Israel starts aid airdrops
Israel starts airdrops with humanitarian aid in Gaza, a military spokesperson has told Reuters.
The Israeli forces said humanitarian corridors would also be established for United Nations convoys, though it did not say when or where.
The military also said it was prepared to implement “humanitarian pauses” in densely populated areas.
Key events
Israeli strike on south Lebanon kills three
The Lebanese health ministry said three people were killed in Israeli strikes on the south on Saturday despite a ceasefire, as the Israeli military said one of them targeted a Hezbollah militant.
“The Israeli enemy drone strike that targeted a vehicle” in Tyre district “killed one person”, a ministry statement said.
The Israeli military said that it “struck and eliminated” a Hezbollah commander who was “involved in efforts to rehabilitate the terrorist organisation in the area of Bint Jbeil” near the border.
It did not specify where the strike took place.
The Lebanese health ministry later reported that another Israeli strike in Tyre district, on the town of Debaal, killed two people. The state-run National News Agency reported that it targeted a house.
Syria says meeting with Israeli officials sought to ‘contain escalation’
A Syrian diplomatic source said Saturday that a US-mediated meeting with Israeli officials in Paris this week sought to “contain the escalation” after recent sectarian violence in southern Syria prompted Israeli intervention.
Israel launched strikes this month on Damascus and Druze-majority Sweida province, saying it was acting both in support of the religious minority and to enforce its demands for a demilitarised southern Syria.
The Syrian diplomatic source told state television on Saturday that the recent Paris meeting “brought together a delegation from the foreign ministry and the general intelligence service with the Israeli side”, and addressed “recent security developments and attempts to contain the escalation in southern Syria”.
Israel starts aid airdrops
Israel starts airdrops with humanitarian aid in Gaza, a military spokesperson has told Reuters.
The Israeli forces said humanitarian corridors would also be established for United Nations convoys, though it did not say when or where.
The military also said it was prepared to implement “humanitarian pauses” in densely populated areas.
Israel will resume airdrop aid to Gaza on Saturday night, the Israeli military said, a few days after more than 100 aid agencies warned that mass starvation was spreading across the territory.
“The airdrops will include seven pallets of aid containing flour, sugar and canned food to be provided by international organisations,” the military added in a statement.
Summary
Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
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The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has strongly criticised the use of airdrops to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, calling them “inefficient” and a “distraction” from addressing the root causes of the crisis. “Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation,” said the UNRWA commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini. “They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction and screensmoke.”
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Israeli airstrikes and gunshots killed at least 25 Palestinians overnight on Saturday, Palestinian health officials and the local ambulance service reported. The majority of people were killed by Israeli gunfire as they waited for aid trucks close to the Zikim crossing with Israel, the Associated Press reports, citing staff at Shifa hospital, to which victims were transported.
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Keir Starmer has confirmed the government will be “taking forward” plans to airdrop aid into Gaza and evacuate children who need medical assistance in an effort to relieve what Downing Street called an appalling situation. Speaking to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Saturday morning, the prime minister outlined the UK’s intentions to work with Jordan to carry out the plans.
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A toddler and a 60-year-old woman were among those killed in an armed attack by the Sunni Jaish al-Adl Baluch group on a courthouse in Iran’s restive Sistan-Baluchestan province on Saturday.
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Starmer rejected calls to immediately recognise a Palestinian state, after 221 MPs signed a letter urging the British government to recognise the state of Palestine at a meeting of the UN next week. While Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said on Saturday that recognising the state of Palestine before it is established could be counterproductive.
The Associated Press has this report on the impact of Gaza’s widespread famine – as a result of Israeli’s aid restrictions – on one family:
A mother pressed a final kiss to what remained of her 5-month-old daughter and wept. Esraa Abu Halib’s baby now weighed less than when she was born. On a sunny street in shattered Gaza, the bundle containing Zainab Abu Halib represented the latest death from starvation after 21 months of war and Israeli restrictions on aid.
The baby was brought to the paediatric department of Nasser hospital on Friday. She was already dead. A worker at the morgue carefully removed her Mickey Mouse-printed shirt, pulling it over her sunken, open eyes. He pulled up the hems of her trousers to show her knobby knees. His thumb was wider than her ankle. He could count the bones of her chest.
