Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Thursday that Israeli forces killed at least 118 Palestinians and wounded 581 over the previous 24-hour period as heavy US-backed Israeli strikes continued across the Strip and Israeli troops continued to shoot people seeking aid.
Thursday marks the third day in a row that the Health Ministry reported a death toll of more than 100. Based on the ministry’s numbers, which studies have found are likely a significant undercount, Israeli forces killed 369 Palestinians over a 72 hours.
Israeli attacks on Thursday included massacres of children. According to The Associated Press, an overnight strike on tents sheltering displaced Palestinians killed 13 members of one family, including six children under the age of 12. Two children, including a six-year-old girl, were among eight people reported killed by an Israeli strike that hit near a stand selling falafel in central Gaza.
Mourners attend the funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on a school sheltering displaced people at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, July 3, 2025 (IMAGO/APAimages via Reuters Connect)
An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City killed 15 people. The breakdown of the casualties is unclear, but photos of the funeral for the victims at Al-Shifa Hospital show several tiny bodies wrapped in shrouds.
Medical sources told AP that five Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces along roads while attempting to reach distribution sites run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), and another 40 were killed while waiting for UN aid trucks in various parts of Gaza.
The Health Ministry said that since the GHF began operating in Gaza at the end of May, 652 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid. The aid massacres have continued despite more attention on the issue following a report from Haaretz that revealed IDF troops had been given orders to fire on unarmed people near GHF sites.
The AP also reported that American contractors posted at the aid sites have also been using live ammunition and stun grenades to disperse civilians near the distribution sites. In at least one case, one of the contractors who spoke to AP said it appeared fire from the US contractors hit an unarmed Palestinian.
The revelations about the aid killings have not impacted US support for Israel or support for the aid mechanism that has proven to be deadly. The Trump administration recently announced it was providing $30 million to the GHF.
– She names 48 corporate actors, including arms manufacturers, banks, tech companies, energy giants, academic institutions, alleging they are directly linked to broader ‘economy of occupation’ sustaining Israeli actions
GENEVA
Israel is responsible for “one of the cruelest genocides in modern history,” the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory said on Thursday, accusing Tel Aviv of weaponizing Gaza as a testing ground and calling for sweeping international action, including a full international arms embargo and the suspension of trade and investment ties.
“The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is apocalyptic,” Francesca Albanese told the UN Human Rights Council, presenting her latest report. “In Gaza, Palestinians continue to endure suffering beyond imagination. Israel is responsible for one of the cruelest genocides in modern history.”
Albanese said official figures count over 200,000 Palestinians killed or injured, but leading health experts estimate “the true toll is far higher.” She denounced the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – Israel’s new aid mechanism in Gaza, with hundreds of associated deaths to date – as “a death trap – engineered to kill or force the flight of a starved, bombarded, emaciated population marked for.”
Profits from genocide
She grimly highlighted the economic gains made during the war, noting that in the past 20 months, arms companies have reaped huge profits by supplying Israel with weapons used to bombard Gaza.
“Arms companies have turned near-record profits by equipping Israel with cutting-edge weaponry to unleash 85,000 tons of explosives – six times the power of Hiroshima – to destroy Gaza,” she said.
The report also pointed to 213% gains on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange since October 2023, describing a stark contrast: “One people enriched, one people erased.”
Accusing Israel of using the war to “test new weapons, customized surveillance, lethal drones, (and) radar systems,” Albanese warned that Palestine’s defenselessness had made it “an ideal laboratory for the Israeli military-industrial complex.”
She named 48 corporate actors, including arms manufacturers, banks, tech companies, energy giants, and academic institutions, alleging that they are directly linked to a broader “economy of occupation” sustaining the Israeli state’s actions.
Among the most important firms mentioned in the report are Amazon, Microsoft, BNP Paribas, Booking, and Korean HD Hyundai, according to her report.
“Weapons and data systems brutalize and surveil Palestinians,” she said. “Colonies spread –financed by banks and insurers, powered by fossil fuels, and normalized by tourism platforms, supermarket chains, and academic institutions.”
Later in a press briefing in Geneva, Albanese said she had formally notified all companies named in her report, sharing with them “the facts that I found in violation of international law.”
She emphasized that her work went “beyond what has been done in other similar cases,” explaining: “For each of them, I have provided a detailed analysis, a case by case legal analysis, so where I found their nonconformity with international law translating into violation of the right of self-determination, other human rights violations and even war crimes or crimes against humanity, and to an extent, in which case it could be embroiled in the crime of genocide.”
