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At least 21 Palestinians killed in Gaza aid site stampede

At least 21 Palestinians killed in Gaza aid site stampede
By Lyndal Rowlands, Virginia Pietromarchi, Edna Mohamed and Nils Adler
Published On 16 Jul 2025

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18 Jul 2025 - 14:30
 (14:30 GMT)

Merz cautions Israel on aid, settlements

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has spoken on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing hopes for a ceasefire in Gaza while calling for safe access to humanitarian aid there, a German government spokesperson said.

“The chancellor emphasised that the urgently needed humanitarian aid must now reach the people in the Gaza Strip in a safe and humane manner”, the spokesperson said in a statement.

“The chancellor emphasised that there must be no steps towards annexation of the West Bank.”

16 Jul 2025 - 23:59
 (23:59 GMT)

Thanks for joining us

Watch our video on how more than 20 Palestinians were killed at a Gaza aid site after a stampede here.

Read our article on how sectarian tension and Israeli intervention led to the deadly violence in Syria here.

And watch the moment Israel targeted key Syrian government buildings in Damascus here.

16 Jul 2025 - 23:50
 (23:50 GMT)

Here’s what happened today

We will be closing this live page soon. Here are today’s major developments:

  • Israel’s relentless attacks continued across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 80 Palestinians since dawn, with UN officials warning of a fast-deteriorating humanitarian situation unfolding because of the war and blockade.
  • Israel struck multiple sites in the heart of Damascus as it warned the Syrian government it would escalate attacks if its troops did not withdraw from Suwayda in southern Syria.
  • After the series of air strikes, the Syrian government announced a new ceasefire in Suwayda, but it’s unclear if it will hold after a previous one quickly disintegrated.
  • US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the various parties involved in fighting in Syria had agreed on “specific steps” to end the clashes there.
  • At least 25 people at a Gaza food distribution site die in a stampede after tear gas was fired near the controversial US- and Israeli-backed GHF.
16 Jul 2025 - 23:40
 (23:40 GMT)

Syria’s leader: ‘Illegal actions cannot be accepted’

Videos have surfaced on social media of government-affiliated fighters forcibly shaving the moustaches of Druze sheikhs and stepping on Druze flags and pictures of religious clerics.

Other videos showed Druze fighters beating captured government troops and posing by their bodies. Reporters in the area saw burned and looted houses.

Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued a statement condemning the violations and promising that perpetrators would be punished.

“These criminal and illegal actions cannot be accepted under any circumstances, and completely contradict the principles that the Syrian state is built on,” said al-Sharaa.

Syria’s leader Ahmad al-Sharaa [File: Mosa’ab Elshamy/AP Photo]
16 Jul 2025 - 23:30
 (23:30 GMT)

Yemen’s Houthis target multiple locations in Israel

Yemen’s Houthi militia says it attacked Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, Eilat port and a military site in the Negev region in a series of coordinated missile and drone attacks.

“The Houthi missile force launched a ballistic missile of the Zulfiqar type at Lod airport [Ben Gurion] in the Tel Aviv area,” Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a statement.

The strike forced “occupying Zionist settlers into shelters and halted airport operations”, he added.

Earlier, the Israeli army said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, triggering air raid sirens in several southern areas. The army did not mention any drone activity in its statement.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree [File: Mohammed Huwais/AFP]
16 Jul 2025 - 23:15
 (23:15 GMT)

UNICEF says the world has failed Gaza’s children

More than 17,000 children have reportedly been killed and 33,000 wounded in the ongoing war in Gaza, UNICEF’s executive director, Catherine Russell, says.

She told the UN Security Council an average of 28 kids die daily in Gaza – “a whole classroom of children killed every day for nearly two years”.

Malnutrition has surged with nearly 6,000 children acutely malnourished in June, a 180 percent increase since February, she said.

Food supplies are running out, and Gaza civilians are being shot while seeking something to eat, UN Under-Secretary-General Tom Fletcher said.

“Civilians are exposed to death and injury, forcible displacement, stripped of dignity,” Fletcher told the Security Council, emphasising Israel’s obligation under the Geneva Conventions to provide food and medical aid as the occupying power in Gaza.

Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator [File: Denis Balibouse/Reuters]
16 Jul 2025 - 23:05
 (23:05 GMT)

Israel escalates attacks on Syria

Israel has bombed Syria’s capital, Damascus, and other cities. It attacked near the presidential palace and other key sites, killing at least three people and wounding dozens.

Following the fall of Syria’s longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, the Israeli military took control of the UN-monitored demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights and conducted hundreds of strikes on military targets in Syria.

Watch the AJ+ video below:

16 Jul 2025 - 23:00
 (23:00 GMT)

Photos: Demonstrations take place in Syria following Israeli strikes

A demonstration following Israeli air strikes in Tartous, Syria [Tamam Jerbi/Anadolu]
Mourners chanted slogans condemning Israeli attacks and supporting the Syrian state [Tamam Jerbi/Anadolu]
The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province of Suwayda [Tamam Jerbi/Anadolu]
In the city of Homs, in central Syria, protesters carried the body of a Syrian army soldier killed in Israeli shelling [Tamam Jerbi/Anadolu]

16 Jul 2025 - 22:45
 (22:45 GMT)

‘Stop the genocide’: Protests outside Berlin restaurant with GHF ties

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the opening of an Israeli restaurant in Germany’s capital has been postponed following protests over its owner’s ties to controversial Gaza aid efforts.

Dozens demonstrated the launch of a restaurant owned by Israeli celebrity restaurateur Shahar Segal, a former spokesperson for the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF).

The newspaper said the demonstration was organised by anti-Zionist Jewish groups, including the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) and Jewish Voice for Peace.

Protesters chanted slogans such as “Blood in your food” and “Stop the genocide.”

16 Jul 2025 - 22:30
 (22:30 GMT)

Druze fear for the lives of relatives in Syria’s Suwayda

Reports of attacks on civilians continue to surface, and Druze with family members in the conflict zone searched desperately for information about their fate amid communication blackouts.

In Jaramana, near the Syrian capital Damascus, Evelyn Azzam, 20, said she feared her husband, Robert Kiwan, 23, is dead. The newlyweds live in the Damascus suburb, but Kiwan would commute to Suwayda for work and got trapped there when the clashes erupted.

Azzam said she was on the phone with Kiwan when government forces questioned him and a colleague about whether they were affiliated with Druze militias.

When her husband’s colleague raised his voice, she heard a gunshot. Kiwan was then shot while trying to appeal.

“They shot my husband in the hip from what I could gather,” she said, struggling to hold back tears. “The ambulance took him to the hospital. Since then, we have no idea what has happened.”

Residents flee clashes in the southern city of Suwayda on Wednesday [Mohammed al-Rifai/EPA]
16 Jul 2025 - 22:15
 (22:15 GMT)

War on Gaza ‘a complete human tragedy’, says Swedish doctor

Marit Halmin, a Swedish doctor currently in Gaza, says she met fathers who are going to deadly aid distribution sites despite being scared for their lives and aware of the likelihood of being shot.

She also described having to put dead children and their mothers into body bags.

“This is a complete human tragedy that the world is witnessing and allows to happen,” Halmin told told Sweden’s national broadcaster SVT.

Palestinians mourn loved ones killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza City [Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu]
16 Jul 2025 - 22:00
 (22:00 GMT)

Syria’s army begins withdrawal from Suwayda

The Syrian government earlier announced a new ceasefire in Suwayda after clashes a war monitor said killed more than 300 people since Sunday.

The Syrian army “has begun withdrawing from the city of Suwayda in implementation of the terms of the adopted agreement, after the end of the sweep of the city for outlaw groups”, a Defence Ministry statement said.

The statement did not mention any pullout of other government security forces, which deployed to the city on Tuesday following days of deadly fighting between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes.

Witnesses have reported that government forces joined with the Bedouins in attacking Druze fighters and civilians in a bloody rampage through the city.

Syrian government forces deploy at Mazraa village near Suwayda [Ghaith Alsayed/AP Photo]
16 Jul 2025 - 21:45
 (21:45 GMT)
Analysis

Israeli would choose ‘chaos and weakness’ rather than a ‘coherent threat’ in Syria

Israel’s attacks in Syria are an “extreme step beyond making a point”, says Glenn Carle, a former US deputy national intelligence officer.

Carle said he could “understand the Israeli concern about having hostile groups right along its border, that it has just, in over two years, substantially reduced the threat from”.

However, “destroying the Ministry of Defence of a very weak government strikes me as using a sledgehammer when possibly a strong statement might have been more effective”.

Carle said Israel prefers a dysfunctional Syria with “a group of factions squabbling among itself but not posing a security threat to Israel”.

“They would choose chaos and weakness to dealing with a coherent threat,” he told Al Jazeera.

Men walk amid debris after Israeli air strikes hammered Damascus [Khalil Ashawi/Reuters]
16 Jul 2025 - 21:30
 (21:30 GMT)

Photos: Large crowds gather in Gaza for a rare meal

A large crowd formed during food distribution by a charity [Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim al-Arini/Anadolu]
Many Palestinians struggle to access food because of Israel’s blockade and ongoing attacks on Gaza [Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim al-Arini/Anadolu]
Starvation and malnutrition continue to haunt the Palestinians of war-battered Gaza [Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim al-Arini/Anadolu]

16 Jul 2025 - 21:15
 (21:15 GMT)

Ex-Israeli PM: ‘At this time we need to end the war’

Israel’s military response after the Hamas-led attack of October 2023 was “unavoidable and inevitable”, but the time has come to end the war on Gaza, a former Israeli leader says.

