3 Israeli teens shot 10 times, U.S. official says

The disclosure clashes with earlier speculation by commentators on what the captors intended to do.
Distress call analyzed

6 Dead in Texas Shooting; Suspect Surrenders After Standoff

A Texas father went to the home where his kids were staying on Wednesday and opened fire - killing six people, including four of his children who ranged in age from 4 to 13 - and surrendered to police after a tense three-hour standoff in a suburban cul-de-sac outside of Houston, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

The suspect has been identified as Stephen Stay, 39, ABC News has learned.

How Alleged Gunman's Own Daughter Stopped More Killings

The lone survivor of the shooting is the man's 15-year-old daughter - who managed to dial 911 and tip off police that her father intended to kill her grandparents. She remains in critical condition, they said.

The victims include the suspect's children - two boys, 13 and 4, and two girls, ages 9 and 7, authorities said. Two relatives caring for the children, a 39-year-old man and 33-year-old woman, were also found dead at the home at 711 Leaflet Lane.

Stay fled the house and led police on a short chase in the neighborhood.

Three of the children were found dead inside the home, and a fourth child died after being airlifted to a hospital, police said. The surviving teen was listed in critical condition at a local hospital.

The Harris County Precinct 4 Constable's Office originally reported that five children and one adult had been killed, but the Harris County Sheriff's Office later said that four children and two adults had been killed.

As the trucks blocked the suspect's car, the man visibly engaged with police from the driver’s seat. Police said the suspect had a handgun and was holding it to his head. They were speaking with the man by cell phone as darkness fell over the scene. Nearby homes were evacuated.

At about 10 p.m. CT, authorities swarmed the vehicle, and the suspect was taken into custody.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel dramatically escalated its aerial assault in Gaza Thursday hitting hundreds of Hamas targets, and the Palestinians said a family of eight was killed in a strike that destroyed their home. Israel's missile defense system once again intercepted rockets fired by militants at the country's heartland.

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Israel struck more than 320 Hamas targets overnight, focusing on underground tunnel networks and rocket launching sites. That brought the total number of targets hit to 750 in three days of the massive offensive. At least 75 Palestinians have been killed.

Lerner said Israel has already mobilized 20,000 reservists for a possible ground operation into Gaza, but for the time being Israel remained focused on maximizing its air campaign. A ground invasion could lead to heavy civilian casualties on the Palestinian side while putting Israeli ground forces in danger.

Neither side is showing any sign of halting their heaviest fighting since an eight-day battle in late 2012. Israel says that Hamas must cease rocket fire from Gaza for Israel to consider a truce. Militants have fired hundreds of rockets, striking across the length of Israel and disrupting life across the country. No one has been seriously harmed as the "Iron Dome" defense system has intercepted at least 70 of the projectiles destined for major population centers.

"The ground option needs to be the last option and only if it is absolutely necessary. It is a carefully designed plan of action," Lerner said.

Palestinian medical officials said a strike early Thursday struck a home in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing eight members of a family. The Israeli military also said it struck a car in Gaza carrying three Islamic Jihad militants involved in firing rockets. The militant group confirmed that its men were killed in the strike.

View gallery

Palestinians carry bodies of seven people killed in a strike during their funeral in Khan Younis ref …

At least 20 civilians have been among the 75 deaths reported by the Health Ministry in Gaza, though the exact number is not known.

Israel accuses militants of deliberately endangering civilians by using homes and other civilian buildings for cover. The military has also directly targeted the homes of known militants that it says are used as command centers, though it says it contacts the families first to evacuate.

Yigal Palmor, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Hamas is firing rockets from "within houses and streets and neighborhoods which are populated with civilians ... exposing these civilians to retaliation and to backfire."

After an overnight lull, militants resumed their barrage toward central and southern Israel. Remnants of a long-range rocket fired from Gaza landed in a gas station in south Tel Aviv after being shot down by Israel's "Iron Dome" defense system.

The longer range of the rockets fired from Gaza has disrupted life across southern and central Israel, where people have been forced to remain close to home, and kindergartens and summer camps have closed.

Besides firing toward Israel's two largest cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Hamas also launched a rocket that reached the town of Zichron Yaakov, more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Gaza.

Israel escalates aerial assault on Gaza

A family of eight Palestinians is killed as hundreds of militant targets are bombed overnight.
Hamas rockets intercepted

As it seems to be embarking on its third war with Hamas in less than six years, Israel faces a foe that has lost most of its key allies and the attention of the international community.

