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Ukraine’s forces have hit an advanced Su-57 warplane on an airbase in Russia nearly 600km from the frontlines, according to Ukrainian military intelligence. The GUR shared satellite photos appearing to show an aircraft among scorch marks and craters. “The pictures show that on June 7th, the Su-57 was standing intact, and on the eighth, there were ruptures from the explosion and characteristic spots of fire caused by fire damage near it,” the GUR said.
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The strike took place on Saturday at the Akhtubinsk base in southern Russia, the GUR said. The plane, capable of carrying stealth missiles, was among “a countable few” of its type in service. Russia’s Su-57 fleet has been largely absent from the skies over Ukraine, and has instead been used to fire long-range missiles from across the border.
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The UK Ministry of Defence has said Russia is likely trying to avoid “reputational damage, reduced export prospects, and the compromise of sensitive technology” that would come from losing any Su-57 jets in enemy territory. For its part, the Russian defence ministry said its forces downed three Ukrainian drones in the Astrakhan region, home to the Akhtubinsk airstrip. Russian officials routinely say all enemy threats were shot down, regardless of the actual outcome.
Ukraine war briefing: Ukrainian intelligence ‘strikes Su-57 warplane deep inside Russia’
Hamas says 3 hostages, including an American, were killed in Israeli rescue raid
Militant-held Israeli hostages were among the more than 200 people killed in the raid that freed four captives and has been lauded as heroic in Israel but described as a massacre across much of the Middle East, Hamas officials said Sunday.
Abu Obaida, spokesman for the Hamas Al-Qassam Brigades military wing, called Saturday's raid a "complex war crime." He said three hostages were killed in the attack, including one holding a U.S. passport, a claim Israeli military spokesperson Peter Lerner said should be taken "with a pinch of salt."
"By committing horrific massacres, the enemy was able to free some of his prisoners, but at the same time, it killed some of them," Obaida said. "The operation will pose a great danger to the (remaining hostages) and will have a negative impact on their conditions and lives."
Under a drone-filled sky, Ukraine tries to retake a town, one house at a time
Vovchansk, once home to about 17,000 people, is approximately three miles (5km) from the border with Russia in north-east Ukraine.
Russian troops seized it on the first day of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale February 2022 invasion. They retreated six months later, going back up the road to the Russian city of Belgorod. A month ago – on 10 May – they swept in again, taking over Vovchansk’s polyclinic and meat processing factory.
A brutal battle has raged ever since. Russian forces control the north of the city and a grid of shattered western districts. Ukrainian troops hold the centre. Their fiefdom includes half of Korelenka Street, with the Russians concealed in nearby basements. Fighting takes place house by house. Vovchansk now resembles a 21st-century mini Stalingrad, a place of death, rattling gunfire and close-quarters combat.
Biden apologizes for delay in Ukraine military aid
US President Joe Biden has apologised to his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky for delays in military aid to Ukraine and has pledged $225m (£191m) in support.
The pair met for talks in Paris, a day after they both attended the 80th anniversary commemorations of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France.
The US Department of Defense said the new aid package would include ammunition and anti-aircraft missiles.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Mr Biden said previous delays in aid had been caused by some Republicans in Congress, but reiterated US support for Ukraine.
A covert Israeli online influence campaign tried to sway American lawmakers
Websites that appear to covertly target mostly younger, progressive Americans with a pro-Israeli spin on the war in Gaza are linked to a company that’s being paid by the Israeli government to sway lawmakers and public opinion in the U.S., according to Israeli researchers and The New York Times.
A new report published Wednesday by FakeReporter, an Israeli watchdog group that tracks misinformation, identified five specific websites tied to an Israeli political consulting form called STOIC. The Times reported Wednesday that STOIC is being paid $2 million by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs to influence Democratic members of the U.S. Congress to maintain support for Israel, at a time when many Democrats are questioning continued U.S. military support to Israel amid rising civilian casualties and suffering in Gaza.
Israel used a U.S.-made bomb in a deadly U.N. school strike in Gaza
The munition used was a GBU-39 small-diameter bomb, according to a Pentagon official and a former U.S. Air Force official. It is the same kind of bomb, according to The New York Times, that Israel used in an airstrike last month that killed dozens of displaced civilians at a tent camp in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, an incident Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a “tragic mishap.”
Israel’s army said it was targeting a group of militants inside two classrooms at a U.N. school in Nuseirat, a central Gaza refugee camp. But the 2 a.m. strike killed at least 32 people, including seven children, according to Dr. Khalil Doqran, director of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza.
Families displaced in the war are sheltering in the school. At the hospital morgue, NPR documented one body bag labeled as containing the body parts of five children.
Israeli Nationalists Chant Racist Slogans While Marching In Palestinian Area Of Jerusalem
Ben-Gvir, who was once on the fringes of Israeli politics but now holds a key position in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, had insisted that the march follow its traditional route through the Palestinian area, despite tensions surging because of the war. Marchers entered the Muslim Quarter of the Old City through Damascus Gate and ended at the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray.
The police stressed that the march would not enter the sprawling Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam. The hilltop on which it stands is the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of the Jewish temples in antiquity.
But activists said hundreds of Jews had visited the compound earlier in the day, and Ben-Gvir said they prayed there freely, following what he said was his own policy that permitted prayer there.
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