According to Albanese, 18 companies responded to her findings, while the others did not. Of these 18, she said that “only a small number” engaged with her in good faith, while the rest denied their wrongdoings.
Referring to those in denial, she said: “They don’t understand international law clearly. They think that international law is there to make excuses.”
‘Responsibility to abstain’ or cut ties with ‘economy of occupation’
Under international law, she said, even a minimal connection to this system carries clear responsibility. “There is a prima facie responsibility on every state and corporate entity to completely abstain from or end their relationships with this economy of occupation.”
In a direct appeal to UN member states, Albanese called for bold steps: “Member states must impose a full arms embargo on Israel, suspend all trade agreements and investment relations, and enforce accountability, ensuring that corporate entities face legal consequences for their involvement in serious violations of international law.”
She also called on businesses to act, stressing: “Corporate entities must urgently cease all business activities and terminate relationships directly linked with, contributing to, and causing human rights violations and international crimes against the Palestinian people.”
Albanese said she no longer believed ignorance or ideology were sufficient explanations for global inaction. “In the face of genocide – so visible, so livestreamed – these explanations fall short.”
She concluded with a call for civil society to play its part, saying: “Trade unions, lawyers, civil society groups, and ordinary citizens should encourage such behavioral change from the side of businesses and governments by pressing for boycotts, divestments, sanctions, and accountability. What comes next depends on all of us.”
At least one journalist was killed and another was injured
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, Jun 30, 2025
Medical sources told Al Jazeera on Monday that Israeli attacks killed at least 95 Palestinians in Gaza throughout the day as Israeli forces bombed a seaside cafe and gunned down more desperate people who were seeking aid.
According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, an Israeli airstrike hit the Al-Baqa Cafe in Gaza City, killing 33 people and injuring 50 others. Among the dead was journalist Ismail Abu Hatab, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists killed since October 7, 2023, to 227, according to WAFA’s count.
Another journalist, Bayan Abu Sultan, was wounded in the attack, and photos and videos of the aftermath show her standing outside the cafe covered in blood. Ali Abu Ateila, a survivor of the airstrike, told The Associated Press that the cafe was struck when it was crowded with women and children.
Journalist Bayan Abu Sultan, after the Israeli airstrike on the Al-Baqa Cafe in western Gaza City on June 30, 2025 (Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect)
“Without a warning, all of a sudden, a warplane hit the place, shaking it like an earthquake,” Ateila said. The cafe was one of the few businesses that continued to operate in Gaza and was frequently crowded as Palestinians went there to charge their phones and use the internet.
The AP also reported that at least 22 people were killed by Israeli fire while attempting to get aid in different areas of Gaza. The Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said it received 11 bodies of Palestinians who were killed while returning from an aid site operated by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the area. Another Palestinian was killed near an aid site in Rafah.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that another 10 people were killed at a UN warehouse in northern Gaza. The latest aid-related killings come after a report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that Israeli troops are being ordered to fire on unarmed Palestinians attempting to reach GHF distribution sites to drive them away or disperse them, even though they pose no threat.
Israeli forces also launched heavy attacks on the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City on Monday, with residents reporting that the IDF bombed four schools that were sheltering displaced people, and at least 10 Palestinians were killed in the area. “Explosions never stopped; they bombed schools and homes. It felt like earthquakes,” Salah, a 60-year-old father of five children from Gaza City, told Reuters. “In the news we hear a ceasefire is near, on the ground, we see death and we hear explosions.”
The genocidaires of the past gave no food packets; they only killed. Trump and Netanyahu do both at once.
Palestinians inspect the damage at a school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit by Israeli military strike and killed at least 36 people, in Gaza City, on Monday, May 26, 2025. Photo: AP/PTI
You just may have noticed that a new ingenious modality of mass murder has been in operation in Gaza.
Call it game-hunting, safari style.
Recall how when some royals used to be taken on a tiger shoot, a bait would be tied to a tree so a big cat could be drawn to it for the dignitary’s convenient aim.
So now, dangerously famished Palestinian children, women, old folk on spindly legs are got the better of by being drawn to the bait where ostensibly benevolent patrons are ready to hand out food packets.
As soon as they rush to the bait, the guns blaze. As most are eliminated, some manage to grab a packet or two, proving to the world how the scheme remains such a success at both ends – some get to eat, salving the qualms of those upset at being accused of allowing genocide, others swell the ranks of the dead, facilitating the grand project of ethnic cleansing.
When did the world see so clever a two-timing enterprise?
The genocidaires of the past gave no food packets; they only killed. Trump and Netanyahu do both at once. What could be smarter? And how could anyone object, not that anyone is objecting.
You see, the killings in Gaza are game-hunting; in Ukraine it is people who get killed.
Which brings home another sad reality: Curse me if you will, but as a true follower of the Sanatan Dharma, I have been having trouble reconciling Dharma with ethical indifference to the mass murder of a whole innocent population.
Nothing is closer in exclusionary genius to Hindutva than Zionism
I am unable to swallow the trick that my noble nation’s so-noble government played in the United Nations General Assembly.
Where 149 countries voted in favour of demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and the resumption of humanitarian aid operated by the United Nations, Naya Bharat abstained from voting.
Perhaps we were setting up an example of how to eat the cake and have it too: after all, nothing is closer in exclusionary genius to Hindutva than Zionism, and nobody more consequential for ensuring Viksit Bharat than Trump, Musk, the Pentagon, Silicon Valley etc.
So, at one canny stroke of turning our face away from genocide, we accomplished the feat of not annoying either of our pals, not knowing how badly this Trump fellow would behave subsequently.
But these are risks great governments have to take in the larger national interest. After all, as Vishwa Guru, the worst we can do is to take sides.
Then, did we not also abandon our so-close friends in the SCO by abstaining there as well when the organisation to which India belongs issued a statement condemning Israel for attacking Iran?
Nobody may thus accuse us of inconsistency in our extraordinary foreign policy towards the comity of nations.
Now that I am arguing the case, I say mea culpa for not being able to square these cunning decisions with my Sanatana Dharma.
So, give me time and I will follow the leader whose finesse in these matters I have thus far been too incapable of absorbing.
In the meanwhile, the Mecca/Medina Islamic world more than matches us in their brand of sagacious cynicism towards the game-hunt in Gaza.
As to the fussy International Criminal Court, their warrant of arrest against the conqueror of Palestine and the elimination of innocents remains a residual pinprick from a queasy but defeated world that no longer exists.
Why these judges and prosecutors in the Hague should be receiving either the world’s attention or their salaries from honest tax-payers is a conundrum that may also be up for resolution should Trump and Netanyahu go from strength to strength, should the grand nations of Europe continue to behave with customary sophistication, and should rising stars like Narendra Modi show the way to moral fusspots whose understanding of great events and great ideas remains atavistic.
So help us god, and so may the Palestinian lambs-to-the-slaughter know that they serve a noble and mighty purpose in their canonical sacrifice.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
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President Trump said on Wednesday that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call a day earlier to “keep going” with his attacks on Iran.
The president told reporters that Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for his role in war crimes in Gaza, is a “good man” who has been treated “very unfairly” by his own country. “He’s a wartime president. Going through this nonsense — ridiculous,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments about Netanyahu come amid anticipation over whether or not the US will enter Israel’s war with Iran directly by launching airstrikes. The US has supported the assault by providing weapons and intelligence and intercepting Iranian missiles and drones, but so far hasn’t launched direct strikes of its own.
Trump and Netanyahu at the White House on April 7, 2025 (White House photo)
The president also said on Wednesday that “nobody knows” whether he’ll enter the war or not. When asked if he was moving closer on a decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump said, “You don’t know that I’m going to even do it. You don’t know. I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble.”
In other comments to the press, Trump said he wasn’t interested in an Israel-Iran ceasefire. “We’re not looking for a ceasefire. We’re looking for a total and complete victory. Again, you know what the victory is: no nuclear weapon,” he said.
Netanyahu launched his war of aggression against Iran under the pretext of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but US intelligence assessed before the attacks that Tehran was not pursuing a nuclear bomb.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday rejected President Trump’s demand for an “unconditional surrender” and warned the US against entering the war by launching strikes on Iran, saying the US would suffer “irreparable harm.”
Trump has also threatened Khamenei, claiming the US was aware of his location but wasn’t going to kill him for the time being. “[Trump] has threatened us. Not only does he make threats, but he also uses absurd, unacceptable rhetoric to openly demand that the Iranian people surrender to him. When a person hears such things, it’s truly surprising,” Khamenei said in a televised address.