The girl had weighed more than 3kg (6.6lbs) when she was born, her mother said. When she died, she weighed less than 2kg (4.4lbs). A doctor said it was a case of “severe, severe starvation”.
She was wrapped in a white sheet for burial and placed on the sandy ground for prayers. The bundle was barely wider than the imam’s stance. He raised his open hands and invoked Allah once more.
Zainab was one of 85 children to die of malnutrition-related causes in Gaza in the past three weeks, according to the latest toll released by the territory’s health ministry on Saturday. Another 42 adults died of malnutrition-related causes in the same period, it said.
“She needed a special baby formula which did not exist in Gaza,” Zainab’s father, Ahmed Abu Halib, told The Associated Press as he prepared for her funeral prayers in the hospital’s courtyard in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Dr Ahmed al-Farah, head of the paediatric department, said the girl had needed a special type of formula that helps babies allergic to cow’s milk. He said she hadn’t suffered from any diseases, but the lack of the formula led to chronic diarrhoea and vomiting. She wasn’t able to swallow, as her weakened immune system led to a bacterial infection and sepsis, and quickly lost more weight.
An attack by the jihadist separatist group Jaish al-Adl on a courthouse in Iran’s south-eastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan has left at least six civilians, including a mother and child, dead and 22 wounded.
Twenty-eight doctors from Gaza are being held in Israeli prisons, eight of whom are senior consultants in surgery, orthopaedics, intensive care, cardiology and paediatrics, according to data from Healthcare Workers Watch (HWW), a Palestinian medical organisation.
Twenty-one of those detained have been held for more than 400 days. HWW said none had been charged with any crimes by the Israeli authorities. Three healthcare workers have been detained since the start of July.
On Monday, the Gaza health ministry said an Israeli undercover force detained Dr Marwan al-Hams, head of the Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, outside the field hospital of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip. His whereabouts are unknown, and the Israeli authorities have yet to publish a statement on his detention. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization confirmed that two of its workers were taken into detention from a facility sheltering staff and their families in Deir al-Balah; one remains in Israeli custody.
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Palestinian health officials: Israeli forces killed at least 25 Palestinians as many waited for aid
Israeli airstrikes and gunshots killed at least 25 Palestinians overnight on Saturday, Palestinian health officials and the local ambulance service reported.
The majority of people were killed by Israeli gunfire as they waited for aid trucks close to the Zikim crossing with Israel, the Associated Press reports, citing staff at Shifa hospital, to which victims were transported.
Those killed in strikes included four people in an apartment building in Gaza City, hospital staff and the ambulance service added.
Here is a summary of today’s events:
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Keir Starmer has confirmed the government will be “taking forward” plans to airdrop aid into Gaza and evacuate children who need medical assistance in an effort to relieve what Downing Street called an appalling situation. Speaking to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Saturday morning, the prime minister outlined the UK’s intentions to work with Jordan to carry out the plans.
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A toddler and a 60-year-old woman were among those killed in an armed attack by the Sunni Jaish al-Adl Baluch group on a courthouse in Iran’s restive Sistan-Baluchestan province on Saturday.
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The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has strongly criticised the use of airdrops to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, calling them “inefficient” and a “distraction” from addressing the root causes of the crisis.
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The death toll from Israeli military operations in Gaza has reached 59,733, according to the latest update from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
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At least 25 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes and gunshots overnight, according to health officials and the ambulance service on Saturday, as ceasefire talks appear to have stalled and Palestinians in Gaza face famine.
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Starmer rejected calls to immediately recognise a Palestinian state, after some 221 MPs signed a letter urging the British Government to recognise the state of Palestine at a meeting of the UN next week. While Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni said on Saturday that recognising the State of Palestine before it is established could be counterproductive.
The head of Oxfam has said airdrops of aid are “wholly inadequate, dangerous and dehumanising” after prime minister Keir Starmer confirmed the government will be moving ahead with plans to airdrop supplies.
Dr Halima Begum, Oxfam GB Chief Executive said: “Israel has been blocking humanitarian aid for months now, and it is deeply distressing to know that hundreds of tonnes of food are sat awaiting delivery just a few miles from camps where tens of thousands of people, including babies and children, are in the grips of starvation.
