Gaza killings under ceasefire, Iran deal stalled, Ukraine hits nuclear plant

What soldiers are saying about Gaza’s ceasefire — and what it means

In October, a ceasefire halted the full-scale war in Gaza. Seven months later, Israeli reservists who served there are telling the Associated Press that the killing never really stopped.

Three soldiers, speaking anonymously, described permissive orders along the “Yellow Line” — a barrier dividing Israeli-controlled Gaza from Palestinian areas still under Hamas administration. One soldier described the line’s location as ambiguous: sometimes marked with yellow blocks and barrels, sometimes not marked at all. “After the ceasefire, the order was: If someone crosses the line, you shoot them,” one soldier in his twenties told AP. His teammates, he said, celebrated after striking a vehicle carrying Palestinians near the line. “To call it a ceasefire is a joke,” another soldier said. [1,2,3]

The soldiers said some commanders privately wanted the war to continue, and that troops sometimes acted too quickly to identify who they were shooting at. The Israeli military, for its part, says the line is clearly marked and that most of those killed posed genuine threats. The IDF disputes that civilians were targeted unlawfully. [3]

The ceasefire’s terms require Israeli forces to pull back further once an international stabilisation force deploys — but that deployment is deadlocked over a single issue: whether Hamas must disarm first. Israel says yes; Hamas says no. That standoff is holding up reconstruction, hostage negotiations, and any permanent settlement. [3]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week ordered the army to expand its territorial control toward 70% of the Gaza Strip — well beyond what the ceasefire framework allows [11]. Hamas called the move a “dangerous escalation.” UNICEF said it would deepen suffering among children. Germany expressed concern about the permanent division of Gaza. [11] Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group aligned with Iran, fired rocket barrages at northern Israel overnight in apparent response to Israeli operations expanding into southern Lebanon, hitting Safed, Kiryat Shmona, and Karmiel; none caused injuries. [76,81]

The picture that emerges across these reports is not of a ceasefire that is holding but of one that has been hollowed out from the inside — the geography expanding, the rules of engagement quietly permissive, the political process frozen.

Iran deal: close, not close, and capable of resuming war

On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s annual defence and security forum held in Singapore, where he said talks with Iran were “productive” — and then immediately threatened to restart the war. “Our ability to recommence if necessary — we are more than capable,” Hegseth said. “Our stockpiles are more than suited for that.” [8,10,36]

Here is the background. The US and Israel launched a war against Iran on 28 February. A truce took effect in early April. Since then, negotiators have been trying to convert that truce into a permanent deal. The main obstacles are three: whether Iran gives up uranium enrichment (the US insists; Iran says no), whether the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway through which roughly 20% of the world’s traded oil passes — reopens for normal traffic, and whether frozen Iranian assets worth billions of dollars are released. [7]

Hegseth said a reopened Strait should be “toll-free” for the world. Iran has been effectively closing it to non-sanctioned shipping. The US Treasury this week clarified that even receiving a “guarantee of safe passage” from Iran without paying a toll is prohibited for US persons under sanctions law — blocking any workaround. [61]

The US Navy separately intercepted another commercial ship trying to breach the blockade and reach an Iranian port. [20,45]

Trump on Friday called a White House meeting to make a “final determination” on extending the ceasefire by 60 days to buy time for talks. The White House afterwards said Trump would only accept a deal that “satisfies his red lines,” the chief of which is that Iran cannot possess a nuclear weapon. [13] Iranian officials, meanwhile, are showing no urgency. Analysis from Haaretz describes Tehran as comfortable with the current stalemate: the Hormuz closure has given it leverage, and Iran’s negotiators see no reason to surrender enrichment capacity while the US blockade remains a constant pressure point. [7]

What changes if no deal is struck: the US resumes airstrikes, oil prices spike further, and the Strait remains closed. China’s factory PMI — an index that measures whether manufacturing is growing or shrinking — barely held above 50 (the dividing line between growth and contraction) in May, and analysts already cite the Iran war’s energy shock as a drag on global output. [44]

Ukraine: a drone hits Europe’s largest nuclear plant

Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom said on Saturday that a Ukrainian drone struck the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest, with six reactors — leaving a hole in the wall of a turbine hall. Rosatom’s head Alexei Likhachev called the strike “deliberate.” The IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, confirmed it had been informed and that its on-site team had requested access to inspect the damage. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said: “Attacking nuclear sites is like playing with fire.” [19]

Ukraine’s military denied responsibility, calling the Russian account “yet another propaganda ploy” and stating that its forces “act strictly within international humanitarian law.” Russia captured Zaporizhzhia in March 2022. It sits close to the front line in southeastern Ukraine. [19]