“It isn’t wise to tell the Iranian nation to surrender. Wise people who know Iran, the Iranian people, and Iran’s history would never utter such words. What should the Iranian nation surrender to? The Iranian nation isn’t a nation that surrenders. We haven’t attacked anyone, and we definitely won’t tolerate anyone attacking us, and we will never surrender in response to the attacks of anyone,” Khamenei said.
Khamenei during his televised address (photo via his website)
The US has supported Israel’s war on Iran by providing weapons and intelligence and by intercepting Iranian missiles and drones. So far, the US hasn’t launched direct airstrikes on Iran, but Trump is considering doing so, especially against the Fordow nuclear plant, which is buried deep underground.
“Of course, the Americans who are familiar with the policies of this region know that the US entering in this matter [war] is 100% to its own detriment,” Khamenei said. “The damage it will suffer will be far greater than any harm that Iran may encounter. The harm the US will suffer will definitely be irreparable if they enter this conflict militarily.”
Iranian ballistic missiles are believed to be able to do significant damage to US bases in the region. Trump was asked on Wednesday if he would launch strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, but wouldn’t say. “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the war under the pretext of stopping Iran from advancing toward a nuclear bomb, but US intelligence agencies had assessed there was no evidence Tehran was working to make a nuclear weapon, and the US was unconvinced by new Israeli intelligence.
Israel’s attack also disrupted negotiations between the US and Iran. Trump said on Wednesday that Iran had asked for a meeting at the White House, but the claim was rejected by Tehran, as Iranian officials have said they won’t negotiate while Israel continues its attacks.
“No Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House. The only thing more despicable than his lies is his cowardly threat to ‘take out’ Iran’s Supreme Leader,” Iran’s mission to the UN said. “Iran does NOT negotiate under duress, shall NOT accept peace under duress, and certainly NOT with a has-been warmonger clinging to relevance.”
When Israeli warplanes struckIran this week — violating Iranian sovereignty in a brazen act of aggression, killing scores of civilians alongside top military commanders and nuclear scientists and inviting Iran’s equally indiscriminate retaliatory strikes — Europe’s leaders didn’t condemn the attack.
They perversely endorsed it and condemned Iran for the attacks on its own territory.
The president of France Emmanuel Macron set the tone by condemning Iran’s “ongoing nuclear program” and reaffirming “Israel’s right to defend itself and secure its security.” President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen seemed to have spoken from the same script “reiterating Israel’s right to defend itself,” embellished by some generic platitudes about the need for restraint and de-escalation.
The German foreign ministry went a step further and actually “strongly condemned” Iran for “an indiscriminate attack on Israeli territory” — even before Tehran launched its missiles in response for Israel’s attack on its territory — while fully endorsing Israel’s actions.
This Orwellian rhetoric isn’t just incompetence or ignorance. It’s the culmination of years of European diplomatic malpractice that helped to manufacture this crisis — and exposed the “rules-based order” as a corpse. Europe’s double standards killed its credibility.
Europe’s stance on Ukraine invoked Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter with political clarity: “All members shall refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of any state.” Yet when Israel attacked Iran — with no legal basis for self-defense — Europe de-facto reframed aggression as virtue, and condoned it.
Europe’s moral and diplomatic collapse hasn’t gone unnoticed. Two globally respected voices delivered particularly damning verdicts. Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Laureate and former head of the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog, offered a humiliating crash course in international law to the German foreign ministry.
Reacting to Berlin’s endorsement of Israel’s “targeted strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities” (never mind the hundreds of civilians killed in these strikes), El Baradei reminded it that such strikes are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions to which Germany is a party, and that the use of force in international relations “is generally prohibited in the UN Charter with the exception of the right of self-defense in the case of armed attack or upon authorization by the Security Council in the case of collective security action.”
For her part, Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, reacting to Macron’s statement, commented that “on the day Israel, unprovoked, has attacked Iran, the president of a major European power, finally admits that in the Middle East, Israel, and only Israel, has the right to defend itself.”
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The message of the likes of El Baradei and Albanese is unequivocal: when Europe applauds Israel’s strike while condemning Russia’s invasion, it doesn’t uphold universal rules — it enforces its tribalist identity: “rules” only apply to adversaries, not friends. This is fatal to Europe’s pretense of moral authority — it has been well noticed in the Global South, but also among many European citizens too.
