Death toll from Israel's war on Gaza surpasses 60,000 people, says health ministry

TNA’s live coverage of the latest from the war on Gaza and the Middle East concludes for today. Join us again at 0800 GMT for updates from the besieged Palestinian enclave.
 

Israeli forces disrupted the funeral of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in Hebron, according to Wafa news agency.

Hathaleen, a teacher and human rights defender featured in the Oscar-winning film No Other Land, was shot dead by an Israeli settler on Monday.

He was reportedly trying to stop the destruction of Palestinian land in Umm al-Kheir, a village southeast of Yatta in the Hebron area.

Activist Osama Makhamreh told Wafa that Israeli soldiers assaulted mourners, expelled them from the procession, and declared the area a closed military zone.

Two foreign activists were arrested for showing support to Hathaleen’s family, while the military blocked access to the village, preventing residents, rights groups, and other activists from attending the funeral.

Later, Israeli troops were seen guarding settlers as they continued expansion of the nearby Carmel settlement on Palestinian land.

Watch: Israeli solders raid the mourning tent for Awdah Hathaleen in Umm Al Khair, forcing all the guests out, including journalists pic.twitter.com/9XHPnylv2R

— Oren Ziv (@OrenZiv_) July 29, 2025

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that “there is no starvation” in Gaza, calling the remarks “beyond comprehension”.

Albanese was responding to a question from an Australian Labor backbencher on whether Australia would recognise a Palestinian state.

He stated that Israel is “quite clearly” violating international law by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the territory.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has “stolen far too many innocent lives”, he added.

In response, Israel’s Foreign Ministry dismissed Albanese’s comments as “a lie” and insisted it is “not withholding any aid”.

Israel has allowed 109 aid trucks into Gaza, but most were looted amid growing chaos, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.

“Today, 109 aid trucks entered Gaza, with the majority looted and robbed due to the security chaos systematically and deliberately imposed by the Israeli occupation,” the office said in a statement.

The office stressed that Gaza urgently needs at least 600 aid trucks and fuel each day to meet basic humanitarian needs as famine worsens.

It accused Israel of deliberately undermining aid efforts to “sabotage aid distribution and deprive civilians of assistance as part of engineering chaos and starvation”.

Airdrop efforts have also failed to reach intended recipients.

The media office said, “four of six air drops landed in areas under Israeli military control or neighbourhoods where civilians had been ordered to evacuate”.

It warned that civilians in these zones “face direct targeting and killing”, making the airdrops “not only futile but also dangerous to the starving population”.

 President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the US will partner with Israel to run new food centers in Gaza to address the worsening humanitarian crisis there, but he and U.S. officials offered few additional details about the plan or how it would differ from existing food distribution centers.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned from a trip to Scotland that Israel would preside over the new food centers “to make sure the distribution is proper.”

“We're going to be dealing with Israel, and we think they can do a good job of it," Trump said.

The White House described it as “a new aid plan” to help people in Gaza obtain access to food and promised that details would emerge. It did not elaborate.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Tuesday that she didn’t know "the framework” of how the new aid distribution would work.

“I’m waiting for the president to return. I don’t want to get ahead of him,” Bruce said.

The UK-based International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) has urged Hungarian police to arrest an Israeli soldier suspected of war crimes.

In a statement on Tuesday, the ICJP said the soldier is believed to be in Hungary and served in the 932nd 'Granite' Battalion of the Israeli Nahal Brigade during key operations in Gaza between October and December 2023, and later in Rafah.

The group submitted a dossier of photographic and written evidence to Hungarian authorities, detailing his combat role.

ICJP claims the soldier made statements calling for the burning of Palestinian villages. It also cites video footage from April 2024 showing the battalion’s commander referencing the “blowing up” of Palestinians in northern Gaza.

The group is calling for the soldier’s arrest under Hungarian law and international obligations, including the Rome Statute.

Despite Hungary’s April 2025 announcement to leave the ICC, ICJP notes that withdrawal takes one year. Hungary remains bound by the statute until April 2026.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, in response to the United Kingdom's plans to recognise a Palestinian state, that Prime Minister Keir Starmer has rewarded "Hamas monstrous terrorism and punishes its victims."

"A jihadist state on Israel's border today will threaten Britain tomorrow", Netanyahu added. 

Gaza's civil defence agency said Tuesday that Israeli air strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians, including women and children, in the central Nuseirat district.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the strikes were carried out overnight and into the morning and "targeted a number of citizens' homes" in Nuseirat refugee camp.

The camp's Al-Awda Hospital said it had received "the bodies of 30 martyrs, including 14 women and 12 children".