“It needed an immediate and very forceful reaction, which we had to take,” said former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “At the time we started it, the international community almost across the board was in favour of it.”

But Olmert said this was 22 months ago, “and since then a lot happened.”

“I think we have achieved a great deal militarily. We destroyed the infrastructure of the Hamas military power and eliminated most of the leaders … But we have reached a point where no military operation can achieve anything that is worth the cost of the soldiers of Israel, the risking of the lives of the hostages, and the killing of many non-involved Palestinians who are part of this battlefield,” he told Al Jazeera.

“So at this time what we need to do is end the war and bring back all the hostages and then establish an [international] interim security force that would take over practical control over Gaza.”

Palestinians survey the rubble of their destroyed homes in Beit Hanoon [File: Fatima Shbair/Getty Images]
16 Jul 2025 - 21:00
 (21:00 GMT)

How an NGO supporting disabled Palestinians in Jenin now faces demolition

By Niamh Ní Hoireabhaird

The Al-Jaleel Society for Care and Community-based Rehabilitation has provided essential services to disabled Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp for decades.

Al-Jaleel’s staff have received no official notice, but in early June, the Israeli army published a map showing several buildings in the area set to be destroyed.

“This is not the first time the centre has been targeted. The Israeli military has destroyed parts of it during previous acts of demolition in the refugee camp, and has breached and ransacked the centre and tampered with assistive devices meant for persons with disabilities,” said Zaid Am-Ali, senior advocacy officer at Humanity and Inclusion, Al-Jaleel’s partner organisation.

Read the full story here.

Israeli soldiers install an iron gate at the entrance to Jenin camp [Raneen Sawafta/Reuters]
16 Jul 2025 - 20:45
 (20:45 GMT)

UN humanitarian chief paints a grim Gaza picture

By Kristen Saloomey

Reporting from the United Nations

This meeting at the United Nations was convened by several UN Security Council members, including the United Kingdom, France, Greece, Slovenia, and Denmark, who are seeking increased access for aid to enter Gaza – given the current situation there.

UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said “it’s hard to come up with the words to describe” what UN staff are seeing in Gaza.

In just the last month, some 5,800 women and children have been treated for malnourishment, 70 percent of essential medicines are missing in the Gaza Strip, and the UN has also reported that people are sleeping outside without any shelters or protection because they’ve been displaced so many times.

This was essentially a call for help from Fletcher, who also explained that, despite its presence on the ground in Gaza, the UN is still unable to meet the vast needs of the people there.

A view shows the United Nations Security Council meeting in New York City, the US [Angela Weiss/AFP]
16 Jul 2025 - 20:30
 (20:30 GMT)

Iran condemns Israel’s ‘unhinged aggression’

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has denounced Israel after it bombed Syria’s capital and other areas.

“The rabid Israeli regime knows no bounds and only grasps one language. The world, including the region, must unite to end its unhinged aggression,” he said.

Syria called for the United Nations Security Council to meet as soon as possible to “address the consequences of the Israeli aggression on Syrian territory”.

16 Jul 2025 - 20:15
 (20:15 GMT)

Israeli military and Yemen’s Houthis continue to trade fire

By Hamdah Salhut

Reporting from Amman, Jordan

Al Jazeera is reporting from Jordan because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military has confirmed there was a projectile launched by the Houthis in Yemen.

This would be the 61st ballistic missile fired in addition to at least 15 drones since March. That’s when Israel decided to break the ceasefire and continue its attacks on Gaza.

Since October 2023, the Houthis have carried out a lot of attacks against Israel, saying that this is in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

And if war is going to keep continuing, then so are these attacks on Israel.

But the Israelis haven’t stayed silent. They’ve conducted quite a flurry of air strikes in Yemen within the last several months, saying they’re doing it to target Houthi infrastructure.

16 Jul 2025 - 20:00
 (20:00 GMT)

Israel says ‘operating responsibly and with restraint’ in Syria

Israel’s army chief says it’s acting with “sound judgement” in Syria after launching a major bombing campaign against its neighbour.

Fighter jets attacked government targets in the capital, Damascus, and other parts of the country.

“The commanders and soldiers are acting with responsibility, restraint and sound judgement,” said Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir as he visited the frontier with Syria on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Major-General Eyal Zamir at the Western Wall in East Jerusalem’s Old City [File: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters]