Israeli Strikes on Gaza Kill At Least 20 As War Rages on After The Opening of A New Front with Iran
AP
Two Palestinians ride a small boat at the seafront next to a tent camp in the Gaza City port, Friday.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — At least 20 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip overnight and into Saturday, according to local health officials. The 20-month war with Hamas has raged on even as Israel has opened a new front with heavy strikes on Iran that sparked retaliatory drone and missile attacks.
Another 11 Palestinians were killed overnight near food distribution points run by an Israeli- and U.S.-supported humanitarian group in the latest of almost daily shootings near the sites since they opened last month. Palestinian witnesses say Israeli forces have fired on the crowds, while the military says it has only fired warning shots near people it describes as suspects who approached its forces.
The sites are located in military zones that are off limits to independent media. Israel's military said it fired warning shots overnight to distance a group of people near troops operating in the Netzarim corridor, and an aircraft struck a person who kept advancing.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private contractor that operates the sites, said they were closed Saturday. But witnesses said thousands had gathered near the sites anyway, desperate for food as Israel's blockade and military campaign have driven the territory to the brink of famine.
Al-Awda Hospital said it received eight bodies and at least 125 wounded people from a shooting near a GHF site in central Gaza.
Mohamed Abu Hussein, a resident of the built-up Bureij refugee camp nearby, said Israeli forces opened fire toward the crowd about a kilometer (half-mile) from the food distribution point. He said he saw several people fall to the ground as thousands ran away.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, Nasser Hospital said it received 16 dead, including five women, from multiple Israeli strikes late Friday and early Saturday. It said another three men were killed near two GHF aid sites in the southernmost city of Rafah, now a mostly uninhabited military zone. Israel's military said it was unaware of any gunfire there during that time overnight.
An Israeli strike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killed four people, Al-Aqsa Hospital said.
Meanwhile, Israel's military said two projectiles came from Gaza and fell in open areas, with no injuries.
U.S., Israel push their own distribution to sideline U.N.
Israel and the United States say the new aid system is intended to replace a U.N.-run network that has distributed aid across Gaza through 20 months of war. They accuse Hamas of siphoning off the aid and reselling it to fund its militant activities.
U.N. officials deny Hamas has diverted significant amounts of aid and say the new system is unable to meet mounting needs. They say the new system has militarized aid by allowing Israel to decide who has access and by forcing Palestinians to travel long distances or relocate again after waves of displacement.
They say the U.N. has struggled to deliver aid even after Israel eased its blockade last month because of military restrictions and rising lawlessness.
Hamas, which is allied with Iran, sparked the war when its fighters led a rampage into southrn Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. They still hold 53 hostages, less than half of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed over 55,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which has said women and children make up more than half of the dead but does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in count.
The offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced 90% of the population of some 2 million Palestinians, leaving them almost entirely reliant on international aid.
The war has drawn in Iran and its other allies across the region, igniting a chain of events that led to Israel's major strikes on Iran's nuclear and military facilities on Friday.
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The Mainichi
a day ago
- The Mainichi
Many Americans are witnessing immigration arrests for the first time and reacting
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Adam Greenfield was home nursing a cold when his girlfriend raced in to tell him Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles were pulling up in their trendy San Diego neighborhood. The author and podcast producer grabbed his iPhone and bolted out the door barefoot, joining a handful of neighbors recording masked agents raiding a popular Italian restaurant nearby, as they yelled at the officers to leave. An hour later, the crowd had grown to nearly 75 people, with many in front of the agents' vehicles. "I couldn't stay silent," Greenfield said. "It was literally outside of my front door." More Americans are witnessing people being hauled off as they shop, exercise at the gym, dine out and otherwise go about their daily lives as President Donald Trump's administration aggressively works to increase immigration arrests. As the raids touch the lives of people who aren't immigrants themselves, many Americans who rarely, if ever, participated in civil disobedience are rushing out to record the actions on their phones and