The Al-Awda Hospital later reported that 13 people had been killed by Israeli gunfire while waiting near an aid distribution point on Gaza's main north-south route, Salah al-Din Road.

The Israeli military said it was "not aware of casualties as a result of (army) fire adjacent to the distribution site in the central Gaza Strip".

The Dutch government will summon Israel's ambassador to the Netherlands to denounce the "unbearable and indefensible" situation in Gaza and it has imposed travel bans on two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, the government said in a letter published late on Monday.

Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich will no longer be allowed to enter the Netherlands, which accuses them of repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians and calling for an "ethnic cleansing" of the Gaza strip.

The Dutch decision follows similar moves last month by Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.

In remarks to journalists on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said the Netherlands would also push for EU trade sanctions against Israel because it has not fully implemented its agreement with the European Union on increasing aid supplies to Gaza.

"Because that (agreement) is not yet fully implemented, we now make the case in the EU for suspension of the trade part of the EU Israel association agreement," he said.

Israel's foreign minister, Gideon Saar, responded to the travel ban on the two ministers by summoning the Dutch ambassador, the ministry's spokesperson said on Tuesday.

France will air-drop 40 tonnes of aid into Gaza from Friday, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Tuesday, as UN-backed experts warned the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory was slipping into famine.

"We will organise, starting from Friday, and in close coordination with the Jordanian authorities, four flights carrying 10 tonnes of supplies each for the Gaza Strip," Barrot told the BFMTV television broadcaster.

But Barrot said France also had aid waiting to cross into Gaza by road that was being blocked in northern Egypt.

"The air route is useful, but it is not sufficient," the minister added.

"Fifty-two tonnes of French humanitarian freight are blocked in El-Arish," an Egyptian city some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the border, he added.

"It is therefore essential that the Israeli authorities finally agree to reopen land access to the Gaza Strip sufficiently so as to alleviate the atrocious suffering of its civilian populations," he added.

Oxfam has welcomed the UK government’s pledge to recognise a Palestinian state, describing it as "a welcome and long-overdue step in the right direction".

In a statement, the charity stressed that such recognition “must not be made conditional”, particularly while millions of Palestinians face famine and the denial of basic human rights.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the UK would formally recognise a Palestinian state in September, unless Israel takes concrete steps to improve the “appalling situation” in Gaza.

Starmer said the move would depend on Israel agreeing to a ceasefire, ending annexation efforts in the occupied West Bank, and committing to a long-term peace process aimed at achieving a two-state solution.

The announcement follows mounting pressure within Starmer’s cabinet, as well as France’s recent declaration of its own intention to recognise Palestine.

People across Gaza are now starving to death. Our message to @Keir_Starmer and the UK government is: Enabling Gaza's erasure is a red line. You must ACT.
Share our call. Make it louder #RedLineForGaza pic.twitter.com/Dl4lYaKK3d

— Oxfam (@oxfamgb) July 29, 2025

Sirens sounded in several Israeli cities, including Jerusalem, on Tuesday as the military said it identified and intercepted a projectile launched from Yemen, as news agency AFP reported hearing booms over Jerusalem.

"Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted by the (Israeli air force)", the military said in a statement.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer did not discuss Britain's plan to recognize a Palestinian state in September unless Israel takes a number of steps to improve life for Palestinians.

"We never did discuss it," Trump told reporters on board Air Force One.

The Netanyahu government's rejection of a two-state solution is wrong, morally and strategically, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said at a UN conference.

The UK carried out its first air drop of aid into Gaza on Tuesday, the government said, as UN agencies warned the Palestinian territory was slipping into famine.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office said "the first air drops of British aid" were landing Tuesday "containing around half a million pounds worth of lifesaving supplies".

"The Palestinian people have endured terrible suffering now in Gaza because of a catastrophic failure of aid, we see starving babies, children too weak to stand," Starmer said in a televised address, adding "the suffering must end".

Israel should reoccupy Gaza rather than negotiate with Hamas, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tuesday at an event marking the 20th anniversary of Israel's withdrawal of settlers from the Palestinian territory.

"Gaza is an integral part of Israel. How to move on to a tangible plan (for resettlement)? We need to need think about it, and above all we must succeed," said Smotrich, who lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Smotrich, who had threatened to leave the government if it allowed aid into Gaza, was on the back foot a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorised new humanitarian deliveries.

"If I'm still in the government despite everything, it's probably because I have good reasons to believe positive things are about to happen," the head of the Religious Zionism Party said.