“While the Prime Minister has finally acknowledged the devastating scale of Israel’s actions this week, rhetoric alone will make no difference to the appalling suffering in Gaza – and only compounds the intellectual and moral incoherence of continued UK arms sales to Israel.
“Air drops of humanitarian aid are wholly inadequate, dangerous and dehumanising – a gesture and a distraction that do nothing to ensure Israel is meeting its obligations to stave off starvation. The UK must press Israel to lift the siege and allow the free flow of aid into and throughout Gaza, with the immediate opening of Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings a first step.“
The Israeli military told AFP that its troops fired “warning shots to distance the crowd” after identifying an “immediate threat” at an aid distribution point located near an Israeli military post in the Zikim area, northwest of Sudaniyah.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said another man was killed by a drone strike near Khan Yunis, while one was killed by artillery fire in the Al-Bureij camp in central Gaza.
The Israeli military said it was continuing its operations in Gaza, adding that it killed members of a “terrorist cell” which it accused of planting an explosive device.
It said the air force had “struck over 100 terror targets” across Gaza over the previous 24 hours.
Keir Starmer has confirmed the government will be “taking forward” plans to airdrop aid into Gaza and evacuate children who need medical assistance in an effort to relieve what Downing Street called an appalling situation.
Speaking to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Saturday morning, the prime minister outlined the UK’s intentions to work with Jordan to carry out the plans.
The three leaders agreed to work closely together on a plan to “pave the way to a long-term solution and security in the region”.
Read our full report here:
The stench of decaying bodies hangs heavy in the streets of the provincial capital in Syria’s southern province of Sweida, where fighting recently erupted, AP reports. Once bustling roads now lie eerily silent, with only a few people passing by. In some areas, the destruction is overwhelming, with buildings and cars charred black.
At a bank branch, shattered glass covered the floor as an alarm blared nonstop. Walls are emblazoned with slogans graffitied by both sides in the recent conflict.
The devastation came after violent clashes broke out two weeks ago, sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and fighters from the Druze religious minority. The fighting killed hundreds of people and threatened to unravel Syria’s fragile postwar transition.
Syrian government forces intervened, ostensibly to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans. Some government fighters reportedly robbed and executed Druze civilians.
Associated Press journalists from outside the city were able to enter Sweida on Friday for the first time since the violence started on July 13. With a ceasefire largely holding, residents of Sweida are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives.
Toddler and 60-year-old woman among those killed in Iran terror attack
Jaish al-Adl Baluch confirmed the deaths of three of its members who were among the assailants in an armed attack by the Sunni group on a courthouse in Iran’s restive Sistan-Baluchestan province on Saturday
The group’s members died in the clashes with security forces in Zahedan, the capital of the far southeastern province bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. Sistan-Baluchestan is home to Irans Sunni Muslim Baluch minority, who have long complained of economic marginalisation and political exclusion.
A toddler and a 60-year-old woman were among those killed, as well as three soldiers and law enforcement personnel assigned to the courthouse, the head of the province’s judiciary told IRNA. He did not identify the sixth dead person. He said the attackers wore explosive vests and carried grenades. It was not clear if they had detonated them.
Jaish al-Adl, which claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on its Telegram account, said it had killed at least 30 members of the judiciary and security forces. It said it targeted judges and court personnel, whom it accused of issuing death sentences and house demolition orders to Baluch citizens.
“We warn all judges and employees of the judiciary that Baluchestan will no longer be a safe place for them and death will follow them like terrifying shadows until retribution,” the group said in its statement.
It blamed security forces for the deaths of civilians, saying they had fired indiscriminately.
The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, warned on social media that airdrops are “expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians” and won’t reverse the increasing starvation or prevent aid diversion.
In a post on X, Lazzarini said airdrops are a “distraction and screensmoke”.
He added: “A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will. Lift the siege, open the gates and guarantee safe movements plus dignified access to people in need.”
#Gaza: airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation. They are expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving civilians.
It is a distraction & screensmoke.A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will.
Lift the siege, open the gates & guarantee safe movements…— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) July 26, 2025