launch impromptu protests. Arrests are being made outside gyms, busy restaurants Greenfield said on the evening of the May 30 raid, the crowd included grandparents, retired military members, hippies, and restaurant patrons arriving for date night. Authorities threw flash bangs to force the crowd back and then drove off with four detained workers, he said. "To do this, at 5 o'clock, right at the dinner rush, right on a busy intersection with multiple restaurants, they were trying to make a statement," Greenfield said. "But I don't know if their intended point is getting across the way they want it to. I think it is sparking more backlash." Previously, many arrests happened late at night or in the pre-dawn hours by agents waiting outside people's homes as they left for work or outside their work sites when they finished their day. When ICE raided another popular restaurant in San Diego in 2008, agents did it in the early morning without incident. White House border czar Tom Homan has said agents are being forced to make more arrests in communities because of sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with ICE in certain cities and states. ICE enforces immigration laws nationwide but seeks state and local help in alerting federal authorities of immigrants wanted for deportation and holding that person until federal officers take custody. Vice President JD Vance, during a visit to Los Angeles on Friday, said those policies have given agents "a bit of a morale problem because they've had the local government in this community tell them that they're not allowed to do their job." "When that Border Patrol agent goes out to do their job, they said within 15 minutes they have protesters, sometimes violent protesters who are in their face obstructing them," he said. 'It was like a scene out of a movie' Melyssa Rivas had just arrived at her office in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, California one morning last week when she heard the frightened screams of young women. She went outside to find the women confronting nearly a dozen masked federal agents who had surrounded a man kneeling on the pavement. "It was like a scene out of a movie," Rivas said. "They all had their faces covered and were standing over this man who was clearly traumatized. And there are these young girls screaming at the top of their lungs." As Rivas began recording the interaction, a growing group of neighbors shouted at the agents to leave the man alone. They eventually drove off in vehicles, without detaining him, video shows. Rivas spoke to the man afterward, who told her the agents had arrived at the car wash where he worked that morning, then pursued him as he fled on his bicycle. It was one of several recent workplace raids in the majority-Latino city. The same day, federal agents were seen at a Home Depot, a construction site and an LA Fitness gym. It wasn't immediately clear how many people had been detained. "Everyone is just rattled," said Alex Frayde, an employee at LA Fitness who said he saw the agents outside the gym and stood at the entrance, ready to turn them away as another employee warned customers about the sighting. In the end, the agents never came in. Communities protest around ICE buildings Arrests at immigration courts and other ICE buildings have also prompted emotional scenes as masked agents have turned up to detain people going to routine appointments and hearings. In the city of Spokane in eastern Washington state, hundreds of people rushed to protest outside an ICE building June 11 after former city councilor Ben Stuckart posted on Facebook. Stuckart wrote that he was a legal guardian of a Venezuelan asylum seeker who went to check in at the ICE building, only to be detained. His Venezuelan roommate was also detained. Both men had permission to live and work in the U.S. temporarily under humanitarian parole, Stuckart told The Associated Press. "I am going to sit in front of the bus," Stuckart wrote, referring to the van that was set to transport the two men to an ICE detention center in Tacoma. "The Latino community needs the rest of our community now. Not tonight, not Saturday, but right now!!!!" The city of roughly 230,000 is the seat of Spokane County, where just over half of voters cast ballots for Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Stuckart was touched to see his mother's caregiver among the demonstrators. "She was just like, 'I'm here because I love your mom, and I love you, and if you or your friends need help, then I want to help,'" he said through tears. By evening, the Spokane Police Department sent over 180 officers, with some using pepper balls, to disperse protesters. Over 30 people were arrested, including Stuckart who blocked the transport van with others. He was later released. Aysha Mercer, a stay-at-home mother of three, said she is "not political in any way, shape or form." But many children in her Spokane neighborhood -- who play in her yard and jump on her trampoline -- come from immigrant families, and the thought of them being affected by deportations was "unacceptable," she said. She said she wasn't able to go to Stuckart's protest. But she marched for the first time in her life on June 14, joining millions in "No Kings" protests across the country. "I don't think I've ever felt as strongly as I do right this here second," she said.