Smotrich evoked the 2005 withdrawal in which Israel evacuated 8,000 settlers and its soldiers from the Gaza Strip. "Who could have thought 20 years ago that Gaza would be like it is now?" he asked the audience, before suggesting that conditions in the territory now favoured a return of Israeli settlers.

Britain will recognise a Palestinian state in September if Israel doesn't end its military campaign in Gaza and commit to peace, Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy told an international conference at the United Nations on Tuesday that aims to work on a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel was continuing its efforts to release captives being held in Gaza despite the "refusal" of Hamas.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday blasted Israel for condemning the people of Gaza to famine, saying that images coming from the Palestinian enclave were worse than "Nazi camps".

"Israel's use of hunger as a weapon, especially against Palestinians, is the clearest indication that they have not taken any share of humanity," the Turkish leader said at a press conference in Ankara.

"Images coming from Gaza are far worse, more brutal, and inhumane than those from Nazi camps. A people is being killed by hunger and thirst before the eyes of the world," he added.

Erdogan has previously called Israel a "terrorist state" and accused it of committing genocide in Gaza.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Tuesday Britain will recognise the state of Palestine in September unless Israel takes "substantive steps" in Gaza, including agreeing to a ceasefire.

"I have always said that we will recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to a proper peace process at the moment of maximum impact for the two state solution," Starmer said.

"With that solution now under threat, this is the moment to act," he added.

Demonstrators calling for an end to the war in Gaza protested the arrival of an Israeli cruise ship on another Greek island Tuesday – the third such protest on Greek islands in the last week.

Protesters on the southern Greek island of Crete unfurled a huge Palestinian flag at the port of Agios Nikolaos and shouted "Free, free Palestine" as the tourists on board the Crown Iris disembarked and left on buses for their tours of the island, according to images shown on local media outlets.

Riot police kept the crowd away from the pier where the cruise ship was docked, while scuffles broke out between demonstrators and police. Local media reported that officers used pepper spray at one point to keep the crowd back.

Four people were detained, local media said. Video showed police leading one man away, his arms cuffed behind his back, as he shouted "Free, free Palestine."

Συμπλοκές αστυνομικών - διαδηλωτών και χημικά, με φόντο το κρουαζιερόπλοιο με τους ισραηλινούς στρατιώτες -"τουρίστες".
Μέσα σε γενικευμένη ένταση και τις έντονες αποδοκιμασίες του κόσμου, με συνθήματα υπέρ της Παλαιστίνης και κατά του γενοκτόνου κράτους του Ισραήλ, φυγαδεύτηκαν… pic.twitter.com/Nlkg2NI1mc

— Areti Athanasiou (@AretiAthanasiu) July 29, 2025

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar delivered a formal reprimand to the ambassador of the Netherlands on Tuesday in response to Dutch criticism over the treatment of Palestinians and a travel ban against two members of the Israeli cabinet.

Saar said in a post on X that the Dutch government "chose to convert a long-standing friendship with Israel into open hostility towards it, precisely during its difficult time, probably out of political interests".

The Israeli army said on Tuesday that Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group had moved most of its weapons north of the Litani River, and was still in possession of "thousands of missiles," most of them short-range.

The Lebanese government has said that much of south Lebanon south of the Litani has been demilitarised and hundreds of weapons caches belonging to Hezbollah have been confiscated and other military infrastructure dismantled.

Israel's army claimed it has killed more than 230 Hezbollah members since the 27 November truce deal last year that ended the war between both sides.

The army also claimed that it had recently monitored attempts by Hezbollah to resume the production of drones in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Despite the 2024 truce deal, Israel has targeted parts of Lebanon - mainly the south - nearly every day, vowing to keep Hezbollah weakened after last year's war battered the group's military capabilities and eliminated thousands of its fighters, as well as its senior command structure.

A trickle of aid into the Gaza Strip must become an ocean, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday.

"Food, water, medicine and fuel must flow in waves and without obstruction," he said, describing an alert by a global hunger monitor on Tuesday as confirming "what we have feared: Gaza is on the brink of famine."

"Palestinians in Gaza are enduring a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions. This is not a warning. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes," he said in a statement.

The first group of Syrian refugees returned home from Lebanon on Tuesday under a new plan the United Nations developed with the Lebanese government following the downfall of Bashar Assad's rule in December.

The new plan has the UN refugee agency offering $100 in cash to each repatriated Syrian refugee and the Lebanese authorities waiving any fees or fines they owe. The UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration will provide them with buses for their return journey.

The UNHCR also says it will help returning Syrians with "cash grants, legal assistance for civil documents, psychosocial support, livelihood opportunities, and other protection services."