This pretense looks even more detached from reality given that the crisis in the Middle East erupted on fertile ground prepared by serial European failure. First it was the E3 (Britain, France, Germany) failure to uphold the JCPOA following the U.S. withdrawal under Donald Trump’s presidency in 2018. While the EU offered rhetorical support for the nuclear deal, it buckled to U.S. sanctions and refused to shield EU firms willing to engage with Iran. It let the JCPOA die, de-facto creating a vacuum for escalation.
Further, while mediators like Oman and Qatar brokered talks on a new nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran, the EU pushed for an IAEA resolution censoring Iran days before Israel’s strike, torpedoing de-escalation and contributing to creating a more menacing, dangerous security environment, with the U.N. Security Council sanctions snapback and potential Iran’s withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) lurking in the background.
Each of these failures validated Tehran’s view that it is futile to negotiate with Europe. The E3/EU are now seen not just as a weak party unable to fulfil its commitments under the nuclear agreement, but also an actively destructive player undermining Iran’s security and regional stability.
European powers’ staggering descent into diplomatic irrelevance was starkly illustrated by Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi’s categorical rejection of his British counterpart David Lammy’s pleas to de-escalate. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine why Tehran should heed these calls when they come from parties it sees as actively colluding with the aggressors.
The likely fallout from Europe’s diplomatic self-sabotage is that it incinerated whatever residual trust it still had in Iran and the broader Global South. It all but guaranteed proliferation by giving Iranians — now not just the hardliners — a powerful incentive to seek nuclear weaponization, an outcome that could have been avoided had Europe engaged in serious, good faith talks with Iran on reviving the nuclear deal. Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT is no longer a merely theoretical possibility.
All of these developments dramatically increase the likelihood of blowback against European interests: a regional war in the Middle East means more uncontrolled migration, heightened risks of terrorism on European soil or against European interests in the region, and energy shocks if Iran delivers on its threats to block the Hormuz Straight, the world’s principal oil trade artery.
Absent an urgent but unlikely course correction, such as holding Israel accountable for its regional aggression, Europe’s decay will accelerate. When Brussels exempts allies from rules imposed on rivals, it doesn’t preserve peace — it signs its own geopolitical suicide note.
Call the White House and tell them you do not want any part of this disastrous war
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Jun 15, 2025
Sources familiar with the matter have told Antiwar.com Editorial Director Scott Horton that the Trump administration is poised to enter Israel’s aggressive war against Iran directly. US airstrikes on Iran could begin as soon as Monday. Please contact the White House by calling (202-456-7041) or sending an email. Tell them that you do not want the US to enter this disastrous war, which could lead to heavy American casualties at US bases across the Middle East. The US has supported the war by reportedly providing Israel with intelligence and helping intercept Iranian missiles and drones, but so far, there have been no direct US attacks on Iran. Iranian officials have warned that Tehran would hit US bases in the region in response to any US strikes. Axios reported on Saturday that Israel is urging the US to join the war since Israel lacks the bunker-busting bombs necessary to do serious damage to Iran’s Fordow plant, which is buried deep underground. An Israeli official told Axios that President Trump had previously suggested the US could strike Fordow. Trump himself said on Sunday that it was “possible” that the US would get directly involved in the war, which Israel launched early Friday morning with airstrikes across Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the war under the pretext of preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon. But it was the consensus of the US intelligence community that there was no evidence Iran was working toward a nuclear weapon, and Tehran made clear they were ready to make a deal with the US that would significantly lower uranium enrichment levels and increase oversight of its nuclear program in exchange for US sanctions relief. Ali Larijani, an aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has previously said that the one thing that would make Tehran reconsider its prohibition on the development of nuclear weapons would be a US or Israeli attack. “We are not moving towards (nuclear) weapons, but if you do something wrong in the Iranian nuclear issue, you will force Iran to move towards that because it has to defend itself,” Larijani said on April 1. “Iran does not want to do this, but … (it) will have no choice,” he added. “If at some point you (the US) move towards bombing by yourself or through Israel, you will force Iran to make a different decision.”
Published date: 14 June 2025 19:34 BST | Last update:9 hours 49 mins ago
The US and Israel altered Israel’s F-35 warplanes to extend their range without the need for refuelling or compromising on stealth to help Israel’s attack on Iran, Middle East Eye can reveal.
The modification is secret, but two US officials speaking to MEE on condition of anonymity confirmed that Israel did not use mid-air refuelling during its Friday attack on Iran or land their warplanes for refuelling at any nearby countries.
