𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

An Israeli strike hit a street in central Gaza where witnesses said a crowd of people was getting bags of flour from a Palestinian police unit that had confiscated the goods from gangs looting aid convoys. Hospital officials said 18 people were killed.

The strike was the latest violence surrounding the distribution of food to Gaza’s population, which has been thrown into turmoil over the past month. After blocking all food for almost three months, Israel has allowed only a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May.

Efforts by the UN to distribute the food have been plagued by armed gangs looting trucks and by crowds of desperate people offloading supplies from convoys.

The strike in the central town of Deir al-Balah yesterday appeared to target members of Sahm, a security unit tasked with stopping looters and cracking down on merchants who sell stolen aid at high prices.

The unit is part of Gaza’s Hamas-led interior ministry, but includes members of other factions.

At least 1,190 Iranians have been killed in Israel’s 12-day-long offensive on Iran, according to a Washington-based human rights group.

The war between Israel and Iran left about 4,475 others wounded, HRANA said, according to Iranian media.

Donald Trump vowed to “save” Benjamin Netanyahu as he hit out at the Israeli prime minister’s “witch-hunt” corruption trial.

Trump claimed Israel’s prime minister was a “great hero” and “warrior” who faced politically motivated charges and called for the trial to be cancelled.

The president’s intervention comes as Netanyahu’s cross-examination, which began on 4 June, is set to resume on Monday. He faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust and denies all of them.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Pakistan prime minister Shehbaz Sharif discussed promoting “a durable peace between Israel and Iran” during a call yesterday.

“The two leaders acknowledged the importance of working together to promote a durable peace between Israel and Iran,” the US state department said in a statement. “Secretary Rubio emphasised Iran can never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon.”

President Donald Trump, earlier this week, announced a ceasefire between US ally Israel and its regional rival Iran to halt a war that began on 13 June when Israel attacked Iran.

Mr Trump met Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir at the White House last week where they discussed Iran, which Mr Trump said Pakistan knew about better than most other countries.

A section of Pakistan’s embassy in Washington represents Iran’s interests in the US, as Tehran does not have diplomatic relations with the US.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has claimed that the US “gained no achievement” after it attacked three Iranian nuclear sites.

Instead, the US entered the war to “save” Israel after Tehran’s missiles broke through Israel’s multi-layered defence system, the supreme leader said as he claimed victory in the 12-day war.

“The US directly entered the war as it felt that if it did not get involved, the Zionist regime (Israel) would be fully destroyed. It entered the war to save it,” he said.

“The US attacked our nuclear facilities, but couldn’t do any important deed… The US president did abnormal showmanship and needed to do so,” he added.

Donald Trump said over the weekend that the US deployment of 30,000-pound bombs had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme.

However, this appeared to be contradicted by an initial assessment from one of his administration’s intelligence agencies.

Pastor Ara Torosian received a distressed phone call from two Iranian members of his Farsi-speaking church on Tuesday – US federal immigration officers were at their Los Angeles home to arrest them.

It was the second such call he received this week.On Monday, an Iranian couple with a three-year-old was detained at a routine immigration appointment, Torosian said.

Both families were recently arrived asylum seekers who had entered the United States at the US-Mexico border after making an appointment, he said.

The appointment system, known as CBP One, was launched by former US president Joe Biden to promote orderly border crossings. President Donald Trump ended the program when he took office, as part of his aggressive crackdown on immigration.

Torosian said when he arrived at the couple’s home on Tuesday he saw an army of federal law enforcement officers and began filming on his cell phone as officers stopped him from getting close to his church members.

As officers restrained the woman being detained she started to have a panic attack and began convulsing on the floor, he said.

A damaged unit of the South Pars refinery’s Phase 14, which was hit by Israel in its first strike on Iran’s oil and gas sector, has returned to operation, the Iranian state-run agency Nour News reported.

South Pars, the world’s biggest gas field, is located offshore in Iran’s southern Bushehr province and is responsible for the lion’s share of the country’s gas production.

Iran is the world’s third-largest gas producer after the United States and Russia.

Gas production was not halted and the damaged unit was repaired in about 10 days, the agency added.

Earlier on Thursday, US senators emerged with sharply different assessments of the US bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites, with Republicans calling the mission a clear success and Democrats expressing deep skepticism.

CIA director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to Capitol Hill to give the classified briefings, originally scheduled for Tuesday.

Many Republicans left satisfied, though their assessments of how much Iran’s nuclear program was set back by the bombing varied.

Sen Tom Cotton said a “major blow” and “catastrophic damage” had been dealt.

“Their operational capability was obliterated. There is nobody working there tonight. It was highly effective. There’s no reason to hit those sites anytime soon,” Sen Lindsey Graham said.

Here, we take a look at the questions both US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump must answer over the attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites.