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A Chicago man arrested for the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in the US capital Washington could potentially face the death penalty if convicted of murder and hate crime charges, officials said Thursday.US Attorney General Pam Bondi will ultimately decide whether to seek the death penalty for Elias Rodriguez, the suspect in the May 21 attack, federal prosecutor Jeanine Pirro told reporters.Rodriguez, 31, was arrested immediately after the shooting of Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and his fiancee, Sarah Milgrim, 26, outside the Capital Jewish Museum.Pirro said that in addition to two counts of first-degree murder, a grand jury has charged Rodriguez with hate crimes “because of his bias against the people of Israel.””We have a problem with anti-Semitism in this country,” Pirro said. “It’s a problem and we’re not going to tolerate it.”Rodriguez allegedly shouted “Free Palestine” as he was taken away by police after the shooting and told officers “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”FBI agent Reid Davis said Rodriguez is believed to have acted alone.”Based on his writings and communications, we believe he was a lone wolf actor motivated by anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian ideology with the goal of conducting a mass shooting to call attention to his political agenda,” Davis said.Lischinsky, an Israeli citizen, was a researcher at the Israeli embassy, while Milgrim, an American, worked for its public diplomacy department. The couple were engaged to be married.

The United Arab Emirates rejected on Thursday an announcement from Sudan’s armed forces saying they had destroyed an Emirati plane ferrying Colombian mercenaries into the country to back paramilitary rivals.Sudan has been locked in a war between its army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces since April 2023, with the military long accusing Abu Dhabi of supporting the RSF — an allegation it denies.On Wednesday, army-aligned state TV said Sudan’s air force struck an Emirati plane as it landed at an RSF-controlled airport in the war-torn Darfur region, killing 40 Colombian soldiers for hire.A UAE official told AFP that the “unfounded allegations” were “entirely false” and not supported by any evidence.The official dismissed the latest claims as part of Sudan’s “ongoing campaign of disinformation and deflection”.A Sudanese military source, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, had said the plane “was bombed and completely destroyed” at Darfur’s Nyala airport.Colombian President Gustavo Petro said his government was trying to find out how many Colombians died in the attack, adding: “We will see if we can bring their bodies back.”Sudan had accused the UAE earlier this week of hiring Colombian mercenaries to fight against the army on behalf of the RSF.State TV said the plane had taken off from an airbase in the Gulf, carrying dozens of foreign fighters and military equipment intended for the RSF, which controls nearly all of Darfur.Nyala airport has recently come under repeated air strikes by the Sudanese army.- Foreign fighters at displacement camp -The army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has accused the UAE of supplying advanced weaponry, including drones, to the RSF via the airport.Abu Dhabi denies the accusations, despite numerous reports of its involvement from UN experts, US political officials and international organisations.Reports of Colombian fighters in Darfur date back to late 2024 and have been deemed credible by UN experts.In recent days, a pro-army coalition in Darfur known as the Joint Forces reported the presence of more than 80 Colombian mercenaries involved in RSF operations in El-Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur state.Some of the foreign fighters, the group said, were killed during the RSF’s latest failed assault on the city.Recent videos published by the army show mercenaries at a location that a spokesman identified as the Zamzam displacement camp near El-Fasher.”Civilians in areas near Zamzam have reported their belongings and vehicles stolen by mercenaries,” camp spokesman Mohamed Khamis Douda told AFP via satellite connection to circumvent a communications blackout.AFP could not independently verify the videos.- External actors -In May, Sudan’s army-aligned government officially declared the UAE an “aggressor state”, severing all diplomatic relations.The UAE responded by stating that the internationally-recognised Sudanese government “does not represent the legitimate government” of the country.On Wednesday, Sudan’s civil aviation authority claimed the UAE had imposed a ban on Sudanese planes from landing at Emirati airports and blocked a Sudanese airliner from taking off from Abu Dhabi. The UAE has not publicly responded to the reported flight ban.Last month, the latest US attempt to chart a way out of the conflict broke down as Egypt and the UAE, seen as key external players, disagreed on the role the warring parties would play in a potential peace process.Sudan’s newly appointed Prime Minister Kamil Idris travelled to Cairo on Thursday — his first official foreign trip since taking office.In a joint press conference with his Egyptian counterpart, Idris said there was “consensus” between the two countries on key regional and international issues.President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who also met Idris, reiterated Egypt’s “steadfast support for the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sudan”.Sudan is now effectively split, with the army in control of the north, east and centre, and the RSF dominating nearly all of Darfur in the west as well as parts of the south.Both sides have faced claims of war crimes during the conflict, which has killed tens of thousands and created what the UN describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.

“When will this nightmare end?” wonders Amal Hamada, a 20-year-old displaced woman who, like most Gazans, feels powerless before the threat of full Israeli occupation after 22 months of war.Rumours that the Israeli government might decide on a full occupation of the Palestinian territory spread from Israel to war-torn Gaza before any official announcement, sowing fear and despair.Like nearly all Gazans, Hamada has been displaced several times by the war, and ended up in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, where the Israeli military carried out operations last month for the first time in the war.”We’ve lived through many wars before, but nothing like this one. This war is long and exhausting, from one displacement to another. We are worn out,” the woman told AFP.Like her, Ahmad Salem, 45, wonders how things can get worse in a territory that already faces chronic food shortages, mass displacement and daily air strikes.”We already live each day in anxiety and fear of the unknown. Talk of an expansion of Israeli ground operations means more destruction and more death,” Salem told AFP.”There is no safe space in Gaza. If Israel expands its ground operations again, we’ll be the first victims,” he said from a camp west of Gaza City where he had found shelter.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to chair a meeting of his security cabinet later on Thursday to seek approval to expand military operations in Gaza, including in densely populated areas.- ‘Just animals’ -“We read and hear everything in the news… and none of it is in our favour,” said 40-year-old Sanaa Abdullah from Gaza City.”Israel doesn’t want to stop. The bombardment continues, the number of martyrs and wounded keeps rising, famine and malnutrition are getting worse, and people are dying of hunger”, she said.”What more could possibly happen to us?”Precisely 22 months into the devastating war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack, Gaza is on the verge of “generalised famine”, the United Nations has said.Its 2.4 million residents are fully dependent on humanitarian aid, and live under the daily threat of air strikes.The Israeli army announced in mid-July that it controlled 75 percent of Gaza, including a broad strip the whole length of the Israeli border and three main military corridors that cut across the territory from east to west.The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that more than 87 percent of the Gaza Strip is under unrevoked evacuation orders or designated as an Israeli military zone.The remaining areas are the most densely populated. The city of Khan Yunis in the south, Gaza City in the north, and Deir el-Balah and its adjacent refugee camps in the centre.”Now they speak of plans to expand their operations as if we are not even human, just animals or numbers,” Abdullah laments.”A new ground invasion means new displacement, new fear and we won’t even find a place to hide”, she told AFP.”What will happen if they start another ground operation? Only God is with us.”A widening of the war “would risk catastrophic consequences for millions of Palestinians and could further endanger the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza”, senior UN official Miroslav Jenca told the Security Council on Tuesday. The October 2023 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 61,258 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

With food scarce and aid hard and sometimes deadly to come by, Gaza farmer Ibrahim Abu Jabal is growing vegetables in the harsh conditions of a sprawling displacement camp to sustain his family.Abu Jabal, 39, has turned a small patch of soil near the family’s tent in Gaza City into a vegetable garden, where he tends to rows of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, surrounded by tens of thousands of other Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war.”Our bodies need tomatoes, cucumbers,” he told AFP.”And these products are expensive here. Not just expensive — they’re not even available. There are no tomatoes, and even if there were, we wouldn’t have the money to buy them.”The displaced farmer has cultivated the sandy plot of 120 square meters (about 1,300 square feet), using seeds from dried vegetables and relying on an erratic water supply.”Due to the situation we’re going through… and the soaring prices of vegetables, I had to return to my old profession,” said Abu Jabal.He said he had prepared the plot “so I can start planting again, just so my children and I can survive another day, or a little longer.”Water in Gaza, much like food, is in precariously low supply, and to keep his garden green, Abu Jalal usually has to carry large jugs he fills from a nearby pipe where water flows only one hour a day.Israel is under growing pressure to bring an end to the war in Gaza, where UN warnings that famine was unfolding have heightened global concern for the territory’s more than two million Palestinian inhabitants living through a humanitarian crisis.- Aid access ‘blocked’ -The Israeli offensive, triggered by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, has killed at least 61,258 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which are considered reliable by the United Nations.The Hamas attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Israel in late May began easing a complete aid blockade that had lasted more than two months, but only a trickle of food and other basic supplies has entered Gaza since then.Before the war, agriculture accounted for around 10 percent of the Gaza Strip’s economy, with about a quarter of the population at least partially supported by agriculture and fishing.But on Wednesday the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said that just 1.5 percent of the territory’s farmland remained accessible and undamaged, citing the latest satellite data.”People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed, and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods,” the agency’s Director-General Qu Dongyu said.Hungry Gazans have increasingly been forced to brave chaotic scenes at a handful of distribution points managed by the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.On July 22, the UN rights office said Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid in Gaza since the GHF started operations in May — nearly three-quarters of them in the vicinity of GHF sites.Abu Jabal said his nine-year-old daughter had been injured near a charity kitchen.Referring to the GHF operation, he said that “the American aid does not satisfy people’s hunger.””For someone who has nine children like me, what can a single box of aid really do?”

