Closing summary
Gaza’s health ministry said on Tuesday at least 72 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and military strikes in the past 24 hours, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. A six-week-old infant was among 15 people who have died of starvation in Gaza in the past 24 hours, local health officials said, with malnutrition now killing Palestinians faster than at any point in the 21-month war.
The head of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (Unrwa) said on Tuesday that its staff members as well as doctors and humanitarian workers are fainting on duty due to hunger and exhaustion, describing the situation in Gaza as “hell on earth”. The Unrwa estimates that 1,000 starving people have been reported killed while seeking food aid since the end of May.
Unrwa commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini also called the Israeli-backed logistics group run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation a “sadistic death trap”. He said snipers opened fire randomly on crowds at aid sites as if they are given a “licence to kill”. The GHF responded by claiming the UN was “refusing” to deliver aid in Gaza that could help end the desperation in the region.
Malnourishment is soaring and starvation is knocking on every door in Gaza, United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said on Tuesday, describing the situation in the Palestinian territory as a “horror show”. “And now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles,” Guterres told the UN security council.
Israeli strikes killed at least 20 people in Gaza, Palestinian health officials said on Tuesday, as Israel pushed on with a new incursion in Deir al-Balah, which had largely been spared heavy fighting during the 21-month war. The expansion of Israel’s ground invasion comes as Israel and Hamas have been considering terms for a ceasefire for Gaza that would pause the fighting and free at least some hostages.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the Israeli military attacked its staff residence and main warehouse in Deir al-Balah on Monday, compromising its operations in Gaza. The WHO said its staff residence was attacked three times, with airstrikes causing a fire and extensive damage, and endangering staff and their families, including children.
Amnesty International on Tuesday called for a war crimes investigation into Israel’s deadly air attack on Tehran’s Evin prison during last month’s 12-day war. The strike, confirmed by Israel, killed 79 people, according to a provisional tally by Iranian authorities.
At least 1,062 people died in Iran in its 12-day war with Israel last month, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Tuesday, Reuters reports. There were 102 women and 38 children among the dead. The previous official death toll was 935.
Iran said on Tuesday that 27 inmates are still at large after an Israeli airstrike last month targeted Evin prison in the north of the capital, Tehran, local media reported.
The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on what it said was a Houthi-linked petroleum smuggling and sanctions evasion network across Yemen and the United Arab Emirates in fresh action targeting the Iran-backed militant group. The US Treasury Department in a statement said the two individuals and five entities sanctioned on Tuesday were among the most significant importers of petroleum products and money launderers that benefit the Houthis.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch, said on Tuesday he and church leaders had returned from a visit to Gaza with “broken hearts”, calling the spiralling humanitarian crisis there “morally unacceptable”, Reuters reports. Pizzaballa and Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, on Friday visited the Holy Family Church compound in Gaza City, where an Israeli strike last week killed three people and injured several more including the parish priest.
Regarding the possibility of reimposing international sanctions on Iran, state media quoted the country’s deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi as saying on Tuesday that the Iranian government feels the “snapback” mechanism lacks any legal ground. He was speaking ahead of a meeting on Friday with three European states known as the E3 – Britain, France and Germany. The E3 have said that if no progress is reached by the end of August over Iran’s nuclear programme, they will invoke a “snapback” mechanism – a process that would reimpose UN sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under a 2015 deal in return for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Government offices in at least 10 Iranian provinces, including the capital, have been ordered to close on Wednesday in a bid to conserve water and electricity, as temperatures in parts of southern and south-western Iran soared above 50C (122F). At least 10 provincial capitals recorded temperatures above 40C on Monday, including Tehran, which reached 40C for the first time this year, the meteorological agency said.
The Norwegian Refugee Council told Reuters on Tuesday its aid stocks are completely depleted in Gaza, with some of its staff now starving, and accused Israel of paralysing its work. “Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left,” Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the council told Reuters in an interview via video link from Oslo.
A cruise ship carrying Israeli tourists left the Greek island of Syros Tuesday without its passengers disembarking, after more than 150 protesters demonstrated at the island’s port, unfurling Palestinian flags and calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Carrying banners that read: “Stop the Genocide” and “No a/c in hell” — a reference to the conditions Palestinians face in the Gaza Strip — the protesters chanted slogans on the dock near where the cruise ship, the Crown Iris, was docked on Tuesday, local media said. There were no reports of any violence.
A cruise ship carrying Israeli tourists left the Greek island of Syros Tuesday without its passengers disembarking, after more than 150 protesters demonstrated at the island’s port, unfurling Palestinian flags and calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
Carrying banners that read: “Stop the Genocide” and “No a/c in hell” — a reference to the conditions Palestinians face in the Gaza Strip — the protesters chanted slogans on the dock near where the cruise ship, the Crown Iris, was docked on Tuesday, local media said. There were no reports of any violence.
The ship is operated by an Israeli company, Mano Cruise, which said about 1,700 passengers were on board and it is sailing to Cyprus, AP reported.
Greece’s coastguard said the ship set sail at around 3 p.m., earlier than originally scheduled, but did not immediately have any further details.
