Closing summary
We are now closing the live blog. Here is a summary of events today:
The Israeli military has launched an investigation into possible war crimes following growing evidence that troops have deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians gathering to receive aid in Gaza.
United Nations secretary general António Guterres said on Friday that a US-backed aid operation in Gaza is “inherently unsafe,” giving a blunt assessment: “It is killing people”, Reuters reported.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said that “the Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid” as it called on the Israeli authorities to end its siege on the territory.
At least 56,331 Palestinian people have been killed and 132,632 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. At least 72 Palestinian people were killed and 174 others injured in the last 24 hours, it added.
Gaza rescuers said 62 people were killed on Friday by Israeli forces, including 10 waiting for aid.
Israel’s air force carried out intense airstrikes on mountains overlooking the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on Friday, in an attack that the Israeli military claimed targeted underground Hezbollah assets.
Lebanon said one person was killed and 21 wounded in strikes with Israel, blaming the death on Hezbollah arms.
The Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, denounced the Israeli attacks saying they break the terms of the ceasefire signed between Israel and Hezbollah in November.
The 50th Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) medic has been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, the PRCS said in a statement. Haitham Bassam Abu Issa, a nurse at the PRCS clinic in Deir al-Balah in the centre of the Gaza strip, was killed while off duty on Thursday, the PRCS says.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi indicated on Friday that Tehran may reject any request by the head of the UN nuclear watchdog for visits to Iranian nuclear sites, Reuters reports. In a post on X he said the UN nuclear watchdog head’s insistence to visit Iran sites is “meaningless, even malign”.
Donald Trump reiterated on Friday that Tehran wants to meet following US strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, but gave no further details, Reuters reports. Trump also said that he would want the International Atomic Energy Agency or another trusted entity to have full rights to conduct inspections in Iran.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday rejected a report that the country’s military commanders ordered their soldiers to fire at Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid in Gaza, Reuters reports.
Netanyahu’s request to postpone his upcoming testimony in his criminal trial by two weeks has been rejected.
Netanyahu is keen to meet US president Donald Trump at the White House in the coming weeks to celebrate the joint US-Israeli bombing campaign of Iran’s nuclear program, according to reports.
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz says he had instructed military to prepare “enforcement plan” against Iran.
The UK said on Friday it would end evacuation flights out of Israel for UK nationals after a sixth and final flight scheduled for Sunday, as demand decreases in light of a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, Reuters reports.
Iran will hold what it described as “historic” funeral proceedings in Tehran on Saturday for 60 killed in its 12-day war with Israel, including top military commanders and nuclear scientists.
Israel killed more than 30 senior security officials and 11 senior nuclear scientists, a senior Israeli military official said on Friday in summarising Israel’s 12-day air war with Iran.
The 13 June opening strike on Iran, 1,500 km (930 miles) away, severely damaged its aerial defences and destabilised its ability to respond in the critical early hours of the conflict, the official said, according to Reuters.
Israel’s air force struck over 900 targets and the military deeply damaged Iran’s missile production during the war that ended with a US-brokered ceasefire, the official said.
“The Iranian nuclear project suffered a major blow: The regime’s ability to enrich uranium to 90% was neutralized for a prolonged period. Its current ability to produce a nuclear weapon core has been neutralised,” the official said.
IDF opens inquiry into possible war crimes after deaths near Gaza aid sites
by Jason Burke and Malak A Tantesh in Gaza
The Israeli military has launched an investigation into possible war crimes following growing evidence that troops have deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians gathering to receive aid in Gaza.
Hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks after being subjected to air attacks, shootings and bombardments by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) while waiting for food to be distributed or while making their way todistribution sites.
On Friday the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers as saying they had been told to fire at crowds near food distribution sites to keep them away from Israeli military positions. The soldiers said they had concerns about using unnecessary lethal force against people who appeared to pose no threat.
Haaretz also quoted unnamed sources as saying that the army unit established to review incidents that may involve breaches of international law had been tasked with examining soldiers’ actions near distribution locations over the past month.
In a statement reported by Israeli media, the IDF rejected the accusations, saying that no forces had been ordered “to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers”.
“To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians,” the IDF said.
In a joint statement issued late on Friday, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and Israel Katz, the defence minister, accused Haaretz of “malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world”.