The outrage that accompanied last week's discovery of the bodies of three kidnapped Israelis and a suspected revenge attack in which a Palestinian teenager was kidnapped and murdered has dissipated, even as the violence that followed has escalated. On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuannounced yet another expansion of the Israel Defense Forces' ongoing operation in Gaza. Here was a similar declaration yesterday:

Benjamin Netanyahu ✔ @netanyahu Follow ›We have therefore significantly expanded our operations against Hamas and the other terrorist organizations in Gaza.› 4:31 PM - 8 Jul 2014

268 RETWEETS 190 FAVORITES

Ordinarily, this moment would be accompanied by a cascade of international opprobrium from Palestinian supporters, demands for restraint, and perhaps calls from Israel's own allies to rein in its forces. Yet even as the death toll in Gaza grows from the Israeli campaign — Israel has reportedly struck 400 targets in Gaza since yesterday morning from the sea and the air — there has been relative quiet about the battle. Hamas continues to fires its rockets, hundreds of them, deeper into Israeli territory than ever before, but the normally raucous international chorus has barely made a peep so far.

RELATED: Man Who Literally Wrote the Book on Running with the Bulls Was Gored by a Bull

In an interview with the Times of Israel, a senior Israeli official said as much:

The international community is totally disinterested. Yes, there were a few press releases from [UK Foreign Secretary] William Hague and a few others, but generally the world doesn’t show any particular interest in this.”

There are many reasons for this seemingly peculiar insouciance. Here are a few:

View gallery

Israel Has a New Weapon Against Hamas: International Indifference

The war-wrecked region

Officials and diplomats are exhausted, spread thin, and focused on seemingly bigger problems, as Syria's civil war grinds on and ISIS continues marauding across Iraq.

A Groundhog Day Syndrome

It's surreal to think that just nine weeks ago the deadline for Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to produce an outline for a comprehensive peace agreement passed, fruitlessly, and the American-brokered peace process collapsed. Now Israel and Hamas are battling for the third time in less than six years, in a conflict that more or less resembles the two previous ones.

The isolation of Hamas

In late 2012, the last time Israel and Hamas had more than just their conventional exchange of fire, the landscape looked much different. Hamas had an ally in Egypt President Mohamed Morsi, who hailed from the more sympathetic Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt even mediated the ceasefire that ended that round of hostilities between Israel and Hamas. With Morsi deposed and with military ruler pushing to keep Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood at the margins, Hamas doesn't have a neighbor to turn to. Moreover, Egypt actually seems disinterested in getting involved at all.

RELATED: Populist Jakarta Governor Claims Victory In Indonesian Presidential Election

Hamas has also lost Iran's patronage, with whom it split last year over Hamas' criticism of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his attacks on Sunni Muslims in the Syrian civil war. Iran remains as one of Assad's few friends.

In other words, while Qatar and Turkey remain in Hamas' corner, so long as the group continues to fire rockets into Israeli civilian centers, the Israeli counterattack, which comes with a qualitative military edge, will seem warranted. For the time being, everyone else has lost the interest, energy, or willingness to do anything.

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, has now lost the ability to govern, control the other rocket-firing terrorist groups in Gaza, easily replenish its weapons, pay salaries, and keep the electricity on. One could argue that this escalation is, in part, about Hamas seeking to assert itself again, in the only way it can. Or perhaps, as Zvi Bar'el suggests, it could even strengthen Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

RELATED: Snowden Russian Asylum Is Almost Up, but He's Asking for More Time

Of course, this could all change in an instant given the volatility of the situation. But for now, the calm is particularly eerie, even as a war rages around it.

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/07/israel-has-a-new-weapon-against-hamas-international-indifference/374163/

Israel's new weapon against Hamas

As the death toll in Gaza grows from Israeli strikes, there has been a relative international indifference.
3 possible reasons

Exclusive: Iraq tells U.N. that 'terrorist groups' seized nuclear materials

A fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) holds an ISIL flag and a weapon on a street in the city of Mosul in this June 23, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/Files

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Insurgents in Iraq have seized nuclear materials used for scientific research at a university in the country's north, Iraq told the United Nations in a letter appealing for help to "stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad."

Nearly 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of uranium compounds were kept at Mosul University, Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the July 8 letter obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

"Terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the sites that came out of the control of the state," Alhakim wrote, adding that such materials "can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction."

"These nuclear materials, despite the limited amounts mentioned, can enable terrorist groups, with the availability of the required expertise, to use it separate or in combination with other materials in its terrorist acts," said Alhakim.

He warned that they could also be smuggled out of Iraq.

View gallery

Militant Islamist fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Sy …

A U.S. government source familiar with the matter said the materials were not believed to be enriched uranium and therefore would be difficult to use to manufacture into a weapon. Another U.S. official familiar with security matters said he was unaware of this development raising any alarm among U.S. authorities.

A Sunni Muslim group known as the Islamic State is spearheading a patchwork of insurgents who have taken over large swaths of Syria and Iraq. The al Qaeda offshoot until recently called itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

"The Republic of Iraq is notifying the international community of these dangerous developments and asking for help and the needed support to stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad," Alhakim wrote.

Iraq acceded to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material on Monday, said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The convention requires states to protect nuclear facilities and material in peaceful domestic use, storage and transport.

"It also provides for expanded cooperation between and among states regarding rapid measures to locate and recover stolen or smuggled nuclear material, mitigate any radiological consequences of sabotage, and prevent and combat related offences," according to the IAEA.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; editing by Andrew Hay)