UNHCR Lebanon spokesperson Lisa Abou Khaled says about 17,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon have already signed up to go back to their home country, though the vast majority have opted not to take the buses. Tuesday's repatriation was a "test run," she said, with only 72 people, mostly going to Syria’s third-largest city of Homs and rural Damascus.

منطقة البقاع شهدت ج اليوم الثلاثاء، انطلاق أولى رحلات العودة الطوعية المنظمة للسوريين من لبنان إلى بلدهم، ضمن إطار خطة لبنانية رسمية تحظى برعاية الأمم المتحدة ودعم عدد من الدول المانحة.

تم تنفيذ العملية بالتنسيق الكامل بين الأمن العام اللبناني والمفوضية السامية للأمم المتحدة… pic.twitter.com/YiMUWTo7R8

— Beirut Time (@beiruttime_leb) July 29, 2025

The main UN aid agencies on Tuesday called for Gaza to be flooded with humanitarian assistance, warning that "time is running out" and that the Palestinian territory is "on the brink of a full-scale famine."

"We need to flood Gaza with large-scale food aid, immediately and without obstruction, and keep it flowing each and every day to prevent mass starvation," the World Food Programme's (WFP) Executive Director Cindy McCain said in a joint statement with UNICEF and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

France on Tuesday condemned the killing in the West Bank of Palestinian teacher Awdah Hathaleen who contributed to Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land", describing Israeli settler violence as "terrorism".

"France condemns this murder with the utmost firmness as well as all deliberate acts of violence committed by extremist settlers against the Palestinian population, which are multiplying across the West Bank," a foreign ministry spokesman said, after Hathaleen was killed on Monday. "These acts of violence are acts of terrorism."

Germany, France and Britain are considering sending their foreign ministers to Israel next week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Tuesday, as international pressure mounts over Gaza's dire humanitarian crisis.

"We will probably ask the three foreign ministers of France, the United Kingdom and Germany to travel to Israel together next Thursday to present the position of ... the three governments," Merz told a press conference in Berlin alongside Jordan's King Abdullah II.

Hamas's negotiating team left the Qatari capital Doha for Turkey on Tuesday to discuss the "latest developments" in the stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, a Hamas official told AFP.

"A high-level leadership delegation from Hamas, headed by Mohammed Darwish, president of the movement's leadership council, and including the negotiation team and its head, Khalil al-Hayya, is departing Doha heading to Istanbul", the source told AFP.

"The delegation will hold several meetings with Turkish officials regarding the latest developments in the ceasefire negotiations, which stalled last week", the source added.

For over two weeks, mediators in Qatar had been shuttling between Israeli and Hamas delegations in a bid to secure a breakthrough in indirect talks for a ceasefire and the release of hostages held in Gaza, nearly two years into the war.

The United States joined Israel last week in pulling its negotiators from the negotiations, with US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff blaming the Palestinian militant group for the failure to reach a deal and saying Washington would "consider alternative options".

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that two of the country's aircraft could fly aid airdrop missions from Jordan to Gaza as soon as Wednesday, calling the help a small but important signal.

"This work may only make a small contribution to humanitarian aid, but it sends an important signal: We are here, we are in the region," said Merz at a press conference alongside Jordan's King Abdullah in Berlin.

Two A400M aircraft were on their way to Jordan at the moment, where they would refuel and then fly their aid mission at the weekend at the latest, in coordination with France and Germany, said Merz.

Merz also welcomed initial steps taken by Israel to allow in aid but said more must follow.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Tuesday that its team was able to gain access to the southern Syrian city of Suweida, where fighting broke out this month.

The team, which joined a Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) humanitarian convoy sent to the city on Monday, was able to get a first-hand assessment of where the most pressing needs were.

The ICRC said it will continue its efforts for further access to Suweida as well as its support to the ongoing emergency response of the SARC to those most in need in the area.

France will air-drop aid into Gaza "in coming days", a diplomatic source said on Tuesday, as UN-backed experts warned the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory was slipping into famine.

"France will carry out air drops in the coming days to meet the most essential and urgent needs of the civilian population in Gaza," the source said, also urging "an immediate opening by Israel of the land crossing points".

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that Western demands over Tehran's nuclear programme are an excuse to confront the Islamic Republic, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump warned about renewed strikes if Iran restarts nuclear work.

"Nuclear programme, enrichment, human rights are all excuses ... What they are after is your religion and knowledge," Khamenei said.

Gaza's health ministry said Tuesday that the death toll from the Israel's war in the enclave had surpassed 60,000 people, in fighting that has raged for nearly 22 months.