You can read the full report here:
Netanyahu rejects report Israeli troops ordered to fire on Gaza aid-seekers
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday rejected a report that the country’s military commanders ordered their soldiers to fire at Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid in Gaza, Reuters reports.
Left-leaning daily Haaretz earlier quoted unnamed soldiers as saying commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds near aid distribution centres to disperse them even when they posed no threat.
“The State of Israel absolutely rejects the contemptible blood libels that have been published in the Haaretz newspaper,” Netanyahu said in a joint statement with defence minister Israel Katz.
Trump insists Iran 'wants to meet' for talks - reports
Donald Trump reiterated on Friday that Tehran wants to meet following US strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, but gave no further details, Reuters reports.
Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, also said that he would want the International Atomic Energy Agency or another trusted entity to have full rights to conduct inspections in Iran.
UK says last Israel evacuation flight to leave on Sunday
The UK said on Friday it would end evacuation flights out of Israel for UK nationals after a sixth and final flight scheduled for Sunday, as demand decreases in light of a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, Reuters reports.
“The government has organised multiple flights evacuating British nationals and their dependants from Tel Aviv, prioritising the most vulnerable,” a spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign Office said, adding the number of commercial options for travel was growing.
“These flights will end if there is not sufficient demand. We will keep the situation under review.”
Iran's Araghchi says UN nuclear watchdog head's insistence to visit Iran sites is 'meaningless, even malign'
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi indicated on Friday that Tehran may reject any request by the head of the UN nuclear watchdog for visits to Iranian nuclear sites, Reuters reports.
In a post on X he said the UN nuclear watchdog head’s insistence to visit Iran sites is “meaningless, even malign”.
50th Palestine Red Crescent medic killed in Gaza since the start of the war
The 50th Palestine Red Crescent medic has been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PCRS) said in a statement.
Haitham Bassam Abu Issa, a nurse at the PRCS clinic in Deir al-Balah in the centre of the Gaza strip, was killed while off duty on Thursday, the PRCS says.
“This brings the total number of PRCS staff and volunteers killed during the conflict to 50 – a deeply shocking figure,” it said.
It added that “30 colleagues were killed while on PRCS duty wearing what should have been protective emblems. Those colleagues killed off duty should have been protected like all civilians should be.”
UN chief says US-backed Gaza aid operation is 'unsafe' and is 'killing people'
United Nations secretary general António Guterres said on Friday that a US-backed aid operation in Gaza is “inherently unsafe,” giving a blunt assessment: “It is killing people.”
He also said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel - as the occupying power - is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout Palestine, Reuters reports.
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters.
Updated
Iran will hold what it described as “historic” funeral proceedings in Tehran on Saturday for 60 killed in its 12-day war with Israel, including top military commanders and nuclear scientists, AFP reports.
The commemorations will begin at 0800 local time (0430 GMT) at Enghelab (Revolution) Square in central Tehran, followed by a funeral procession to Azadi (Freedom) Square, about 11 kilometres (7 miles) away.
“A brief ceremony will be held there, then the processions of the martyrs will go toward Azadi Square,” said Mohsen Mahmoudi, head of Tehran’s Islamic Development Coordination Council, in a televised interview Friday.
“Tomorrow will be a historic day for Islamic Iran and the revolution,” he added.
Among the dead is Gen Mohammad Bagheri, a major general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the second-in-command of the armed forces after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
He will be buried alongside his wife and daughter, a journalist for a local media outlet, all killed in an Israeli attack.
Nuclear scientist Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, also killed in the attacks, will be buried with his wife.
Four women and four children are among those to be honoured at the funeral ceremony.
Gaza rescuers say 62 killed by Israeli forces including 10 waiting for aid
Gaza’s civil defence agency said that Israeli forces killed at least 62 people on Friday, including 10 who were waiting for aid in the Palestinian territory.
The reported killing of people seeking aid marks the latest in a string of deadly incidents near aid sites in Gaza, where a US- and Israeli-backed foundation has largely replaced established humanitarian organisations.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 62 Palestinians had been killed on Friday by Israeli strikes or gunfire in the Gaza Strip.
When asked by AFP for comment, the Israeli military said it was looking into the incidents, and denied its troops fired in one of the locations in central Gaza where rescuers said one aid seeker was killed.
Bassal told AFP that six people were killed in southern Gaza near one of the 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.