On the same night, Ukrainian drones hit oil depots in Russia’s Rostov and Krasnodar regions, sparking fires. President Zelenskyy posted: “We are rightfully bringing the war back to where it came from.” [19,21]

Zelenskyy also warned this week that Russia may be preparing a “massive” new offensive, a concern reinforced by AP reporting that Putin — facing battlefield stalemate and domestic discontent — appears ready to escalate. [17]

The drone strike on Romania’s residential building in Galati, which injured two people and punched a hole through a roof on Friday, added another dimension. Romanian President Nicusor Dan confirmed it was a Russian Shahed-type drone, knocked off course by Ukrainian air defences. NATO and the EU condemned it as a consequence of Russian aggression. Romania did not invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty — which would trigger an emergency alliance consultation — to avoid “creating panic.” [30,59] For NATO, this is the most serious spillover incident on alliance soil since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

Singapore and the shape of Asia without US leadership

The Shangri-La Dialogue — held in Singapore, it is Asia’s premier annual gathering of defence ministers and military officials — revealed a region recalibrating to a world where the US is less reliably present. [35]

China sent no defence minister for the second consecutive year, dispatching instead a low-profile panel of “experts and scholars.” Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun skipped opportunities to meet counterparts from the US, Australia, France, Japan, and Britain. Analysts said Beijing was deliberately avoiding tough questions — including about Taiwan tensions and the impact of military corruption purges on combat readiness. Hegseth noted the absence directly. [35,54]

Hegseth’s own speech was notably softer on China than last year’s, when he had called a Chinese invasion of Taiwan “imminent.” This year he did not mention Taiwan except when asked. He said the US sought “a respectful regional balance” and “genuine equilibrium.” He also suspended a $14 billion Taiwan arms package to conserve munitions for the Iran war. [54,66]

Several things were announced at Singapore that will matter. The AUKUS defence pact — a trilateral alliance between the US, UK, and Australia — unveiled its first deliverable beyond nuclear submarines: unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) to protect undersea cables, conduct reconnaissance, and carry weapons. The UK committed £150 million ($201 million). The technology is expected to be ready by next year. British Defence Secretary John Healey acknowledged that “for too long in Aukus, we talked too much and delivered too little.” [27,57]

India signed a BrahMos supersonic cruise missile deal with Vietnam, a significant arms transfer that deepens defence ties between two countries that share overlapping concerns about Chinese maritime behaviour in the South China Sea. [65]

Vietnam’s President To Lam, in his first international media interview since taking combined powers as both party chief and president, told Reuters: “We do not pick sides.” He said better relations with China and progress on the South China Sea territorial disputes were “mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive.” [15]

The Philippines’ defence minister said China remained a threat despite Trump’s summit with Xi in Beijing earlier this month. [25]

Congo’s Ebola outbreak passes 1,000 cases

The WHO’s director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, flew to Ituri Province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday — the epicentre of an Ebola outbreak that has now recorded more than 1,000 suspected cases and at least 246 deaths. [77,23]

The strain involved is Bundibugyo Ebola, a rare variant with no proven vaccine. It kills roughly one in three people infected. The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said never before had so many cases been recorded so soon after an outbreak’s declaration — just two weeks after it was formally announced. [77]

Neighbouring Uganda has reported nine confirmed cases and one death. Brazil is investigating a suspected case in São Paulo in a Congolese man who recently visited the country. [77,67]

The response is lagging the spread. Testing had been done 1,500 kilometres away in Kinshasa until recently; a local lab in Bunia can now return results within 24 hours, which health workers say is critical. But conflict in eastern Congo is hampering containment. Border and airport closures are delaying supplies. Hundreds of samples remain untested. [77,23]

The story nobody’s covering

Guyana and the Iran war’s oil windfall. Guyana, a small South American country of fewer than 800,000 people, has emerged as one of the biggest unintentional beneficiaries of the US-Iran war. With Iranian oil effectively removed from global markets by the Hormuz blockade, buyers have scrambled for alternatives. Guyana — which only began significant offshore oil production in 2019 — is suddenly one of the most attractive sources of non-sanctioned crude. Reuters reports that Guyana is “poised for big Iran oil gains,” with revenues and production targets both rising rapidly. [18]

The problem is absorbing it. A country of under a million people receiving oil revenues at this scale faces severe “Dutch disease” risk — a phenomenon where a resource boom drives up the exchange rate, making other sectors of the economy uncompetitive and crowding out manufacturing and agriculture. Infrastructure, healthcare, and institutional capacity are all straining. Guyana is watching what happened to other small oil states and trying to avoid their mistakes, but the pressure is arriving faster than the policy response. [18]