ATLANTA (AP) — CONCACAF says it will investigate racist messages directed at Canadian soccer player Moïse Bombito on social media after he made a tackle on Lionel Messi during a 2-0 Copa America loss to Argentina on Thursday.
The Canadian Soccer Association issued a statement on social media late Thursday night about the messages without mentioning Bombito by name.
“Canada Soccer is aware of and deeply disturbed by racist comments made online and directed at one of our men’s national team players following tonight’s game,” the statement said. “We are in communication with CONCACAF and CONMEBOL about this matter.”
CONCACAF said it stood with Canada Soccer "in condemning the disgraceful social media posts.
"We are now working with the federation and with our colleagues at CONMEBOL and FIFA to seek ways to investigate the accounts which posted racist material. We will continue to use our reach to promote unity and respect."
Bombito, a 24-year-old from Montreal who plays for the Colorado Rapids in MLS, made an Instagram story post that didn’t reference anything specifically but said, “My beautiful Canada. No room for that bs.”
Bombito caught Messi while attempting a tackle in the 82nd minute after his pass was intercepted by Lautaro Martínez. Messi, clearly in pain, went down in the penalty area after Canada goalkeeper Maxime Crépeau saved an ensuing shot from Martínez.
Replays showed a sliding Bombito getting a foot to the ball and then making contact with Messi’s right ankle. There was no foul called.
Messi walked off the field gingerly after receiving treatment but returned to action and set up Argentina’s second goal in the 88th minute.
AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports
Canada's Moise Bombito (15) moves with Argentina's Lionel Messi in the second half during a Copa America Group A soccer match in Atlanta, Thursday, June 20, 2024. Canadian soccer player Moise Bombito had racist messages directed at him on social media after he made a tackle on Lionel Messi during a 2-0 Copa America loss to Argentina. The Canadian National Team issued a statement on social media late Thursday night about the messages without mentioning Bombito by name.(AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Argentina's Julian Alvarez, left, and Canada's Moise Bombito battle for the ball during a Copa America Group A soccer match in Atlanta, Thursday, June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Jason Allen)
Argentina's Lionel Messi, right, and Canada's Moïse Bombito watch the ball during a Copa America Group A soccer match in Atlanta, Thursday, June 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Jason Allen)
Families bid a tearful goodbye as 21 critically ill children were set to exit Gaza for treatment abroad on Thursday. It’s the first medical evacuation since the territory’s sole travel crossing shut down in early May after Israeli forces captured it, Palestinian officials say.
The kids and their adult escorts left Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis bound for the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing with Israel. It was not clear where they would receive treatment.
Kamela Abukweik burst into tears after her son got on the bus heading to the crossing with her mother. Neither she nor her husband were cleared to leave.
“He has tumors spread all over his body and we don’t know what the reason is. And he constantly has a fever,” she said. “I still don’t know where he is going.”
The nearly nine-month Israel-Hamas war has devastated Gaza’s health sector and forced most of its hospitals to shut down. Dr. Mohammed Zaqout, the head of Gaza’s hospitals, said over 25,000 patients require treatment abroad, including some 980 children with cancer, a quarter of whom need “urgent and immediate evacuation.”
International criticism is growing over Israel’s campaign against Hamas as Palestinians face severe and widespread hunger. The eight-month war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and basic goods to Gaza, and people there are now totally dependent on aid. The top United Nations court has concluded there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 37,600 people in Gaza, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Currently:
— Gunfire, lawlessness and gang-like looters are preventing aid distribution in Gaza, an official says.
— A Palestinian was shot, beaten and tied to an Israeli army jeep. The army says he posed no threat.
— The U.S. military shows reporters the pier project in Gaza as it takes another stab at aid delivery.
— Ship attacked in Red Sea in latest maritime assault likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
— Man who police say urged ‘Zionists’ to get off NYC subway train faces criminal charge.
— Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s the latest:
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Twenty-one critically ill children were set to exit Gaza on Thursday in the first medical evacuation since the territory’s sole travel crossing was shut down in early May, Palestinian officials said.
The nearly nine-month Israel-Hamas war has devastated Gaza’s health sector and forced most of its hospitals to shut down.
Family members bid a tearful goodbye to the children as they and their escorts left the Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis bound for the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing with Israel. It was not clear where they would receive treatment. The Israeli military body that coordinates civilian affairs in Gaza did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a press conference at Nasser Hospital on Thursday, Dr. Mohammed Zaqout, the head of Gaza’s hospitals, said the evacuation of the 21 children was being done in coordination with the World Heath Organization and three American charities.
Zaqout said over 25,000 patients in Gaza require treatment abroad, including some 980 children with cancer, a quarter of whom need “urgent and immediate evacuation.”
He said the cases included in Thursday’s evacuation are “a drop in the ocean” and that the complicated route through Kerem Shalom and into Egypt cannot serve as an alternative to the Rafah crossing.
The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, the only one available for people to travel in or out, shut down after Israeli forces captured it during their operation in the city early last month. Egypt has refused to reopen its side of the crossing until the Gaza side is returned to Palestinian control.