Lebanon says 1 killed, 21 wounded in strikes as Israel blames death on Hezbollah arms
Lebanon’s health ministry said a woman was killed and 21 other people wounded in Israeli strikes Friday in the country’s south, while the Israeli military blamed Hezbollah munitions for the death (see earlier post).
An “Israel enemy strike on an apartment in Nabatieh led to a preliminary toll of one woman killed” and 14 other people wounded, the ministry said in an updated statement carried by the official National News Agency (NNA).
The NNA said an Israeli drone targeted the apartment.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on social media that the army “did not target any civilian building”.
The NNA earlier reported “a wave of successive heavy strikes” in several other areas in the Nabatieh region that the health ministry said wounded seven people.
An Israeli military statement said fighter jets struck a site that Hezbollah used “to manage its fire and defence array in the area of the Beaufort Ridge”, near Nabatieh and the Israeli border.
It said the site was “part of a significant underground project that was completely taken out of use” by the raids.
Adraee said the civilian building “was hit by a rocket that was inside the (fire and defence array) site and launched and exploded as a result of the strike”.
Israeli defence minister says he instructed military to prepare 'enforcement plan' against Iran
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz has instructed the military to prepare an enforcement plan against Iran following their 12-day air war, Katz said on Friday in a statement, Reuters reports.
The plan “includes maintaining Israel’s air superiority, preventing nuclear advancement and missile production, and responses to Iran for supporting terrorist activities against Israel”, Katz added.
Desperate relatives of two French detainees in Iran demanded “proof of life” on Friday after Israel struck their Tehran prison, with a lawyer denouncing their “forced disappearance”, AFP reports.
French national Cecile Kohler, 40, and her 72-year-old partner Jacques Paris have been held in Iran since May 2022 on espionage charges their families reject.
Their fate has been unknown since Israel targeted Tehran’s Evin prison in an air strike on Monday, before a US-proposed ceasefire between the Middle East foes came into force.
Iran’s prison authority transferred inmates out of the prison after it was hit, the judiciary said on Tuesday, but it is not clear how many inmates were moved or who they were.
“We don’t know if they are still alive, we don’t know where they are,” Cecile’s sister, Noemie Kohler, said at a press conference in Paris.
“We await proof of life immediately.”
Anne-Laure Paris said she also had no idea where her father, Jacques, was.
“I’m scared for my father’s life,” she said.
Chirinne Ardakani, the lawyer of the relatives, said: “Cecile and Jacques, state hostages arbitrarily detained in a cruel and inhuman manner in Iran, are missing.”
“In law, this is a forced disappearance,” she added.
Updated
Summary of the day so far...
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said that “the Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid” as it called on the Israeli authorities to end its siege on the territory.
At least 56,331 Palestinian people have been killed and 132,632 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. At least 72 Palestinian people were killed and 174 others injured in the last 24 hours, it added.
Israel’s air force carried out intense airstrikes on mountains overlooking the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on Friday, in an attack that the Israeli military claimed targeted underground Hezbollah assets.
The Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, denounced the Israeli attacks saying they break the terms of the ceasefire signed between Israel and Hezbollah in November.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to postpone his upcoming testimony in his criminal trial by two weeks has been rejected.
Netanyahu is keen to meet US president Donald Trump at the White House in the coming weeks to celebrate the joint US-Israeli bombing campaign of Iran’s nuclear program, according to reports.
A doctor working at the Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis has described the horror of regularly receiving bodies of Palestinian people killed while trying to get aid.
Dr Mohammed Saqer said the “world has lost its heart” and possibly its “humanity forever”, as relentless Israeli attacks continue to devastate the territory and its civilian population, with an often muted reaction from the global press and international community.
“At Nasser hospital we receive dozens daily, either dead or wounded. What happened to this world?” he told the Guardian.
Dr Saqer added:
Because of the horrifying numbers of children and women being killed in Gaza, I find myself thinking crazy thoughts… Why don’t we build shelters for them? Trick the warplanes, hide them from death?
We strive to gather whatever food we can find, and give them priority. I know the idea is crazy, but what is the alternative?
Updated
Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza reaches 56,331, says health ministry
At least 56,331 Palestinian people have been killed and 132,632 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
At least 72 Palestinian people were killed and 174 others injured in the last 24 hours, the ministry said.
It added in its post on Telegram:
A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulances and civil defense crews cannot reach them.
