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Teenage gunman kills 19 children and teacher at Texas elementary school

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A teenage gunman killed at least 19 children and two adults after storming into a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, the latest bout of gun-fueled mass murder in the United States and the nation's worst school shooting in nearly a decade.

The 18-year-old suspect, who was killed apparently by police, also had shot his own grandmother before fleeing from the scene, then crashing his getaway car and launching a bloody rampage at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde, Texas, about 80 miles (130 km) west of San Antonio.

The motive was not immediately clear.

Law enforcement officers saw the gunman, clad in body armor, emerge from his crashed vehicle carrying a rifle and "engaged" the suspect, who nevertheless managed to charge into the school and open fire, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Sergeant Erick Estrada said on CNN.

Speaking from the White House hours later, a visibly shaken U.S. President Joe Biden urged Americans to stand up to the politically powerful U.S. gun lobby, which he blamed for blocking enactment of tougher "common-sense" firearms safety laws.

Biden ordered flags flown at half-staff daily until sunset on Saturday in observance of the tragedy.

Governor Greg Abbott said that the suspect, identified as Salvador Ramos, was apparently killed by police officers, and that two officers were struck by gunfire, though the governor said their injuries were not serious.

Authorities said the suspect acted alone.

After confusing early accounts of the death toll, the state attorney general's office in an official statement put the tally of lives lost at 18 children and two adults, including the gunman. A Texas DPS spokesperson later told CNN that 19 school children and two adults were killed, not counting the shooter.

The school's student body consists of children in the second, third and fourth grades, according to Pete Arredondo, chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department, who also addressed reporters. Pupils in those grades would likely have ranged in age from 7 to 10.

The carnage unfolded 10 days after 10 people were killed in Buffalo, New York, in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Authorities have charged an 18-year-old man who they said had traveled hundreds of miles to Buffalo and opened fire with an assault-style rifle at a grocery store.

Tuesday's bloodshed in Texas began when the suspect shot his grandmother before going to the school, Texas Department of Public Safety officer Chris Olivarez said on Fox News, a development Abbott mentioned earlier in the day.

"I have no further information about the connection between those two shootings," the governor said.

University Hospital in San Antonio said on Twitter that it had received two patients from the shooting in Uvalde, a 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl, both listed in critical condition.

Uvalde Memorial Hospital said 15 students from Robb Elementary were treated in its emergency room, with two transferred to San Antonio for further care, while a third patient transfer was pending. It was not immediately clear whether all of those students survived.

A 45-year-old victim grazed by a bullet was also hospitalized at Uvalde Memorial, the hospital said.

Hours after the shooting, police had cordoned off the school with yellow tape. Police cruisers and emergency vehicles were scattered around the perimeter of the school grounds. Uniformed personnel stood in small clusters, some in camouflage carrying semi-automatic weapons.

EPIDEMIC OF GUN VIOLENCE

The rampage was the latest in a series of mass school shootings that have fueled a fierce debate between advocates of tighter gun controls and those who oppose any legislation that could compromise the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms.

The shooting in Texas was one of the deadliest at a U.S. school since a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012. In 2018, a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 students and educators.

Firearms became the leading cause of death for U.S. children and adolescents in 2020, surpassing motor vehicle accidents, according to a University of Michigan research letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month.

The day's horrors were reflected on the Facebook page of Robb Elementary School.

Earlier this week, its posts showed the usual student activities - a trip to the zoo for second-graders and a save-the-date for a gifted-and-talented showcase. But on Tuesday, a note was posted at 11:43 a.m.: "Please know at this time Robb Elementary is under a Lockdown Status due to gunshots in the area. The students and staff are safe in the building."

A second post was more explicit: "There is an active shooter at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement is on site." Administrators asked parents to stay away. And finally, a note was posted advising parents that they could meet their children at the small city's civic center.

FACTBOX-Grim chronology of mass shootings in the United States We have to act,' Biden says after Texas massacre, offers no specificsQUOTES-'How many more lives?': Reactions to Texas school shootingTexas elementary school's end-of-year plans shattered by shooting

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Gunman shot dead, 3 police injured in shooting near Israeli embassy in Jordan

Police had called on residents to stay in their homes as security personnel searched for the culprits, a security source said.

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A gunman was dead and three policemen injured after a shooting near the Israeli embassy in neighbouring Jordan, a security source and state media said on Sunday.

Police shot a gunman who had fired at a police patrol in the Rabiah neighbourhood of Amman, state news agency Petra reported, citing public security, adding investigations were ongoing, Reuters reported.

Jordanian police had earlier cordoned off an area near the heavily policed embassy after gunshots were heard, witnesses said. Two witnesses said police and ambulances rushed to the Rabiah neighbourhood, where the embassy is located.

The area is a flashpoint for frequent demonstrations against Israel. The kingdom has witnessed some of the biggest peaceful rallies across the region as anti-Israel sentiment runs high over the war in Gaza.

Police had called on residents to stay in their homes as security personnel searched for the culprits, a security source said.

Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, they or their parents having been expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Many have family ties on the Israeli side of the Jordan River, read the report.

Jordan's peace treaty with Israel is unpopular among many citizens who see normalisation of relations as betraying the rights of their Palestinian compatriots.

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Powerful Israeli airstrike shakes central Beirut, 11 dead

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A powerful airstrike killed 11 people in central Beirut on Saturday, the Lebanese civil defence said, shaking the capital as Israel pressed its offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

The attack destroyed an eight-storey building and caused a large number of fatalities and injuries, Lebanon's National News Agency said. Footage broadcast by Lebanon's Al Jadeed station showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it, Reuters reported.

Israel used bunker buster bombs in the strike, leaving a deep crater, the agency said. Beirut smelled strongly of explosives hours after the attack.

The blasts shook the capital at around 4 a.m. (0200 GMT). Security sources said at least four bombs were dropped in the attack.

It marked the fourth Israeli airstrike this week targeting a central area of Beirut, in contrast to the bulk of Israel's attacks on the capital region, which have hit the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs. On Sunday an Israeli airstrike killed a Hezbollah media official in the Ras al-Nabaa district of central Beirut.

Rescuers searched through rubble, in an area of the city known for its antique shops.

HOSPITALISED DAUGHTER

A man whose family was hurt tried to comfort a traumatized woman outside a hospital. Car windows were shattered.

"There was dust and wrecked houses, people running and screaming, they were running, my wife is in hospital, my daughter is in hospital, my aunt is in the hospital," said the man, Nemir Zakariya, who held up a picture of his daughter.

"This is the little one, and my son also got hurt - this is my daughter, she is in the American University (of Beirut Medical Centre), this is what happened."

Israel launched a major offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon in September, following nearly a year of cross-border hostilities ignited by the Gaza war, pounding wide areas of Lebanon with airstrikes and sending troops into the south.

Israeli strikes killed at least 62 people and injured 111 in Lebanon on Thursday, bringing the toll since October 2023 to 3,645 dead and 15,355 injured, Lebanon's health ministry said. The figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government accuse Israel of indiscriminate bombing that kills civilians. Israel denies the allegation and says it takes numerous steps to avoid the deaths of civilians.

Hezbollah strikes in the same period have killed more than 100 people in northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They include more than 70 soldiers killed in strikes in northern Israel and the Golan Heights and in combat in southern Lebanon, according to Israel.

The conflict began when Hezbollah, Tehran's most important ally in the region, opened fire in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas after it launched the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.

A U.S. mediator travelled to Lebanon and Israel this week in an effort to secure a ceasefire. The envoy, Amos Hochstein, indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz.

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North Korea’s Kim accuses US of stoking tension, warns of nuclear war

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has accused the United States of ramping up tension and provocations, saying the Korean peninsula has never faced a greater risk of nuclear war, state media KCNA said on Friday.

The comments came amid international criticism over increasingly close military co-operation between Pyongyang and Moscow, and assertions that North Korea sent more than 10,000 troops to Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Previous negotiations with Washington have only highlighted its "aggressive and hostile" policy toward North Korea, Kim said in a speech at a military exhibition in Pyongyang, the capital, the KCNA news agency said.

"Never before have the warring parties on the Korean peninsula faced such a dangerous and acute confrontation that it could escalate into the most destructive thermonuclear war," he said on Thursday.

"We have already gone as far as we can on negotiating with the United States," he said, adding that the talks had only shown its aggressive and hostile policy toward North Korea could never change.

North Korean state media have not yet publicly mentioned the re-election of Donald Trump, who held three unprecedented meetings with Kim during his first term, in Singapore, Hanoi, and at the Korean border, in 2018 and 2019.

But their diplomacy yielded no concrete outcome due to the gap between U.S. calls for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and Kim's demands for sanctions relief.

Trump has long touted his ties with Kim, saying last month the two countries would have had "a nuclear war with millions of people killed", but he had stopped it, thanks to his ties with the North's leader.

Hong Min, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said Kim could be trying to underscore the North's nuclear capabilities ahead of Trump's second term, while leaving the door open for diplomacy.

"He might be suggesting Trump should show his 'willingness to co-exist' before re-opening any talks and calling for a change in the U.S. hostile attitude," Hong said.

MILITARY EXHIBITION

Kim also called for developing and upgrading "ultra-modern" versions of weaponry, and vowed to keep advancing defence capabilities to bolster the North's strategic position, KCNA said.

Strategic and tactical weapons were on display at the event, called the Defence Development Exhibition.

KCNA pictures showed the Hwasong-19 and 18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Chollima-1 rocket used in a successful satellite launch in November 2023, and the Saetbyol-9 multi-purpose attack drone, which resembles the U.S. Reaper.

Hong said the pictures also included several weapons needed by or presumed to already have been supplied to Russia for its war in Ukraine, such as 240mm multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers, anti-tank systems and drones.

North Korea has shipped additional arms to Russia, the South's lawmakers said on Thursday, after being briefed by the national intelligence agency.

Last year, when he was defence minister, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu accompanied Kim to a defence fair that showcased missiles and weapons.

Last week, Kim urged the North's military to improve its war-fighting capabilities, blaming the United States and its allies for stoking tension to "the worst phase in history" and calling the Korean peninsula "the world's biggest hotspot".

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