"The death toll from the Israeli aggression has risen to 60,034 martyrs and 145,870 injuries since October 7, 2023," the ministry said in a statement.

The United Nations food agency said on Tuesday that it is not getting the necessary volumes of humanitarian assistance into Gaza despite Israel issuing new measures to enable more supplies to enter the enclave.

"We have not gotten the authorisation, the permission to move in the volumes that we've requested," Ross Smith, a senior regional programme adviser at the World Food Programme's Regional Bureau for East & Central Africa said at a U.N. briefing in Geneva via video link.

Israel's foreign minister rejected on Tuesday what he called a "distorted campaign" of international pressure for a ceasefire in the Gaza war and recognition of a Palestinian state.

Gideon Saar told reporters that if Israel was to halt the conflict while Hamas is still in power in Gaza and still holding hostages it would be a "tragedy for both Israelis and Palestinians".

"It ain't gonna happen, no matter how much pressure is put on Israel," he said. "When they demand end this war, what does it really mean? Ending the war while Hamas remains in power in Gaza?"

Saar also responded to moves by some foreign capitals, including Paris, to revive efforts for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"The French foreign minister said in New York yesterday that Europe must pressure Israel to accept a two-state solution," he said.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will hold an emergency cabinet on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Gaza and a proposed peace plan as he comes under mounting pressure from his own party to recognise a Palestinian state.

Starmer has taken the rare step of recalling his cabinet during the summer holidays to discuss how to deliver more humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Starmer has not shared details of the plan, but over the weekend he compared the proposals to the "coalition of the willing", the international effort to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire in its war with Russia.

The premier's spokesman said he would discuss the plan with other international allies and countries in the Middle East.

The UN's World Food Programme warned Tuesday that the disaster unfolding in Gaza was reminiscent of last century's famines seen in Ethiopia and Biafra in Nigeria.

"This is unlike anything we have seen in this century," WFP emergency director Ross Smith told reporters in Geneva.

"It reminds us of previous disasters in Ethiopia or Biafra in the past century," he said, speaking via video-link from Rome.

"We need urgent action now."

Iran said Tuesday it had not interfered in negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza, after US President Donald Trump claimed Tehran had issued "orders" to Palestinian group Hamas.

Trump, speaking to reporters on Monday during a visit to Scotland, said the Iranians had "interjected themselves in this last negotiation" between Israel and Hamas, which ended last week with no breakthrough.

"I think they got involved in this negotiation, telling Hamas, giving Hamas signals and orders and that's not good," Trump said without elaborating.

Iran, a close ally and backer of Hamas, dismissed Trump's remarks as "absolutely baseless".

Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei called the claim "a form of projection and evasion of responsibility and accountability" on the US president's part.

Famine is "now unfolding" in Gaza, with thousands of children malnourished and hunger-related deaths on the rise among the youngest, a UN-backed monitor warned on Tuesday.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) said that air drops over Gaza will not be enough to avert the "humanitarian catastrophe."

"The worst-case scenario of famine is now unfolding in the Gaza Strip," said the UN-backed group of organisations, used as a monitor to gauge malnutrition.

"Immediate, unimpeded" humanitarian access into Gaza was the only way to stop rapidly rising "starvation and death", it said.

The IPC issued their warning "alert" after days of aid groups sounding the alarm over hunger-related deaths in Gaza.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Mustafa said Monday that Hamas must disarm and give up control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority to restore security in the war-torn territory.

"Israel must withdraw completely from the Gaza Strip and Hamas must relinquish its control over the strip and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority," Mustafa said at a conference on the two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians at the United Nations in New York.

US President Donald Trump warned Monday that the people of Gaza are facing "real starvation", as aid agencies sought to take advantage of an Israeli "tactical pause" of some military operations to rush in food aid.

Speaking in Scotland, Trump contradicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has dismissed famine fears as Hamas propaganda - something the Palestinian group denies.

Trump said the United States and its partners would help set up food centres to feed the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza facing what UN aid agencies have warned is a deadly wave of starvation and malnutrition.

"We're going to be getting some good strong food, we can save a lot of people. I mean, some of those kids -- that's real starvation stuff," he said at a news conference with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. "We have to get the kids fed."

The Netherlands has declared two hardline Israeli ministers, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as persona non grata, the government said.

"They repeatedly incited settler violence against Palestinians, promoted illegal settlement expansion, and called for ethnic cleansing in Gaza," Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp wrote in a letter to parliament, released late on Monday, in which he announced the measure.

The Dutch decision follows similar moves last month by Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.