Updated
Aitor Zabalgogeaskoa, the Gaza emergency coordinator at Médecins Sans Frontières, said:
The four distribution sites, all located in areas under the full control of Israeli forces after people had been forcibly displaced from there, are the size of football fields surrounded by watch points, mounds of earth and barbed wire.
The fenced entrance gives only one access point in or out. GHF workers drop the pallets and the boxes of food and open the fences, allowing thousands in all at once to fight down to the last grain of rice.
If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time, but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot. If they arrive late, they shouldn’t be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’, they get shot.
The Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza is 'slaughter masquerading as aid' - Médecins Sans Frontières
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said that “the Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid” as it called on the Israeli authorities to end its siege on the devastated territory.
Palestinian witnesses and health officials say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowds heading toward desperately needed food, killing hundreds of Palestinian people in recent weeks.
Israel wants the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – an Israeli-backed logistics group - to replace a system coordinated by the UN and international aid groups. Along with the US, it accuses Hamas of stealing aid, without offering evidence.
The UN and aid agencies have denied that there has been any significant theft of their supplies by Hamas.
In a press release published on its website today, MSF wrote:
The Israeli-US food distribution scheme in Gaza, Palestine, launched one month ago, is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies.
With over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled…
This disaster has been orchestrated by the Israeli-US proxy operating under the name Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The way supplies are distributed forces thousands of Palestinians, who have been starved by an over 100 day-long Israeli siege, to walk long distances to reach the four distribution sites and fight for scraps of food supplies.
These sites hinder women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities, from accessing aid and people are killed and wounded in the chaotic process.
Possibility of new Iran-US negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme 'complicated' by US attacks, says Iranian diplomat
Iran’s top diplomat said the possibility of new negotiations with the US on his country’s nuclear program has been “complicated” by the American attack on three of the sites, which he conceded caused “serious damage”.
The US was one of the parties to the 2015 nuclear deal in which Iran agreed to limits on its uranium enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief and other benefits, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
That deal unraveled after US president Donald Trump pulled the US out unilaterally during his first term. Trump has suggested he is interested in new talks with Iran and said the two sides would meet next week.
In an interview on Iranian state television broadcast late Thursday, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi left open the possibility that his country would again enter talks on its nuclear program, but suggested it would not be anytime soon.
“No agreement has been made for resuming the negotiations,” he said. “No time has been set, no promise has been made, and we haven’t even talked about restarting the talks.”
The American decision to intervene militarily “made it more complicated and more difficult” for talks on Iran’s nuclear program, Araghchi said.
Updated
A woman checks her destroyed house that was hit in an Israeli airstrike in Nabatieh town, south Lebanon.
Lebanese PM 'strongly condemns' Israeli attacks in south of country
The Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, has denounced the Israeli attacks in the vicinity of Nabatieh (see post at 11.01 for more details), saying they break the terms of the ceasefire signed in November.
In a post on X, Salam wrote:
I strongly condemn the Israeli attacks around Nabatieh, which represent a blatant violation of national sovereignty and the cessation of hostilities arrangements reached last November, and pose a threat to the stability we are keen to preserve.
Updated
Israel’s air force carried out intense airstrikes on mountains overlooking the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on Friday, in an attack that the Israeli military claimed targeted underground Hezbollah assets.
Israeli fighter jets launch a fire belt targeting hilltops surrounding the town of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/HThqGYJgZz
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) June 27, 2025
Israeli warplanes dropped “powerful concussion missiles” on multiple areas of southern Lebanon this morning, causing “massive explosions” that reverberated across the region, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported.
Ten minutes later, the jets struck the same locations in a second wave of bombardments, according to the NNA.
There was no immediate information about casualties or comment from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group.
Israel has continued to launch strikes on Lebanon despite a ceasefire with Hezbollah, which states only UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese army should be deployed in southern Lebanon.
Israel, however, retained its forces in five areas it declared strategic, in what the Lebanese government says is a violation of the truce.
Lebanon has called on the international community to pressure Israel to end its attacks and withdraw all its troops.
Updated
Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to the court came shortly after his closest ally, US president Donald Trump, called for the long-running corruption trial to be cancelled or, at least, for the Israeli leader to be pardoned.
Here is an extract from my colleague Jason Burke’s write up of the unusual intervention from Trump.
