Israel-Gaza updates: Hostage speaks 1st time since release

Noa Argamani is one of the four hostages rescued in a deadly IDF raid on June 8.

ByABC NEWS
Last Updated: June 29, 2024, 3:23 PM EDT

As the Israel-Hamas war continues, negotiations have stalled to secure the release of hostages taken by the terrorist organization, and Israeli forces continue to launch incursions in the southern Gazan town of Rafah ahead of a possible large-scale invasion.

Latest headlines:

Here's how the news is developing.
Jun 24, 2024, 2:28 PM EDT

Pentagon: Only the 1 shipment of 2,000-pound bombs has been delayed

Following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments alleging a U.S. slowdown in military aid to Israel, the Pentagon continues to say that only the one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs has been suspended.

"Again, just to clarify, we have paused one shipment to Israel," Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters on Monday.

An Israeli military armored vehicle rolls in an area bordering the Gaza Strip, June 9, 2024.
Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images

"Everything else continues to flow on schedule as normal. It is not diminished," he said.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who is in Washington, D.C., for meetings with U.S. officials, will meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon on Tuesday, Ryder said.

-ABC News’ Luis Martinez

Jun 24, 2024, 12:09 PM EDT

IDF 'approaching the point' of dismantling Hamas' Rafah Brigade

The Israeli military said it is winding down the intensity of fighting in the Rafah area of Gaza.

"We are clearly approaching the point where we can say we have dismantled [Hamas’] Rafah Brigade, that it is defeated not in the sense that there are no more terrorists, but in the sense that it can no longer function as a fighting unit," the IDF chief of the general staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Sunday night. "It has suffered many casualties, and you will ensure until the completion of the mission here, to eliminate as many terrorists and destroy as much terrorist infrastructure as possible going forward."

-ABC News’ Will Gretsky

Jun 24, 2024, 11:32 AM EDT

Looting, smuggling hindering delivery of aid in Gaza: UNRWA chief

"Gaza has been decimated" and life there is a "living hell," Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said in an address to other U.N. officials on Monday.

A Palestinian woman stands near the damaged windows of a classroom in a UNRWA school, after the air strike on a neighboring house to the school in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 21, 2024.
Mohammed Salem/Reuters

He said the breakdown of civil order and "catastrophic levels of hunger" have caused looting and smuggling that are hindering the delivery of aid.

"Children are dying of malnutrition and dehydration, while food and clean water wait in trucks," he said.

A woman and a girl react following an Israeli strike that hit a tent camp, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Al-Mawasi area in western Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 21, 2024.
Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Lazzarini also provided an update on the allegations that UNRWA staff members were involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.

He said out of 19 cases assigned to be investigated: one has been closed and the staffer was reinstated; four were suspended due to insufficient evidence; and 14 investigations are ongoing.

-ABC News’ Guy Davies

Jun 23, 2024, 6:41 PM EDT

Israeli airstrike kills 8 people in Gaza City: Gaza Ministry of Health

Eight people were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike on the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.

The IDF said they were targeting Hamas infrastructure and took measures to reduce risk to civilians.

Witnesses told Reuters that the site was used to distribute coupons for aid and distribute water. Video shows a destroyed building and people moving bodies away from the rubble.

-ABC News' Victoria Beaule, Jordana Miller and Sami Zyara

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