Israel’s security cabinet was set to meet on Thursday to discuss military plans in Gaza, as the families of hostages launched a desperate plea for help aboard a flotilla headed for the Palestinian territory.The meeting comes as international outrage over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza has ratcheted up pressure on Israel, with UN agencies warning of famine in the devastated territory.An Israeli government official told AFP that the meeting would start at around 1500 GMT.Israeli media say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to seek approval to expand military operations, including in densely populated areas where hostages are believed to be held.This comes despite growing concern among Israelis about the fate of the remaining hostages, some of whose families set sail from the port of Ashkelon on Thursday seeking to approach the Gaza Strip.Organisers said they hoped to “get as close as possible to their loved ones”.Speaking in English through a megaphone, Yehuda Cohen, whose son Nimrod is among those held captive, shouted: “Mayday, mayday, mayday. We need all international assistance to rescue the 50 hostages who are nearly two years held by the hand of Hamas.”- ‘More destruction’ -Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, rumours have been rife in the Israeli press about disagreements between the cabinet and Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, who is said to oppose plans to fully reoccupy Gaza.On Wednesday, Defence Minister Israel Katz had weighed in on social media saying that “it is the right and duty of the chief of staff to express his position”, but the military must ultimately respect any policies adopted by the government.In a statement released by the military on Thursday, Zamir underscored his independence, vowing to “continue to express our position without fear”.”We are not dealing with theory — we are dealing with matters of life and death, with the defence of the state, and we do so while looking directly into the eyes of our soldiers and citizens,” Zamir said in the statement.In Gaza, meanwhile, fears grew over what an expansion in combat operations would entail.”Ground operations mean more destruction and death. There is no safe place anywhere,” said Ahmad Salem, a 45-year-old from Jabalia refugee camp now displaced to western Gaza.”If Israel starts and expands its ground operations again, we’ll be the first victims.”The Israeli government is under mounting international and domestic pressure to end the war.In Tel Aviv on Wednesday night, hundreds took to the streets calling on the government to secure the release of the remaining hostages.Out of 251 hostages captured during Hamas’s 2023 attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the military says are dead.- ‘Unrealistic costs’ -Global criticism has also soared over the suffering of the more than two million Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza, after the United Nations warned that famine was unfolding in the territory.On Thursday, displaced Gazan Mahmoud Wafi said that the prices of available food remained high and erratic. “We hope that food will be made available again in normal quantities and at reasonable prices, because we can no longer afford these extremely high and unrealistic costs,” the 38-year-old told AFP from Al-Mawasi, near Khan Yunis. Gaza’s civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said at least 35 people were killed in Gaza on Thursday following air strikes in multiple areas, with dozens more wounded. In late July, Israel partially eased restrictions on aid entering Gaza, but the United Nations says the amount allowed into the territory remains insufficient.Amjad Al-Shawa, head of the Palestinian NGO Network in the Gaza Strip, told AFP that lengthy inspection procedures at entry points meant few trucks could come in.”What is currently entering the Gaza Strip are very limited numbers of trucks — between 70 to 80 per day — carrying only specific types of goods,” he said.He added that over the past few days, “around 50 to 60 trucks” destined for the private sector were able to enter for the first time in months.The UN estimates that Gaza needs at least 600 trucks of aid per day to meet its residents’ basic needs.