Trump on Wednesday posted a lengthy diatribe against the trial, which could lead to a prison sentence for his ally, describing a “ridiculous witch hunt” that was an “unheard of … horror show” and showering praise on Netanyahu for his leadership of Israel during the short war with Iran that was ended by a ceasefire earlier this week.
Netanyahu, whose relationship with Trump was reported to have been under strain until the recent conflict, thanked the president for his “heartfelt support for me and your incredible support for Israel and the Jewish people”.
Netanyahu is keen to meet Trump at the White House in the coming weeks to celebrate the joint US-Israeli bombing campaign of Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli officials have told Axios.
Updated
Benjamin Netanyahu's request to postpone upcoming criminal trial testimony is rejected
The state attorney’s office has dismissed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to postpone his upcoming testimony in his criminal trial by two weeks.
The request, submitted on Thursday by Netanyahu’s attorney Amit Hadad, argued that the Israeli leader needed to focus on urgent national security matters and diplomatic relations, in the aftermath of the war with Iran and amid Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.
In its response, however, the state attorney’s office said the “general reasons detailed in the request cannot justify cancelling two weeks of hearings, particularly in the run up to the (summer) recess”.
Netanyahu is standing trial for three charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He denies the accusations levelled against him and say they are politically motivated.
The Israeli leader has been on trial for a long time: since May 2020, partially because he has been employing numerous legal delay tactics.
Updated
Israeli airstrikes kill at least 11 Palestinians in southern Gaza - report
At least 11 Palestinian people were killed in Israeli airstrikes and drone attacks on southern Gaza this morning, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Israeli warplanes reportedly bombed a makeshift tent sheltering displaced people in al-Mawasi, a so-called humanitarian safe zone south-west of Khan Younis in the south, while drones targeted the Bani Suheila and Sheikh Nasser neighbourhoods, east of Khan Younis.
Another person, according to Wafa, was killed in a separate Israeli air raid targeting the town of al-Qarara. We have not yet been able to independently verify these claims.
Gaza’s Government Media Office said in a press release published to Telegram on Wednesday that at least 549 Palestinian people have been killed and 4,066 others injured by Israeli forces while trying to access humanitarian supplies over the last month.
“A full month has passed since the start of work and the establishment of the so-called “American-Israeli aid centers,” which within 30 days have turned into death traps and traps for daily mass killing and luring,” it wrote in the Telegram post.
The media office said the killings occurred as desperate Palestinians tried to obtain food “amidst the policy of starvation and comprehensive siege”.
Since the blockade was eased to the bare minimum level last month, the UN has tried to bring in aid but has faced major obstacles, including Israeli military restrictions, continuing deadly airstrikes and growing anarchy.
Israel closes key route for aid into Gaza as Palestinians seeking food continue to be killed in Israeli attacks
We are continuing our live coverage of the latest developments in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Israel’s war on Gaza.
Israel closed crossings into northern Gaza on Thursday, cutting the most direct route for aid to reach hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people at risk of famine due to Israeli restrictions on food being allowed into the devastated territory.
After blocking all food for two and a half months, Israel has allowed only a trickle of supplies into Gaza since mid-May.
As the Guardian’s international security correspondent, Jason Burke, notes in this story, the closure of the Zikim crossing, which Israel claimed was necessary to stop Hamas seizing aid, was “very problematic” and would directly impact aid distribution. Here is an extract from his piece:
New food distribution points set up by a secretive US- and Israel-backed private organisation called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are located in central and south Gaza, out of reach of most of the million people estimated to be in the north.
The Israeli government ordered the closure of the northern crossing points after footage surfaced on social media showing armed men guarding a shipment of aid.
Israeli rightwing rivals to Benjamin Netanyahu claimed they were Hamas, but aid workers and others in Gaza said the guards were loyal to a council of local community leaders who had organised protection for a convoy of much-needed supplies.
The crossing closure came amid reports of Israeli forces killing more Palestinian people waiting for food. Gaza’s civil defence agency said 56 people had been killed in Israeli attacks on Thursday, including six who were waiting for food in two separate locations.
An Israeli airstrike yesterday hit a street in central Gaza where witnesses said a crowd of people was getting bags of flour from a Palestinian police unit that had confiscated the goods from gangs looting aid convoys. Hospital officials, according to the Associated Press, said 18 people were killed.