Six of the children were transferred to the Nasser Hospital from Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City earlier this week. Five have malignant cases of cancer and one suffers from metabolic syndrome. That evacuation was organized by the World Health Organization, which could not immediately be reached for comment.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military has ordered new evacuations from the Gaza City neighborhoods that were heavily bombed and largely emptied early in the war. The latest orders apply to Shijaiyah and other neighborhoods where residents reported heavy bombing on Thursday.
First responders with Gaza’s Civil Defense, which is part of the Hamas-run government, said airstrikes hit five homes, killing at least three people and wounding another six. It said rescuers were still digging through the rubble for survivors.
Gaza City was heavily bombed in the opening weeks of the war, which began with Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attack into Israel. Israel ordered the evacuation of all of northern Gaza, including the territory’s largest city, later that month. Hundreds of thousands of people have remained in the north, even as Israeli troops have surrounded and largely isolated it.
Shijaiyah residents in a messaging group shared video showing large numbers of people fleeing the neighborhood on foot with their belongings in their arms. They said several families were isolated by the fighting.
There was no immediate word from Gaza’s Health Ministry, which tracks casualties from the conflict.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A ship traveling through the Red Sea on Thursday reported being hit in an attack likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a private security firm said, the latest in the campaign targeting shipping over the Israel-Hamas war.
The ship issued a radio call off the coast of the rebel-held port city of Hodeida, saying it had been struck, the private security firm Ambrey said. A warship in the area was responding to the attack, Ambrey added.
It wasn’t clear if anyone was hurt or if the ship was damaged in the assault on the vessel. Neither the British nor U.S. militaries immediately reported the attack.
The Houthis did not immediately claim the attack. However, it can take hours or even days for them to acknowledge their assaults.
TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military says a soldier was killed and 16 others were wounded during a military operation in the West Bank overnight. It said Thursday that an explosive device detonated in the area of the northern city of Jenin, which has seen frequent raids and gunbattles with militants in recent years.
There were no immediate reports of Palestinian casualties. Israel says it has arrested over 4,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack ignited the war in Gaza, including around 1,750 suspected of being Hamas members.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says over 550 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the latest Israel-Hamas war. Most have been killed during Israeli raids and violent protests, although the dead also include innocent bystanders and Palestinians killed in attacks by Jewish settlers. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military has released photos that it says show a staffer with the aid group Doctors Without Borders wearing military fatigues at a gathering of Gaza militants.
The military says that Fadi al-Wadiya, who was killed in an airstrike earlier this week, was a “significant operative” in the Islamic Jihad group and was involved in its rocket program.
Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, did not respond to a request for comment on the photos, which were released late Wednesday. The aid group said earlier that it had no indication he was a militant.
The photos released by the military appear to show al-Wadiya wearing military fatigues in meetings with Islamic Jihad militants, but they could not be independently authenticated.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman who shared the photos on the social media platform X, said that al-Wadiya tried to leave Gaza for military training in Iran when he joined MSF in 2018, without providing evidence.
“Al-Wadiya exploited his position in a humanitarian organization to further terrorist operations,” Shoshani said.
Doctors Without Borders said al-Wadiya, a medic and physiotherapist, worked for the group between 2018 and 2022, before resuming work with the charity during the war. It said he was killed while riding his bicycle to work on Tuesday.
The group said he was the sixth of its employees to be killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, calling their deaths “unacceptable.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, asked about the competing claims on Wednesday, said the United States was not immediately able to resolve them.
The armed wings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian militant groups are highly secretive, and fighters rarely identify themselves publicly for fear of being targeted in Israeli strikes.
A truck carrying Gaza aid is about to enter a U.S ship, at the port of Larnaca, Cyprus, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. An official with the U.S. humanitarian assistance agency USAID says thousands of tons of food, medicines and other aid piled up on a Gaza beach isn't reaching those in need because of a dire security situation on the ground where truck drivers are either getting caught in the crossfire or have their cargo seized by "gang-like" groups. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Palestinian kids sort through trash at a landfill in Nuseirat refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 20, 2024. Israel's war in Gaza has decimated the strip's sanitation system while simultaneously displacing the vast majority of the population, leaving many Palestinians living in tent camps nearby water contaminated with sewage and growing piles of garbage. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians gather to fill water jugs near one of the strip's few functioning desalination plants in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 20, 2024. Israel's war in Gaza has decimated the strip's sanitation system while simultaneously displacing the vast majority of the population, leaving many Palestinians living in tent camps nearby growing piles of garbage. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian parents say goodbye to their sick son before leaving the Gaza Strip to get treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. Twenty one patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A Palestinian man reacts as he says goodbye to his sick daughter before leaving the Gaza Strip to get treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. 21 patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian children with chronic diseases say goodbye to their relatives as they leave the Gaza Strip for treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. 21 patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
An amputee Palestinian child sits in an ambulance with his relatives as he waits to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. 21 patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A Palestinian woman says goodbye to her sick son before leaving the Gaza Strip to get treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. 21 patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A woman holds the body of her daughter Zena Naser, killed in an Israeli bombardment on a residential building in Maghazi refugee camp, outside the morgue of al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, June 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Relatives and friends of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group march with their photos during a rally calling for their release in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Relatives and friends of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group march with their photos during a rally calling for their release in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Relatives and friends of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group march with their photos during a rally calling for their release in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israeli army tanks are seen in Wadi Gaza, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Israeli army tanks are seen in Wadi Gaza, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
