Oscar Piastri’s victory put Australia on top of the Formula One world championship for the first time since 2010.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri cruised to victory in the Formula One Saudi Arabian Grand Prix to move atop the driver’s championship after five races on the season.

The 24-year-old became the first driver this season to win while not starting on the pole, and he comfortably finished the race ahead of runner-up Max Verstappen of Red Bull, who was given a five-second penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage in the opening lap of the race on Sunday.

Charles Leclerc finished third to give Ferrari its first podium of the season. Piastri’s McLaren teammate Lando Norris finished fourth, while Mercedes’s George Russell finished fifth and Kimi Antonelli was sixth.

With his third victory of the season, and second consecutive after winning at Bahrain last week, Piastri becomes the first driver from Australia to lead the drivers’ championship standings since Mark Webber in 2010. It is the first time Piastri has led the drivers’ standings in his F1 career.

Piastri, who began the race from second position on the starting grid, ultimately took the lead on the 6.1km (3.8-mile) track after Verstappen served his five-second penalty during a pit stop on Lap 22. He finished off his fifth career victory in his 51st start without much of a challenge from Verstappen, crossing the finish line 2.84 seconds ahead of the reigning world champion.

In addition to 2025 race victories in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Piastri also won the second race of the season in China. McLaren has won four of the five races after Norris won the season-opening race in Australia.

Verstappen’s runner-up finish came after he won the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix in two of the last three years.

In the drivers’ championship, Piastri has 99 points to Norris’s 89 and Verstappen’s 87. Champions McLaren stretched their lead over Mercedes in the constructors’ standings to 77 points.

The Israeli military has released details of an investigation into its own killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics and aid workers in Gaza last month, saying its code of ethics was not violated and only one soldier is dismissed, in an attack that sparked outrage in the international community.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and the Israeli rights organisation Breaking the Silence rejected the findings of the Israeli probe on Sunday.

PRCS’s president told Al-Araby TV that the Israeli narrative on the killings in Rafah was “contradictory”.

“It is incomprehensible why the occupation soldiers buried the bodies of the paramedics in a criminal manner,” Younis al-Khatib said.

Al-Khatib added that the Israeli army communicated with the paramedics before killing them and that the evidence – including a video showing their ambulances flashing emergency lights – proved “the falsity of the occupation’s narrative regarding the limited visibility at the site”.

“An independent and impartial investigation must be conducted by a UN body,” he said.

PRCS, which had medics killed by Israel in the incident, also denounced the Israeli report as “full of lies” on Sunday. “It is invalid and unacceptable, as it justifies the killing and shifts responsibility to a personal error in the field command when the truth is quite different,” Nebal Farsakh, spokesperson for the organisation, told the AFP news agency.

The PRCS said last week that it received confirmation from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that one of its medics who was missing is being held by Israel.

🚨Urgent: We have been informed by the International Committee of the Red Cross that PRCS medic Assad Al-Nsasrah is being held by the Israeli occupation authorities. His fate had remained unknown since he was targeted along with other PRCS medics in #Rafah.
📢We call on the… pic.twitter.com/l0oOxujS8G

— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) April 13, 2025

The Israeli army on Sunday claimed that six of the aid workers who were killed and buried in a shallow mass grave along with their ambulances were Hamas “terrorists”, without providing any evidence.

It admitted its probe detected a series of “professional failures”, including partial and inaccurate reporting by the commanding officers in the field invading southern Gaza’s Rafah.

The deputy commander of the Golani Reconnaissance Battalion will be dismissed, while the commanding officer of the 14th Brigade is to receive a reprimand.

The examination also found “no evidence to support claims of execution or that any of the deceased were bound before or after the shooting”, despite the testimonies and the evidence.

The Israeli military had initially claimed that the ambulances and aid workers were not clearly marked as first responders and approached its troops “suspiciously”.

A mobile phone video recorded by one of the killed aid workers that was obtained by the New York Times showed that the crew were clearly marked and visible to Israeli forces, and were killed by Israeli fire that lasted several minutes.

United Nations and Palestinian officials later found the mass grave and the bulldozed ambulances and bodies after Israeli authorities granted access to the area of the mostly destroyed city of Rafah bordering Egypt.

‘Another day, another cover-up’

The Israeli anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence said the military investigation is “riddled with contradictions, vague phrasing, and selective details”.

“Not every lie has a video to expose it, but this report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth,” the group said. “Another day, another cover-up. More innocent lives taken, with no accountability.”

But far-right voices in the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believe the army is going too far in punishing the soldiers.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister, said the decision to dismiss the deputy commander was a “grave mistake” that must be reversed.

“Our combat soldiers, who are sacrificing their lives in Gaza, deserve our full support,” he said.

‘Report invites many questions’

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice told Al Jazeera that the findings of the probe raise questions about the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza and the thoroughness of the investigative process.

“It’s a pretty surprising document. It’s also a document that invites many questions that it will be difficult, I suspect, for the [Israeli military] to answer,” Nice said in a television interview.

“For example, [there is] the proposition that six of these people were Hamas, presumably members of Hamas on active [military] service, not people who might have been associated with Hamas in some way. No documentary evidence at all is identified [for that].”

Israel has a track record of denying accusations of wrongdoing and contradicting its own earlier statements.

Past investigations have exonerated the armed forces or placed the blame on a single individual without broader repercussions.

The UN accused the Israeli military of being responsible for the killing of the 15 aid workers, along with the killing of a Bulgarian UN staff member and wounding of six other foreign staff in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah last month.

The organisation has been forced to significantly cut its staff in Gaza as the war’s death toll continues to mount.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration announced a major military offensive against the Houthis a few weeks ago.

The United States has carried out more air strikes in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, after targeting Kamaran Island and Marib governorate earlier, Houthi media outlets report.

No details on casualties have been provided yet.

In Sanaa, two US airstrikes targeted the area of Attan, which has been controlled by the rebel movement since 2014. US airstrikes also reportedly targeted a sanitation project in the Asir area, as well as the Furwah neighbourhood and a popular market in the Shoub district, according to Houthi media.

The strikes on Sunday come a day after the US launched 13 strikes on Hodeidah’s port and airport, and three days after its deadliest attack to date targeted the Ras Isa port, also in Hodeidah, killing at least 80 people and wounding more than 150.

Houthi-held areas in Yemen have been subjected to near-daily air strikes by Washington. Civilians have been targeted, families wiped out, military sites destroyed and soldiers killed.

More than 200 people have been killed since US President Donald Trump’s administration announced a major military offensive against the Houthis in March. It said the air strikes are aimed at forcing the group to stop threatening ships sailing on the Red Sea on a route crucial to international trade.

Since November 2023, the Houthis have reportedly launched more than 100 attacks on vessels they say are linked to Israel in response to Israel’s war on Gaza and in solidarity with Palestinians.

Houthi attacks have paralysed shipping through the Suez Canal, a vital waterway through which approximately 12 percent of global shipping traffic normally passes, forcing many companies to resort to costly alternative routes around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

The Houthis halted attacks on shipping lanes during a two-month ceasefire in Gaza earlier this year. But they vowed to resume strikes after Israel renewed its assault on the besieged enclave last month.

The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah or “supporters of God”, emerged in the 1990s but rose to prominence in 2014 when they seized Sanaa and forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee the country.