Israel launches ground assault on central Gazan city, says charity

Published

1 month ago

July 21, 2025

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Medical aid has been suspended to a city in central Gaza due to an Israeli ground assault there, a charity has said.

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said the Israeli military had launched a ground invasion of the city of Deir al Balah this morning.

It added that thousands of displaced people are living in the area, including MAP staff, and the latest orders by Israel “directly endanger vital humanitarian and primary healthcare sites”.

It said the “forced displacement orders do not allow for the transport of lifesaving medical equipment or supplies” and this was “further obstructing efforts to provide emergency assistance”.

Steve Cutts, MAP’s interim CEO, said: “This latest forced displacement order is yet another attack on humanitarian operations and a deliberate attempt to sever the last remaining threads of Gaza’s health and aid system.

“MAP now has to suspend critical services we have been providing to the Palestinian population, including a primary health clinic that serves hundreds of civilians every day. With Israel’s systematic targeting of health and aid workers, no one is safe.

“Not only are we prevented from carrying out our lifesaving work to support Palestinians, we are also unable to protect our own teams.”

Gaza medics said at least three Palestinians were killed and several were wounded in tank shelling that hit three mosques and eight houses, Reuters news agency reported.

Israeli sources said the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had previously stayed out of Deir Al Balah because they suspect Hamas might be holding hostages there, Reuters added.

At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages in Gaza are believed to still be alive.

‘People were simply trying to access food’

The UN food agency has accused Israel of using tanks, snipers and other weapons to fire on a crowd of Palestinians seeking food aid.

The World Food Programme (WFP) condemned the violence that erupted in northern Gaza as Palestinians tried to reach a convoy of trucks carrying food.

Gaza’s health ministry said at least 80 people were killed in the incident.

The Israeli military said it fired warning shots “to remove an immediate threat” – and questioned the number of those killed as reported by the Palestinians.

The WFP statement said the incident resulted in the loss of “countless lives” – and how the crowd surrounding its convoy “came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire”.

“These people were simply trying to access food to feed themselves and their families on the brink of starvation,” it added.

Earlier, the WFP said that shortly after entering Gaza, a convoy of 25 trucks carrying food aid encountered “massive crowds of hungry civilians” who then came under gunfire.

“WFP reiterates that any violence involving civilians seeking humanitarian aid is completely unacceptable,” it said.

UNRWA, the UN refugee agency dedicated to Palestinians, said in a social media post it was receiving messages from Gaza warning of starvation, including from its own staff, as food prices have increased 40-fold.

“Meanwhile, just outside Gaza, stockpiled in warehouses UNRWA has enough food for the entire population for over three months. Lift the siege and let aid in safely and at scale,” it said.

In Khan Younis earlier on Monday, an Israeli airstrike killed at least five people in a tent, including a man, his wife, and their two children, medics said.

Israel is yet to comment on the incidents.

Meanwhile, Pope Leo warned against the “indiscriminate use of force” and the “forced mass displacement” of people in Gaza in a phone call with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, the Vatican said in a statement.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

The Israeli military campaign against Hamas in Gaza has since killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, according to health officials.

World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

4 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

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What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

4 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

4 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.