Israeli strikes kill at least 62 people in Gaza as ceasefire prospects move closer
Israeli strikes killed at least 62 people across Gaza overnight and into Saturday, health workers said, as ceasefire prospects were said to be improving.
Three children and their parents were killed in an Israeli strike on a tent camp in Muwasi near the southern city of Khan Younis. They were struck while sleeping, relatives said.
'What did these children do to them? What is their fault?' said the children's grandmother, Suad Abu Teima, as others knelt to kiss their bloodied faces and wept. Some placed red flowers into the body bags.
Also among the dead were 12 people near the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, and eight more in apartments, according to staff at Shifa Hospital. More than 20 bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital, according to health officials.
A midday strike killed 11 people on a street in eastern Gaza City, and their bodies were taken to Al-Ahli Hospital. A strike on a gathering at the entrance to the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed two, according to Al-Awda hospital.
Hopes for a ceasefire agreement in the coming week
U.S. President Donald Trump says there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week. Taking questions from reporters on Friday, he said, 'We're working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of.'
An official with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press that Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer will arrive in Washington next week for talks on a Gaza ceasefire, Iran and other subjects. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas have been on again, off again since Israel broke the latest ceasefire in March, continuing its military campaign in Gaza and furthering the territory's dire humanitarian crisis. Some 50 hostages remain in Gaza, fewer than half believed to still be alive. They were among 251 hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparking the 21-month war.
Over 6,000 killed since latest ceasefire ended
The war has killed over 56,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. It says more than half of the dead were women and children. It said the dead include 6,089 killed since the end of the latest ceasefire.
Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing the militants of hiding among civilians because they operate in populated areas.
There is hope among families of hostages that Trump's involvement in securing the recent ceasefire between Israel and Iran might lead to more pressure for a deal in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is riding a wave of public support for the Iran war and its achievements, and he could feel he has more space to move toward ending the war in Gaza, something his far-right governing partners oppose.
Hamas has repeatedly said it is prepared to free all the hostages in exchange for an end to the war in Gaza. Netanyahu says he will end the war only once Hamas is disarmed and exiled, something the group has rejected.
Hundreds have been killed while seeking food
Meanwhile, hungry Palestinians are enduring a catastrophic situation in Gaza. After blocking all food for 2 1/2 months, Israel has allowed only a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May.
More than 500 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded while seeking food since the newly formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began distributing aid in the territory about a month ago, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
Palestinian witnesses say Israeli troops have opened fire at crowds on roads heading toward the sites. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots and that it was investigating incidents in which civilians had been harmed while approaching the sites.
Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the sites, moving through Israeli military zones.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
What's in the latest version of Trump's big bill now before the Senate?
At some 940-pages, the legislation is a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations. Now it's up to Congress to decide whether President Donald Trump 's signature's domestic policy package will become law. Trump told Republicans, who hold majority power in the House and Senate, to skip their holiday vacations and deliver the bill by the Fourth of July. Senators were working through the weekend to pass the bill and send it back to the House for a final vote. Democrats are united against it. Here's the latest on what's in the bill. There could be changes as lawmakers negotiate. Republicans say the bill is crucial because there would be a massive tax increase after December when tax breaks from Trump's first term expire. The legislation contains roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts. The existing tax rates and brackets would become permanent under the bill. It temporarily would add new tax breaks that Trump campaigned on: no taxes on tips, overtime pay or some automotive loans, along with a bigger $6,000 deduction in the Senate draft for older adults who earn no more than $75,000 a year. It would boost the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200 under the Senate proposal. Families at lower income levels would not see the full amount. A cap on state and local deductions, called SALT, would quadruple to $40,000 for five years. It's a provision important to New York and other high tax states, though the House wanted it to last for 10 years. There are scores of business-related tax cuts. The wealthiest households would see a $12,000 increase from the legislation, which would cost the poorest people $1,600 a year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House's version. Middle-income taxpayers would see a tax break of $500 to $1,500, the CBO said. The bill would provide some $350 