Yomiuri Shimbun
a day ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Columbia Protester Mahmoud Khalil Freed from ICE Detention
Former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was freed from detention on Friday after a federal judge ordered his release, ruling that the government's efforts to keep him in custody were highly unusual and potentially a form of punishment for his political views. Khalil was the first noncitizen activist to be arrested and detained by the Trump administration this year as it launched a crackdown on what it said was antisemitism on college campuses. Khalil, a legal permanent resident, was arrested in New York in March and flown to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana. In April, his wife gave birth to their first child, Deen. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey said Friday that prosecutors had not provided a legitimate justification for Khalil's continued detention. The government's bid to keep Khalil detained based on a relatively minor alleged immigration infraction when he is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community is 'highly, highly, highly unusual,' Farbiarz said. The facts of the case suggest that there is 'at least something to the underlying claim' that the government is using the immigration system to punish Khalil for his activism, the judge said. 'And of course that would be unconstitutional.' Just before 8 p.m., Khalil walked out of the detention center in Jena, Louisiana, flanked by his lawyers and wearing a kaffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity. No person 'should actually be detained for protesting a genocide,' Khalil said. 'Justice will prevail.' The first thing he hopes to do after 104 days in detention, he said, is 'just hug my wife and son.' The judge's order to release Khalil on bail marks the latest setback for the Trump administration in its pledge to detain and deport what it has termed 'pro-jihadist' students, with federal courts delivering a string of defeats to the government in recent weeks. One by one, the targeted students and scholars have been released as judges have taken a dim view of the rationale offered by prosecutors for their detentions. The lawyers for the detainees have said their arrests are a form of unconstitutional retaliation for their activism in opposition to the war in Gaza. Those freed in recent weeks include Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student grabbed by masked federal agents outside her apartment; Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student detained at his citizenship interview; and Badar Khan Suri, an Indian scholar at Georgetown University seized outside his home in Virginia. Federal courts have 'uniformly rejected the Trump administration's efforts to target international students' and green-card holders based on their speech, said Elora Mukherjee, a law professor at Columbia University. Taken together, Mukherjee said, the rulings send a clear message that the administration 'shouldn't be snatching up peaceful protesters and those who write op-eds.' Khalil had been detained far longer than any other targeted student and has not been accused of any crime. Instead, officials initially relied on an obscure provision of immigration law to arrest him and launch deportation proceedings. The provision allows the secretary of state to determine that a noncitizen's presence in the country would harm a 'compelling' foreign policy interest. In a March memo, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Khalil's participation in 'antisemitic protests' fostered a 'hostile environment for Jewish students' and undermined U.S. foreign policy. Last month, Farbiarz found that the provision of immigration law cited by Rubio was probably unconstitutional because of its vagueness, and last week, Farbiarz blocked the Trump administration from continuing to detain Khalil on foreign policy grounds. However, prosecutors subsequently said they were detaining Khalil based on a different rationale, namely their allegation that he had omitted information on his application for permanent residency. His lawyers deny that claim. Farbiarz also noted previously that the government 'virtually never' detains immigrants solely on that basis. Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, called Farbiarz a 'rogue district judge' and said Friday's ruling was 'yet another example of how out of control members of the judicial branch are in undermining national security.' 'The Trump administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detail Khalil,' McLaughlin said in a statement, adding that she expects a higher court to vindicate that position. While Khalil was released on bail in his federal detention case, his immigration proceeding will continue. On Friday, an immigration judge in Louisiana denied Khalil's request for bond – a decision overruled by Farbiarz's order. For Khalil and his family, there was relief and exultation. 'We can finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Mahmoud is on his way home to me and Deen, who never should have been separated from his father,' Noor Abdalla, Khalil's wife and a U.S. citizen, said in a statement. Khalil was born and raised in a refugee camp in Syria and went to college in Lebanon. He and his wife moved to the United States in 2023 to begin his graduate studies at Columbia. That fall, protests over the Israel-Gaza war erupted. Khalil was a prominent leader in the protests who interacted with the media without disguising his identity. While President Donald Trump has called him a 'Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student,' the government submitted no evidence in the case to back up those assertions. Instead, friends and colleagues described Khalil as someone who defused tensions and acted as an intermediary between student protesters and the university administration. Several Jewish students at Columbia wrote letters to the court attesting to his commitment to nonviolence and dialogue, and Khalil told CNN last year that 'antisemitism and any form of racism has no place on campus and in this movement.' Khalil missed his graduation from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs in May because of his detention. Khalil was freed without any form of GPS monitoring, and ICE officials will return his green card, although they will retain his passport. Under the terms of his release, he will be able to travel to New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Louisiana, as well as to Washington for lobbying and legislative purposes. Khalil has remained cautious through his long detention and separation from his family, but was ebullient on Friday, his lawyers said. 'It's an enormous relief that Mahmoud's nightmare of arrest and detention is coming to an end,' said Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of Khalil's lawyers, adding that it should not have taken this long to free him. 'Americans should be grateful that there is someone who is willing to fight so hard for our collective First Amendment freedom against this obvious authoritarian tactic that threatens all of us,' Azmy said. 'We all owe a debt of gratitude to Mahmoud.'
