to look around for another reason”.
Nice also asked, “Is there maybe some other objective of which the use of this particular organisation is – knowingly, part knowingly or intentionally – a part?”
Will Iran double down on its nuclear programme after the war?
US President Donald Trump can force Israel to end the war on Gaza if he shows the same gumption as he did with Iran, argues Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Watch this episode of the Bottom Line where Parsi discusses the wider implications of the 12-day war on Iran with host Steve Clemons.
Iran feels Netanyahu ‘can break ceasefire anytime’
As we reported earlier, Iran’s military chief Abdolrahim Mousavi expressed doubts about Israel’s commitment to the ceasefire.
Now, former NATO officer Yusuf Alabarda said Iran is right to be suspicious given Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s track record in the region.
“It is very obvious that Netanyahu is a warmonger,” Alabarda told Al Jazeera. “He’s attacked not only Iran, but the Palestinian territories. Yesterday, he was bombing Lebanon and at the same time invaded parts of Syria.
One factor that could tempt Netanyahu to restart attacks is Iran’s weak air defences, which have so far proven inept against Israeli air raids, Alabarda added.
“The skies are open for the Americans and for the Israelis, which is very attractive for Netanyahu … he feels there’s an opportunity there.”
Photos: People flee eastern Gaza after Israeli evacuation threat
Number of deaths around GHF distribution points ‘extraordinary’
Geoffrey Nice, a human rights lawyer, has talked to Al Jazeera about the potential complicity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US- and Israel-backed organisation, alongside Israeli forces in the reported killings of civilians near aid distribution points.
“If the overall plan is not to bring humanitarian aid, but to achieve something different, and if that something different is a war crime, then they are complicit in it,” Nice, who also took part in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said, speaking from Dubrovnik, Croatia.
“If the underlying objective is starvation or removal of Palestinians from their land and this organisation is actually a part of that … then they are culpable,” he added, noting how the previous aid system relied on partnerships with local contacts and organisations coordinated by the UN.
“[It] was not associated with deaths of this kind or this number so far as I understand it,” he stressed.
Nice said the “extraordinary” number of deaths cannot be explained by claiming people looked “suspicious” or “strange” as they were in a “desperate” situation.
“You are providing aid to starving people … you must reasonably expect them to behave in a way such people would behave: Desperately,” he concluded.