billion for Trump's border and national security agenda, including $46 billion for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and $45 billion for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds, as he aims to fulfill his promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. Money would go for hiring 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with $10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of Border Patrol officers, as well. The goal is to deport some 1 million people per year. The homeland security secretary would have a new $10 billion fund for grants for states that help with federal immigration enforcement and deportation actions. The attorney general would have $3.5 billion for a similar fund, known as Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide, or BIDEN, referring to former Democratic President Joe Biden. To help pay for it all, immigrants would face various new fees, including when seeking asylum protections. For the Pentagon, the bill would provide billions for ship building, munitions systems, and quality of life measures for servicemen and women, as well as $25 billion for the development of the Golden Dome missile defense system. The Defense Department would have $1 billion for border security. To help partly offset the lost tax revenue and new spending, Republicans aim to cut back some long-running government programs: Medicaid, food stamps, green energy incentives and others. It's essentially unraveling the accomplishments of the past two Democratic presidents, Biden and Barack Obama. Republicans argue they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse. The package includes new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults receiving Medicaid and food stamps, including older people up to age 65. Parents of children 14 and older would have to meet the program´s work requirements. There's also a proposed new $35 co-payment that can be charged to patients using Medicaid services. Some 80 million people rely on Medicaid, which expanded under Obama's Affordable Care Act, and 40 million use the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. Most already work, according to analysts. All told, the CBO estimates that under the House-passed bill, at least 10.9 million more people would go without health coverage and 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps. The Senate proposes a $25 billion Rural Hospital Transformation Fund to help offset reduced Medicaid dollars. It's a new addition, intended to win over holdout GOP senators and a coalition of House Republicans warning that the proposed Medicaid provider tax cuts would hurt rural hospitals. Both the House and Senate bills propose a dramatic rollback of the Biden-era green energy tax breaks for electric vehicles. They also would phase out or terminate the various production and investment tax credits companies use to stand up wind, solar and other renewable energy projects. In total, cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs would be expected to produce at least $1.5 trillion in savings. A number of extra provisions reflect other GOP priorities. The House and Senate both have a new children's savings program, called Trump Accounts, with a potential $1,000 deposit from the Treasury. The Senate provided $40 million to establish Trump´s long-sought 'National Garden of American Heroes.' There's a new excise tax on university endowments, restrictions on the development of artificial intelligence and blocks on transgender surgeries. A $200 tax on gun silencers and short-barreled rifles and shotguns was eliminated. One provision bars money to family planning providers, namely Planned Parenthood, while $88 million is earmarked for a pandemic response accountability committee. Billions would go for the Artemis moon mission and for exploration to Mars. The bill would deter states from regulating artificial intelligence by linking certain federal AI infrastructure money to maintaining a freeze. Seventeen Republican governors asked GOP leaders to drop the provision. Also, the interior secretary would be directed to sell certain Bureau of Land Management acreage to provide for housing. The sale of public lands would cover at least 600,000 acres and up to 1.2 million acres, according to a projection from the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group. Altogether, keeping the existing tax breaks and adding the new ones is expected to cost $3.8 trillion over the decade, the CBO says in its analysis of the House bill. An analysis of the Senate draft is pending. The CBO estimates the House-passed package would add $2.4 trillion to the nation's deficits over the decade. Or not, depending on how one does the math. Senate Republicans are proposing a unique strategy of not counting the existing tax breaks as a new cost because those breaks are already 'current policy.' Senators say the Senate Budget Committee chairman has the authority to set the baseline for the preferred approach. Under the Senate GOP view, the tax provisions cost $441 billion, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Democrats and others say this is 'magic math' that obscures the true costs of the GOP tax breaks. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget puts the Senate tally at $4.2 trillion over the decade.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Experts pinpoint EXACTLY where Iranian sleeper cell ground zero is... and how much damage they will cause to America
As Iran continues to consider further retaliation against the US after it bombed its nuclear facilities, experts warned enacting sleeper cell agents could be a high possibility, especially on college campuses. With Russia and terrorists group Hezbollah and Hamas unable to help Iran as they have wars of their own to contend with, Iran's ability to hit the US where it hurts has become limited. The country doesn't have missiles that can reach the mainland US, however, it isn't entirely powerless. 'Iran's ability to react militarily is increasingly minimalized. We have to remember that Iran's terrorist proxies have been severely degraded,' Barak Seener, a senior fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital. 'Iran will be seeking to flex by activating sleeper cells in the US, Britain, Europe or even Asia. [It's] about conducting surveillance and then targeting either community centers or policy officials. 'Iran is not new to this game.' Since the announcement of the US airstrikes in Iran last Saturday, major states, such as California and New York, have been on high alert for threats. Earlier this week, Homeland Security announced it had arrested 11 Iranian nationals who were illegally in the country, including an alleged sniper. The 11 men were arrested across the country, including from California, Colorado, Maryland, New York, and Texas. Seener believes college campuses and anti-Israel protests at schools could be a place where these sleeper agents are. 'Much of the opposition to US foreign policy toward Israel and Gaza has been people that have been coming to the [country] on student visas,' he claimed. 'They're not US nationals. And, yet, they're able to create a disturbance and contribute to an enormous disruption.' President Donald Trump has cracked down on anti-Israel protests on college campuses and began deporting foreign students engaging in it that his administration claimed had links to terrorism through the support of Hamas. The Trump Administration has also demanded foreign students have to keep their social media pages public for government review. Paul Mauro, a retired NYPD executive officer with the Intelligence Operations and Analysis Bureau, told Fox News Digital that Iran could radicalize Americans through social media, like other terrorist groups have done. 'That is a real low-rent, easy-to-run operation,' he told the outlet. In a bulletin, Homeland Security, run by Kristi Noem (left) mentioned the 'likelihood of violent extremists in the Homeland independently mobilizing' if 'Iranian leadership issued a religious ruling calling for retaliatory violence against targets in the Homeland.' 'You get somebody who is leading a slipping down life [who] doesn't have much of an identity, somebody who is looking for a persona, and you give them one. It's subtle, and it's a seduction process. 'You could have the kind of elements that previously, people in remnants of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Syria, Iraq could [be] figuring right now that America is going to be a soft target because you have all this unrest among the progressives.' In a bulletin, Homeland Security mentioned the 'likelihood of violent extremists in the Homeland independently mobilizing' if 'Iranian leadership issued a religious ruling calling for retaliatory violence against targets in the Homeland. Iran has threatened America with sleeper-cell revenge. The Middle Eastern country warned Trump it would unleash sleeper cell terrorists to wreak havoc on US soil if he attacked. Trump received a communiqué from the regime just days before he ordered US military strikes on its nuclear facilities. Iran has already retaliated by launching missiles at a US military base in Qatar.
Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
Donald Trump 'to visit Scotland and his three golf courses in the next month'
Donald Trump is reportedly planning to visit Scotland before the end of July. Donald Trump reportedly plans to visit Scotland next month for the first time since becoming the 47th US President. The American president is planning to visit his three Scottish golf courses before the end of July, reports the MailOnline. This comes after it was revealed that Trump hoped to meet with the King this summer at one of his Scottish residences, Balmoral or Dumfries House. However, it is understood their diaries clash Trump was invited for an unprecedented second State Visit likely to take place in September. MailOnline reported that in the final two weeks of July, security services are preparing for Air Force One to fly into Prestwick Airport with Trump having a ring of steel thrown around him amid anticipated protests. During his first stint in office, thousands of Scots took to the streets in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen to oppose the former Apprentice TV star's visit. The US president will likely visit Turnberry, which was vandalised by pro-Palestine protesters in March, and his Trump International controversial course in Aberdeen, which has had claims lodged against it that it destroyed one of the world's rarest sand dune systems. It's also thought that Trump may visit his new Aberdeenshire course, the MacLeod Trump International Golf Links course - named in honour of his Lewis-born mother, Mary Anne MacLeod - which is set to open before mid-August. Trump has repeatedly asked Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer about hosting The Open at Turnberry, which he bought in 2014 for £46 million, but the organisers have yet to concede to his demands. His son, Eric Trump, said recently: "Turnberry is considered to be the best golf course in the world by the players, the writers, the spectators and the entire golfing community. "If we get the call, and I sincerely hope we do, I promise the Royal and Ancient that we will be the best hosts The Open Championship has ever seen." After Trump was invited for second State Visit, the Scottish Greens launched a 'Dump Trump' petition, claiming the president was not welcome in Scotland as he presents "a clear and present danger to our climate, peace and human rights around the world". It was signed by over 6000 people. First Minister John Swinney condemned the president following his heated exchange with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office earlier this year. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'.
