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LAST UPDATE | 25 Jun
US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump said that progress was being made to end the war in Gaza, as a new ceasefire push began more than 20 months since the start of the conflict.
“I think great progress is being made on Gaza,” Trump told reporters, adding that his special envoy Steve Witkoff had told him: “Gaza is very close.”
He linked his optimism about imminent “very good news” to a ceasefire agreed yesterday between Israel and Iran to end their 12-day war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces growing calls from opposition politicians, relatives of hostages being held in Gaza and even members of his ruling coalition to bring an end to the fighting, triggered by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s 7 October, 2023 attack.
Key mediator Qatar announced yesterday that it would launch a new push for a ceasefire, with Hamas today saying talks had stepped up.
“Our communications with the brother mediators in Egypt and Qatar have not stopped and have intensified in recent hours,” Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP.
He cautioned, however, that the group had “not yet received any new proposals” to end the war.
The Israeli government declined to comment on any new ceasefire talks beyond saying that efforts to return Israeli hostages in Gaza were ongoing “on the battlefield and via negotiations”.
Israel sent forces into Gaza to root out Iran-linked Hamas and rescue hostages after the group’s October 2023 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilian.
Israel’s military campaign has killed at least 56,156 people, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Gaza. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.
In one of the war’s deadliest incidents for the Israeli army, it said seven of its soldiers were killed yesterday in southern Gaza, taking its overall losses in the territory to 441.
The latest losses led to rare criticism of the war effort by the leader of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, a partner in Netanyahu’s coalition government.
“I still don’t understand why we are fighting there… Soldiers are getting killed all the time,” lawmaker Moshe Gafni told a hearing in the Israeli parliament today.
The slain soldiers were from the Israeli combat engineering corps and were conducting a reconnaissance mission in the Khan Yunis area when their vehicle was targeted with an explosive device, according to a military statement.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the main group representing relatives of captives held in Gaza, endorsed the call to end the war.
“The war in Gaza has run its course, it is being conducted with no clear purpose and no concrete plan,” the group said in a statement.
Of the 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the Hamas attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
Human rights groups say Gaza and its population of more than two million face famine-like conditions due to Israeli restrictions, with near-daily deaths of people queuing for food aid.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said today that Israeli fire killed another 35 people, including six who were waiting for aid.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that a crowd of aid-seekers were hit by Israeli “bullets and tank shells” in an area of central Gaza where Palestinians have gathered each night in the hope of collecting rations.
The Israeli military said it was “not aware of any incident this morning with casualties in the central Gaza Strip”.
The United Nations yesterday condemned the “weaponisation of food” in Gaza, and slammed a US- and Israeli-backed body that has largely replaced established humanitarian organisations there.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary general, called for Israeli authorities to allow the delivery of fuel “in sufficient quantities” into the Gaza Strip, including to the north.
Children in Gaza are also experiencing mounting psychological stress, which is being driven by the deteriorating conditions, including lack of food, Dujarric said.
The privately run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was brought into the Palestinian territory at the end of May, but its operations have been marred by chaotic scenes, deaths and neutrality concerns.
The GHF has denied that deadly incidents have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.
The Gaza health ministry says that since late May, nearly 550 people have been killed near aid centres while seeking scarce supplies.
Dujarric said the numbers “speak for themselves as to the horrors of what is going on in Gaza”.
“People being killed just for trying to get food, because of a militarised humanitarian distribution system that meets none of the prerequisites for a functioning fair, independent and impartial humanitarian system.”
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme, UNICEF’s Rosalia Bollen said Gaza is at “rock bottom”.
“We’re really at the worst point we’ve ever been at,” she said.
She said her colleagues have met with people who have been injured near food distribution centres, including a 13-year-old boy who later died from his injuries.
“Hospitals are really on their last legs too. They’re overwhelmed. There’s just this overflow of injured people. There are shortages of medicines, of medical supplies,” Bollen said.
“We’re seeing a very chilling pattern day in, day out. Nobody should have to choose between dying of hunger or risking their life to get food.”
Bollen said every child in Gaza today is hungry, thirsty and exhausted.
“We know children have died of malnutrition, and as temperatures soar right now, there’s also not enough clean water, so we see worsening of the sanitation situation,” she said.
“Sewage is overflowing in the street because there’s not enough fuel for pumping stations to operate. It’s really a man-made catastrophe we’re seeing unfolding in front of our eyes. It’s the worst we’ve been at in these more than 20 months of war.”
With reporting by © AFP 2025
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