Seven Israeli soldiers killed during combat in Gaza, military says
CAIRO, June 25 (Reuters) - The Israeli military said seven personnel, an officer and six soldiers, were killed in fighting in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
In a separate incident, a soldier was severely wounded also in southern Gaza, the military added in a statement on Wednesday.
Israeli media reported the seven were in the city of Khan Younis when an explosive device planted on their vehicle detonated, setting it on fire.
The war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's subsequent air and ground war in Gaza has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, according to its Hamas-run health ministry, while displacing almost the entire population of more than 2 million and spreading a hunger crisis.
According to the military's tallies, 19 soldiers have been killed since the beginning of June during combat in the strip.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
22 minutes ago
- The Independent
Starmer joins Nato summit to face ‘volatile' Israel-Iran tensions
The prime minister is announcing a significant strengthening of the UK's nuclear posture at the Nato summit, including a pledge to acquire 12 new nuclear-capable fighter jets. Discussions at the summit will focus on the volatile situation between Israel and Iran, with leaders, including Sir Keir Starmer, urging diplomacy and the maintenance of a fragile ceasefire. Intelligence reports indicate that recent US strikes only temporarily set back Iran's nuclear program, contradicting claims by Trump that the sites were completely destroyed. The White House and Trump have strongly refuted these intelligence assessments, with Trump asserting the raid was a highly successful military operation. The UK is continuing to evacuate its citizens from Israel, while the Liberal Democrats are calling for parliamentary approval for any future deployment of British troops.
The Guardian
29 minutes ago
- The Guardian
I'm a queer Palestinian. Stop using my identity as cover for the destruction of Gaza
Pride has never been apolitical, but in recent years, particularly after the Israeli occupation's onslaught on the Gaza Strip after 7 October 2023, the coalition of queer rights in the west has felt increasingly fractured. In Berlin, the city I call home, Pride events have splintered along political lines as Palestine has been a recurring point of contention. According to organisers of Internationalist Queer Pride Berlin (IQP Berlin), a split between two major alternative Pride events followed an incident in which the initial organisers called police to the event after participants expressed solidarity by chanting 'free Palestine'. Meanwhile, at Berlin's official Pride parade, attenders have previously waved rainbow and Israeli flags as they marched through Berlin alongside an Israeli embassy float. At last year's IQP Berlin, the Palestine bloc was one of the largest. Jews and Arabs walked side-by-side, wrapped in Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, flanked by German police. The event faced police pushback, including officers in full riot gear wielding batons and shields. At least 25 people were detained, with the Palestine bloc being key targets for the police. Despite these displays of solidarity, and the risks of repression protesters have faced, there have been those who have sneered at the idea that queer people can find common cause with Palestine and advocate for liberation. The most popular example of this came last year when US pop star Chappell Roan criticised the Biden administration for its arming of the Israeli military. On stage at the Governor's Ball festival in New York, the singer, who is a lesbian with a drag persona, turned down an offer from the White House to perform for Pride month, saying: 'We want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that's when I'll come.' Roan's show of solidarity drew the ire of talkshow host Bill Maher, who suggested the singer would be 'thrown off a roof in Gaza', invoking an oft-used cliche based on a video that has been debunked by Reuters and AFP, among others. He went on to make punchlines about Roan's career 'blowing up' like pagers in Lebanon, referring to Israeli attacks that killed 12 people and wounded thousands. Hundreds of children were killed in the following months in Lebanon, thousands in Gaza. Maher postured as the liberal hero of queer people, but it seemed easier for him, like many in the west, to point fingers at Palestinian society than to confront the systems his own countries support – systems that bomb, displace and isolate queer Palestinians in Gaza. When Benjamin Netanyahu addressed congress in July 2024, the Israeli prime minister said that pro-Palestine protesters holding up signs saying 'gays for Gaza' might as well call themselves 'chickens for KFC', suggesting our existence is mired in contradiction. That attempt to sever solidarity between queer people and Palestine has been deadly. A year earlier, an Israeli soldier held up a Pride flag in Gaza, with 'in the name of love' scrawled on it in English, Hebrew and Arabic. The state of Israel's official X account boasted of this achievement, 'the first ever pride flag raised in Gaza'. As a queer Palestinian, it is enraging to see my identity used as an instrument of war, but what I find most strange is the cognitive dissonance: for the 'love' of whom is this flag raised? Certainly not of the queer Palestinians living in Gaza, who have faced 19 months of terror, and a lifetime of occupation. In Jerusalem, the city where I was baptised, there is a very small organic scene of queer Palestinians. Some Palestinians from the city even visit Tel Aviv for Pride if they are allowed to travel there. Most are not. Queer Palestinians all face different obstacles based on where they live and how visible they are; their pain lives precariously in the crossfire of multiple struggles. One friend in Gaza told me he only wished to live in peace, away from conservatism, religious extremism and war. I later discovered he lost both of his parents and his brother, as well as cousins, in Israel's onslaught. Another friend from Jerusalem told me he had a message for the west: that freedom comes in many layers. 'We are under occupation and facing an ongoing genocide,' he said. 'So the first layer is simply to exist.' We can imagine and hope for a just, safe world for queer Palestinians to flourish in. Though there are some vibrant, if quieter, queer communities across the Middle East, there is still persecution. But if the goal is for queer Palestinians to live in an open, tolerant society, then they need first to survive Israel's aggression. There can be no Pride under occupation. There are Palestinian LGBTQ+ organisations such as alQaws and Alwan with aspirations to shape a Palestinian society based on tolerance, equality and openness. An ambition that is made so much harder, if not impossible, by occupation. You can't see rainbows from underneath the rubble. Equally, you cannot in good conscience celebrate Pride in the west while knowing that many of our countries are supplying the arms and funds that are killing queer Palestinians, along with their families. Despite attempts to position the struggles of queer rights as in opposition to Palestinian liberation, I have been moved to see queer people not fall for the trap. This Pride month, we will march again, surrounded by confetti and keffiyehs. Jad Salfiti is a British-Palestinian video producer and journalist
NBC News
30 minutes ago
- NBC News
Iran's strategic blunders paved the way for humiliating defeats, experts say
Less than two years ago, Iran's government sounded triumphant. It was November 2023, just weeks after Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and a senior Iranian general was predicting that the regime and its proxy forces in Gaza and Lebanon were poised to vanquish Israel, the United States and other enemies. 'We are fighting America, Zionism and all those who are targeting the greatness and honor of the Islamic Revolution of Iran,' Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in a speech in the city of Kazvin. 'We are on the verge of conquering great heights. ... We are completely overcoming the enemies.' Now Iran is in its most precarious position since the early 1980s. Its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon have been devastated, Hamas has been eviscerated in Gaza, Tehran's nuclear sites have been heavily bombed, and Israel's military now owns the skies over Iran. As for Salami, he was killed in an Israeli airstrike this month. How Iran got here can be traced to a series of miscalculations and strategic blunders, experts and former officials say, a result of decisions made both decades and only months ago. Tehran's often obstinate diplomacy, overreliance on regional militants and shoddy security left it vulnerable to adversaries with much more powerful militaries. And at a crucial moment, the regime's leaders failed to grasp the intentions and capabilities of its arch foes in Jerusalem and Washington, with no foreign partner ready to come to its aid. 'Iran was too inflexible when it had to be less stubborn,' said Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group think tank. 'It never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.' Among its more recent missteps, Iran failed to learn from how other countries managed their relations with President Donald Trump or how the ground had shifted after Israel devastated Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, Vaez said. But perhaps Iran's biggest mistake was counting on those Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon in the first place to serve as a 'forward defense' against any possible attack by Israel. That approach worked for years, and it dealt Israel a blow when it sent ground troops into Lebanon. But everything changed when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Iran had armed, trained and financed Hamas, and the group's onslaught set off a chain of events that has left the regime in Tehran severely weakened and its regional power diminished. 'I think there is a direct line from Oct. 7 to today,' said Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior intelligence official. While Israel hammered away at Hamas militants in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza after Oct. 7, Iran and its Hezbollah allies prepared for an eventual ground attack from Israel into Lebanon. Instead, Israel took a different tack, targeting Hezbollah's commanders and its top leader through airstrikes and booby-trapped pagers used by Hezbollah's members. Israeli forces staged only a small incursion into southern Lebanon. Alex Plitsas, a former Defense Department official with the Atlantic Council think tank, said, 'The dominoes that fell after Oct. 7th left Iran's proxy network in shambles, eroded deterrence and reduced its counterstrike capabilities.' But he said Iran failed to adapt and refused diplomatic overtures from Washington despite its increasingly vulnerable position. Seth Jones, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that after the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Tehran invested heavily in arming and training militias in the region through its Revolutionary Guard Corps, with Hezbollah as the anchor of an 'axis of resistance.' The scheme worked for decades, Jones said, but it neglected the country's armed forces, which have fallen far behind. 'What it means is that your conventional forces don't get the same level of focus,' Jones said. During Israel's air campaign, 'the Iranians were fighting an enemy that's got fifth-generation F-35 stealth aircraft.' 'They just don't have an answer to that,' Jones added. Iran has also faltered on the diplomatic front. In talks over its nuclear program, Iran's leaders stuck to an uncompromising stance mistakenly believing they could buy more time and secure more concessions from Trump, as well as his predecessor, Joe Biden, experts said. Over four years, Iran dragged its feet and delayed talks with the Biden administration, which had expressed a willingness to revive and revise the 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump had abandoned in 2018, Western officials say. When Trump returned to the White House, his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, offered Iran a way to continue to enrich uranium for a period of years, while other countries in the region would help it develop a civilian nuclear energy program. The Israeli government and Republican hawks were worried that Trump's offer was too generous. But Iran appeared to misread Trump, calculating that it could extend the talks over a longer period, experts and Western officials say. In the end, the billions of dollars and decades of effort Iran devoted to its nuclear program 'provided the nation neither nuclear energy nor deterrence,' Karim Sadjadpour, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on social media. Relying on Russia Apart from its regional network of proxy forces stretching from Lebanon to Yemen, Iran had long relied on the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad as its only genuine ally. But Sunni rebels ousted Assad in December, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers are no longer welcome in Damascus. Iran also had portrayed its increasing cooperation with Russia as a 'strategic' partnership, with Tehran providing thousands of Shahed drones for its war on Ukraine, as well as technical advice to help Moscow build the unnamed aircraft on Russian territory. In return, Iran acquired some Russian air defense systems, but promised fighter jets and other hardware never materialized. Over the past two weeks, Israel's air force destroyed Iran's radars and Russian anti-aircraft weaponry, with Tehran losing control over its airspace. Russian President Vladimir Putin made no mention of providing military assistance to Iran when he met Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Moscow on Monday. Despite Iran's hard-line rhetoric about conquering its enemies and its extensive intelligence and security apparatus, Israel has repeatedly carried out sabotage and assassinations of top military officers, nuclear scientists, the leaders of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the leaders of Hamas in Gaza. The operations have humiliated Iran's regime and shown that the country's intelligence services are unable to protect top-ranking officers or other key figures. 'Iran's entire investments in its forward defense, missiles program and nuclear capabilities evaporated in the course of 12 months of regional war and 12 days of war on its own territory,' said Vaez, of the International Crisis Group. 'Judging by that outcome, there is no question that Iran miscalculated at every turn.'