Shrouded in fog in the lush mountains of southern Oman, a giant chasm plunges into the landscape, echoing with mysterious sounds that have spawned myths and legends among nearby tribes.This enormous sinkhole is one of four that dot Dhofar governorate, including one of the world’s biggest: the yawning Kahf Teiq, 211 metres (692 feet) deep and 150 metres wide.At the Tawi Atair sinkhole, tourists potter around on concrete paths and stairways. Not all of the holes are so welcoming, however.The sheer drop of the Sheeheet pit, a 40-minute drive away along mountain roads, is ringed with slippery mud, prompting the authorities to put up a fence and warning signs.During AFP’s visit, one tourist slipped and slid perilously close to the edge. Dhofar’s governor, Marwan bin Turki Al-Said, gave assurances in a briefing attended by AFP that safety was a priority at the sinkholes.Tawi Atair means “Well of Birds” in Dhofar’s regional language, a reference to the avian twittering, distorted by echoes, that reverberates off the rock.It lay unknown to the outside world until 1997, when a team of Slovenian researchers working with Oman’s Sultan Qaboos University brought it to international attention.Now the sinkholes are marketed as a tourist attraction in Dhofar, whose temperate climate draws many visitors from the Gulf during its punishing summers.Long on the margins of the mainstream tourism circuit, Oman as a whole is increasingly attracting attention from international travellers seeking natural beauty and authenticity.The country welcomed nearly four million visitors in 2024, with the government aiming to triple that figure by 2040 by focusing on sustainable tourism.Dhofar folklore has it that the sinkholes were created by meteorite strikes, direct hits from outer space that gouged the colossal craters.But Ali Faraj Al-Kathiri, a geologist based in Dhofar, explains that water seeping into the porous limestone forms an acid that then dissolves it, creating the caverns over a period of thousands of years.The Oman sinkholes are not to be confused with the “Well of Hell”, the foul-smelling, pitch-black Barhout pit across the border in eastern Yemen that is reputed to be a prison for demons.

Israel’s security cabinet was expected to meet later Thursday to discuss military plans in Gaza, Israeli media said, as the families of hostages launched a desperate plea for help aboard a flotilla to the territory.The planned meeting comes as international outrage over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza has ratcheted up pressure on Israel, with UN agencies warning of famine in the devastated territory.The Times of Israel said the meeting was set to commence around 6:00 pm local time (1500 GMT).The Israeli press, citing officials speaking on condition of anonymity, has predicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would seek approval on expanding operations, including in pockets of densely populated areas where hostages are believed to be held.This comes despite the increasing alarm among Israelis about the fate of the remaining hostages, whose families on Thursday set sail from the central city of Ashkelon, seeking to approach the Gaza Strip.Organisers said they hoped to “get as close as possible to their loved ones”.Speaking in English through a megaphone, Yehuda Cohen, whose son Nimrod is being held captive in Gaza, shouted: “Mayday, mayday, mayday. We need all international assistance to rescue the 50 hostages who are nearly two years held by the hand of Hamas.”- ‘More destruction’ -Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, rumours have been rife about disagreements between the cabinet and Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir. Defence Minister Israel Katz also weighed in on the matter, saying on social media that Israel’s military will have to execute any government decisions on Gaza, following reports that Zamir was against moves to fully occupy Gaza.Katz said in post on X that while “it is the right and duty of the chief of staff to express his position in the appropriate forums”, the military must respect policies made by the government.In Gaza, fears grew over what an expansion in combat operations would entail.”Ground operations mean more destruction and death. There is no safe place anywhere,” said Ahmad Salem, a 45-year-old from Jabalia refugee camp now displaced to western Gaza.”If Israel starts and expands its ground operations again, we’ll be the first victims.”The Israeli government is under mounting pressure to end the war, with growing concern over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.In Tel Aviv on Wednesday night, hundreds took to the streets calling on the government to secure the release of the remaining captives.Out of 251 hostages captured during Hamas’s 2023 attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.- ‘Unrealistic costs’ -Global criticism has soared in recent weeks over the continued suffering of the more than two million Palestinian inhabitants in Gaza, after the United Nations warned that famine was unfolding in the territory.On Thursday, displaced Gaza resident Mahmoud Wafi said that the prices of available food remained high and erratic. “We hope that food will be made available again in normal quantities and at reasonable prices, because we can no longer afford these extremely high and unrealistic costs,” the 38-year-old told AFP from Al-Mawasi near Khan Yunis. Gaza’s civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that at least 35 people had been killed in Gaza on Thursday following airstrikes in multiple areas, with dozens more injured. In late July, Israel partially eased restrictions on aid entering Gaza, but the UN says the amount allowed into the territory remains insufficient.Amjad Al-Shawa, head of the Palestinian NGO Network in the Gaza Strip, told AFP that long and slow inspection procedures at entry points into Gaza meant few trucks could enter.”What is currently entering the Gaza Strip are very limited numbers of trucks — between 70 to 80 per day — carrying only specific types of goods,” he said.He added that over the past few days, “around 50 to 60 trucks” destined for the private sector were able to enter for the first time in months.The UN estimates that Gaza needs at least 600 trucks of aid per day to meet its residents’ basic needs.str-nk-mib-ds/jsa