Instead, the US officials told MEE that Israel and the US modified the F-35’s system to carry additional fuel that did not impact the F-35’s stealth features. The Israeli designation for their version of the F-35s is called the F-35I Adir.
The F-35 is the only long-range stealth fighter in the world, and its features make it difficult for radar or infrared sensors to track it.
The scale of Israel’s Friday attack and the surprise nature of it mean the improvement is a sea change for the F-35, the US officials told MEE.
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The F-35s performance is going to be carefully studied by Middle Eastern countries looking to acquire them, as well as the US’s foes, China and Russia.
“This is a game changer. Israel had our cooperation on this modification,” one US defence official told MEE, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Both officials confirmed that Israel modified their F-35Is with US involvement.
Exclusive: US quietly sent hundreds of Hellfire missiles to Israel before Iran attack
One US official refused to share details on how the F-35 was altered to carry more fuel, but suggested an external feature was added.
The second US official said that Israel attached external drop tanks to the F-35s.
“It’s impressive. Period,” Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace expert at aerodynamic advisory told MEE when asked about the US officials’ statements.
Aboulafia said that the only option Israel had in place of not refuelling was to use drop tanks.
“The big challenge is devising the F-35s interface system with drop tanks that don’t compromise stealth. Not only do you have to design the fixtures, but some sort of in-line modification has to be done. The Israelis, with our cooperation, I assume, practically did surgery on an existing jet to make this modification.”
The F-35 has a publicly stated combat range of roughly 700 miles. The shortest distance between Israel and Iran is roughly 620 miles one way.
If mid-air refuelling wasn’t employed, then theoretically they could have used a US base in the Gulf or in Azerbaijan, but the officials MEE spoke to said land refuelling did not take place on any US bases in the region.
Azerbaijan today said it would not allow its airspace or territory to be utilised for launching attacks on Iran or any other country, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said in a call with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araqchi.
Reports have emerged in recent years that Israel was working on such a project.
In 2021, Israel’s Walla news reported that the Israeli Air Force was working on a drop tank for the F-35I Adirs. The report at the time said Israel could finish the modification in two years.
Adding a drop tank that carries extra fuel sounds easy, but it is extremely sensitive and difficult, US officials and experts say.
The F-35 contains radar-absorbent materials and its entire engineering is designed to avoid detection. Any change to the body could compromise those features.
One challenge noted by The Aviationist magazine in 2021 was that once the tank was dropped it could expose other parts of the aircraft to radar because the attachment points and fuel lines would not be covered by any Radar Absorbing Material (RAM).
The US officials MEE spoke with refused to share details about the F-35s closely guarded engineering.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that Israeli attacks killed at least 106 Palestinians and wounded 393 as Israeli forces continue to pound the Strip with airstrikes and shoot desperate Palestinians seeking aid.
The Health Ministry said that at least five Palestinians were killed and 123 were injured while seeking aid at distribution points run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
According to The Cradle, at least one Palestinian was killed by Israeli gunfire at a distribution site at the Netzarim Corridor, which separates northern Gaza from the rest of the Strip. Four were reported killed when Israeli tanks, gunboats, and snipers opened fire near a site in the southern city of Rafah. Other reports said the death toll in Rafah rose to 13.
Mourners react during the funeral of a Palestinian killed, in what the Gaza health ministry says was Israeli fire near a distribution center in Rafah, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 8, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
According to Reuters, the Israeli military acknowledged that it opened fire on Palestinians near the site in Rafah, claiming its forces “had directed warning shots at a group that was moving towards soldiers and deemed a threat to them.”
The Health Ministry said that the total number of Palestinians killed en route to aid sites since the GHF began operating has reached 115, and another 1,100 have been injured.
Heavy Israeli airstrikes and shelling were also reported across Gaza. According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, at least 31 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes, mainly in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, and in Gaza City and Jabalia in the north.
Also on Sunday, the Israeli military claimed that it had found and identified the body of Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, who it alleges was killed in a May 13 bombing outside the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Israel alleged that tunnels were underneath the facility, which Hamas has previously denied. Sinwar took over as Hamas’s leader following the killing of his brother, Yahya Sinwar, in October 2024.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that since Israel resumed its genocidal war on March 18, at least 4,603 Palestinians have been killed, and 14,186 were injured. The numbers account for dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals and morgues.
Since October 7, 2023, the ministry’s death toll has reached 54,880, and the number of wounded has climbed to 126,227, figures that don’t account for thousands missing and presumed dead under the rubble or indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege.
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