Yomiuri Shimbun
2 days ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Vance Blames California Dems for Violent Immigration Protests and Calls Sen. Alex Padilla ‘Jose'
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Vice President JD Vance on Friday accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of encouraging violent immigration protests as he used his appearance in Los Angeles to rebut criticism from state and local officials that the Trump administration fueled the unrest by sending in federal officers. Vance also referred to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, the state's first Latino senator, as 'Jose Padilla,' a week after the Democrat was forcibly taken to the ground by officers and handcuffed after speaking out during a Los Angeles news conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on immigration raids. 'I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question,' Vance said, in an apparent reference to the altercation at Noem's event. 'I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn't a theater. And that's all it is.' 'They want to be able to go back to their far-left groups and to say, 'Look, me, I stood up against border enforcement. I stood up against Donald Trump,'' Vance added. A spokesperson for Padilla, Tess Oswald, noted in a social media post that Padilla and Vance were formerly colleagues in the Senate and said that Vance should know better. 'He should be more focused on demilitarizing our city than taking cheap shots,' Oswald said. Vance's visit to Los Angeles to tour a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a mobile command center came as demonstrations calmed down in the city and a curfew was lifted this week. That followed over a week of sometimes-violent clashes between protesters and police and outbreaks of vandalism and looting that followed immigration raids across Southern California. Trump's dispatching of his top emissary to Los Angeles at a time of turmoil surrounding the Israel-Iran war and the U.S.'s future role in it signals the political importance Trump places on his hard-line immigration policies. Vance echoed the president's harsh rhetoric toward California Democrats as he sought to blame them for the protests in the city. 'Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, by treating the city as a sanctuary city, have basically said that this is open season on federal law enforcement,' Vance said after he toured federal immigration enforcement offices. 'What happened here was a tragedy,' Vance added. 'You had people who were doing the simple job of enforcing the law and they had rioters egged on by the governor and the mayor, making it harder for them to do their job. That is disgraceful. And it is why the president has responded so forcefully.' Newsom's spokesperson Izzy Gardon said in a statement, 'The Vice President's claim is categorically false. The governor has consistently condemned violence and has made his stance clear.' Speaking at City Hall, Bass said Vance was 'spewing lies and utter nonsense.' She said hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted by the federal government on a 'stunt.' 'How dare you say that city officials encourage violence? We kept the peace,' Bass said. In a statement on X, Newsom responded to Vance's reference to 'Jose Padilla,' saying the comment was no accident. Jose Padilla also is the name of a convicted al-Qaida terrorism plotter during President George W. Bush's administration, who was sentenced to two decades in prison. Padilla was arrested in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport during the tense months after the 9/11 attacks and accused of the 'dirty bomb' mission. It later emerged through U.S. interrogation of other al-Qaida suspects that the 'mission' was only a sketchy idea, and those claims never surfaced in the South Florida terrorism case. Responding to the outrage, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said of the vice president: 'He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.' Federal immigration authorities have been ramping up arrests across the country to fulfill Trump's promise of mass deportations. Todd Lyons, the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has defended his tactics against criticism that authorities are being too heavy-handed. The friction in Los Angeles began June 6, when federal agents conducted a series of immigration sweeps in the region that have continued since. Amid the protests and over the objections of state and local officials, Trump ordered the deployment of roughly 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to the second-largest U.S. city, home to 3.8 million people. Trump has said that without the military's involvement, Los Angeles 'would be a crime scene like we haven't seen in years.' Newsom has depicted the military intervention as the onset of a much broader effort by Trump to overturn political and cultural norms at the heart of the nation's democracy. Earlier Friday, Newsom urged Vance to visit victims of the deadly January wildfires while in Southern California and talk with Trump, who earlier this week suggested his feud with the governor might influence his consideration of $40 billion in federal wildfire aid for California. 'I hope we get that back on track,' Newsom wrote on X. 'We are counting on you, Mr. Vice President.' Vance did not mention either request during his appearance on Friday.
