Al Jazeera – June 28, 2025
At least 13 soldiers killed in suicide bombing in northwestern Pakistan
More than a dozen soldiers have been killed and dozens of people were wounded in a suicide attack in northwestern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, officials said.
Saturday’s attack was carried out in Khadi Market, Mir Ali, North Waziristan, according to a local media outlet, Khyber Chronicles, which quoted security sources.
Security officials said the attacker detonated explosives near a bomb disposal unit vehicle, killing 13 people.
At least 24 personnel, including 14 civilians, were also injured in the attack, the report said.
“A suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a military convoy,” a local government official in North Waziristan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province told the AFP news agency separately.
Children among the injured
“The explosion also caused the roofs of two houses to collapse, injuring six children,” a police officer posted in the district told AFP.
It was one of the deadliest single-day attacks on security forces in recent months in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
There was no immediate comment from the Pakistani military.
The attack was claimed by the Hafiz Gul Bahadur armed group, a faction of the Pakistan Taliban, or TPP.
Pakistan has witnessed a sharp rise in violence in its regions bordering Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, with Islamabad accusing its western neighbour of allowing its soil to be used for attacks against Pakistan – a claim the Taliban denies.
About 290 people, mostly security officials, have been killed in attacks since the start of the year by armed groups fighting the government in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, according to an AFP tally.
Israel bombs heavily populated Gaza City area, at least 20 killed
By Usaid Siddiqui, Urooba Jamal and Nils AdlerPublished On 28 Jun 202528 Jun 2025
Israeli air attacks on al-Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City have killed at least 20 people, including nine children, according to medical sources.
In its latest daily update, the Health Ministry in Gaza says Israeli attacks over the latest 24-hour reporting period have killed at least 81 people and wounded 422 others.
The killings come a day after US President Donald Trump said a ceasefire in Gaza could be reached “within the next week”.
Gaza’s Government Media Office says revelations in the Israeli media that soldiers were ordered to ﾓdeliberately shootﾔ starving Palestinians seeking aid supplies are further evidence of “war crimes” in Gaza.
Israelﾒs war on Gaza has killed at least 56,412 people and wounded 133,054, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7 attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Putin confirms he wants all of Ukraine, as Europe steps up military aid
By John T Psaropoulos
Ukraine’s European allies pledged increased levels of military aid to Ukraine this year, making up for a United States aid freeze, as Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his ambition to absorb all of Ukraine into the Russian Federatio
n.
“At this moment, the Europeans and the Canadians have pledged, for this year, $35bn in military support to Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte ahead of the alliance’s annual summit, which took place in The Hague on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 24-25.
“Last year, it was just over $50bn for the full year. Now, before we reach half year, it is already at $35bn. And there are even others saying it’s already close to $40bn,” he added.
The increase in European aid partly made up for the absence of any military aid offers so far from the Trump administration.
In April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered to buy the US Patriot air defence systems Ukraine needs to fend off daily missile and drone attacks.
The Trump administration made its first sale of weapons to Ukraine the following month, but only of F-16 aircraft parts.
At The Hague this week, Zelenskyy said he discussed those Patriot systems with Trump. At a news conference on Wednesday, Trump said: “We’re going to see if we can make some available,” referring to interceptors for existing Patriot systems in Ukraine. “They’re very hard to get. We need them too, and we’ve been supplying them to Israel,” he said.
Russia has made a ceasefire conditional on Ukraine’s allies stopping the flow of weapons to it and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated that condition on Saturday.
On June 20, Vladimir Putin revealed that his ambition to annex all of Ukraine had not abated.
“I have said many times that the Russian and Ukrainian people are one nation, in fact. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,” he declared at a media conference to mark the opening of the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum on Friday, June 20.
“But you know we have an old parable, an old rule: wherever a Russian soldier steps, it is ours.”
“Wherever a Russian soldier steps, he brings only death, destruction, and devastation,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the next day.
In a post on the Telegram messaging platform on June 21, Zelenskyyﾠwrote that Putin had “spoken completely openly”.
“Yes, he wants all of Ukraine,” he said. “He is also speaking about Belarus, the Baltic states, Moldova, the Caucasus, countries like Kazakhstan.”
German army planners agreed about Putin’s expansionism, deeming Russia an “existential threat” in a new strategy paper 18 months in the making, leaked to Der Spiegel news magazine last week.
Moscow was preparing its military leadership and defence industries “specifically to meet the requirements for a large-scale conflict against NATO by the end of this decade”, the paper said.
“We in Germany ignored the warnings of our Baltic neighbours about Russia for too long. We have recognised this mistake,” said German chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday, highlighting the reason for an about-turn from his two predecessors’ refusal to spend more on defence.
“There is no going back from this realisation. We cannot expect the world around us to return to calmer times in the near future,” he added.
Germany, along with other European NATO allies, agreed on Wednesday to raise defence spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035.
It was a sign of the increasingly common threat perception from Russia, but also a big win for Trump, who had demanded that level of spending shortly after winning re-election as US president last year.
Of that, 1.5 percent is for military-related spending like dual-purpose infrastructure, emergency healthcare, cybersecurity and civic resilience.
