Israel-Hamas war latest: Two-day death toll from Israeli strikes in Lebanon reaches 564

Lebanese health authorities on Tuesday raised the death toll from two days of Israeli airstrikes targeting Hezbollah militants to 564. Palestinian officials in Gaza, meanwhile, said new Israeli strikes killed at least two dozen people.

Israel’s military says it will do “whatever is necessary” to push Hezbollah away from Lebanon’s border with Israel. Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since the Israel-Hamas war began. On Monday, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, killing nearly 500 people and wounding more than 1,600 others.

Thousands of people fled southern Lebanon, jamming the main highway to Beirut in the biggest exodus since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

It's a staggering toll for a country still reeling from a deadly attack on communication devices the week before. Lebanon blamed the attacks on Israel, but Israel did not confirm or deny its responsibility.

Hezbollah again launched some 100 projectiles toward Israel on Tuesday, the Israeli military said.

Here’s the latest:

DEIR AL BALAH, the Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza left multiple Palestinians injured, including children, who were rushed to Awda and Al-Aqsa hospitals.

AP footage shows two children with face injuries rushed inside Al-Aqsa hospital, while a man lying on a stretcher inside an ambulance was wailing in pain as two other men were lying face down. Several children were brought in with injuries to their legs and faces.

At the hospital morgue, a mother is seen crying and bidding farewell to her twin sons, Osama and Bilal Fayad, two young men who were killed in the strikes in Nuseirat.

“I raised those two boys.. they were killed together after being struck,” said their father Ahmed Fayad. “They were born together and died together.”

Over a dozen people gathered outside the hospital to perform a funeral prayer as the bodies of the twins were in front of them on the ground wrapped in white shrouds before they were loaded onto a motorbike to be taken for burial.

The strike that killed the Fayad twins in Nuseirat camp also killed three women and injured over 20 people were also injured, according to Awda hospital, where they were taken.

The Israeli strikes in Nuseirat and Bureij camps on Tuesday killed a total of 29 Palestinians, including 14 children and 6 women, hospital officials told the AP.

TEL AVIV — The Israeli military says three drones were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israel a short while ago, setting off sirens in coastal towns just south of Haifa — more than 50 km (31 miles) from the border with Lebanon. It said two of the drones were intercepted. There were no reports of injuries.

Altogether, more than 300 projectiles have been launched today from Lebanon at northern Israel, according to the Israeli military.

The army said strikes will continue in Lebanon. In the last two hours, Israeli jets carried out a “number of extensive strikes” on targets in the Bekaa region and in southern Lebanon, according to the army, hitting rocket launchers and infrastructure that the army says was used to store weapons.

UNITED NATIONS — Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly he wanted to state “loudly and clearly” that the Israeli government is disregarding human rights, trampling on international law, and “is practicing ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians.

He also accused Israel at Tuesday’s opening of the annual global gathering of carrying out “a clear genocide against a nation a people, and occupying their lands, step by step.”

“Israel’s behavior has once again demonstrated that it is imperative for the international community to develop a protection mechanism for Palestinian civilians,” Erdogan said. “70 years ago, just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, (Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped, must be stopped by an alliance of humanity.”

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon called Erdogan’s remarks “shameful” and told reporters the reference to Hitler is “beyond imagination.”

Erdogan called for the Security Council to impose “coercive measures against Israel” – U.N. language for sanctions – and said the General Assembly should recommend the use of force to achieve an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, the exchange of prisoners, and the unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid.

In language aimed at Israel’s supporters, especially the United States, Erdogan said their backing “is the reason why this aggression is still going on” in Gaza.

While “supposedly working for a cease-fire,” he said, they continue to send arms and ammunition to Israel.

The U.S., Qatar and Egypt have been working for months for a cease-fire in Gaza, and the United States has blamed Hamas for refusing the latest deal. But Erdogan claimed it’s Israel “that doesn’t want peace, by constantly dragging its feet making a settlement much more difficult, almost impossible.”

UNITED NATIONS — Israel’s envoy to the U.N. says his country doesn’t want to send troops into Lebanon but will do “whatever necessary” to halt the Hezbollah rocket fire that has driven tens of thousands of Israelis from their country’s north.

Asked during at a news conference Tuesday at U.N. headquarters whether Israel was contemplating a ground invasion of its northern neighbor, Ambassador Danny Danon said his country is “not eager to start any ground invasion anywhere.”

“We prefer a diplomatic solution. But if it’s not working, we are using other methods to show the other side that we mean business,” he said.

“We will do whatever necessary to bring the residents back to the north,” he added.

He spoke in a week that has seen rapid intensification of hostilities between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, including a wave of Israeli airstrikes that killed more than 550 Lebanese on Monday.

At the same time, Israel is nearly a year into its fight with Hamas militants in Gaza. The war was launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack but has drawn criticism from many countries for the extent of death, destruction and suffering in the Palestinian territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still plans to come to the U.N. to speak Friday at the General Assembly’s annual meeting of world leaders, Danon said. But he noted that “things are dynamic,” and an update on Netanyahu’s plans could come Wednesday.

TEL AVIV — Israel’s Defense Minister said Tuesday that Hezbollah has suffered “extremely severe blows” and Israel has “more strikes ready.”

Speaking to troops after an IDF drill that simulated a ground offensive in Lebanon, Yoav Gallant said “The Hezbollah of today is not the Hezbollah of a week ago. The sequence of blows it faced in its command and control, its operatives, its weapons -- all these things are extremely severe blows.”

SAKSAKIEH, Lebanon — In the Lebanese village of Saksakieh, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the Lebanon-Israel border, mourners carried 11 bodies through the streets Tuesday, including those of four women, an infant and a 7-year old girl. All had been killed in Israel’s bombardment of the village the day before. Israeli strikes killed more than 560 people across Lebanon in two days.

Some of the bodies were draped in Hezbollah flags, others wrapped in black clothes. A wreath of flowers had been placed on top of the smallest one.

Mohammad Halal, the father of 7-year-old Joury Halal, said his daughter was an “innocent child martyr.”

“She is a martyr for the sake of the south and Palestine,” Halal said and defiantly stated his allegiance to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

NEW YORK — White House principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said Tuesday that Biden administration officials were in talks with allies to help find an off-ramp to the escalating tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.

“We’re working on that in real time right here in New York and in capitals around the world,” Finer said in an appearance at an event hosted by the news site Axios on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

“We’re not going to reveal all the details of those sensitive conversations, but we very much want that conflict to de-escalate.”

Finer sidestepped questions about whether the fighting has already become the all-out war that the U.S. had been pressing Israel to avoid with Lebanon as it continues its nearly yearlong conflict in Gaza. But he underscored that a “big war, a wider war” is in neither Israel’s nor Lebanon’s interest.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Another Israeli airstrike in a central Gaza refugee camp on Tuesday killed 10 Palestinians, including four people from the same family, and injured 11 others, according to Al-Awda Hospital.

The strike hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, where six people including three women were killed in an earlier airstrike.

The dead and wounded were taken to Al-Awda Hospital.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it has killed a commander with Hezbollah’s missile and rocket unit in a strike in Beirut.

It said Ibrahim Kobeisi, who it said was responsible for launches toward Israel, was killed Tuesday.

The military said “other key commanders” were with Kobeisi at the time of the strike, but it did not say whether any of them had been killed or injured.

BEIRUT — The U.N. refugee agency in Lebanon says a Lebanese woman who had been working for the agency for 12 years, one of her sons and a cleaner employed by the agency have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.

The building where Dina Darwiche lived with her family was hit in a strike on Lebanon's Bekaa region on Monday, UNHCR said. Her husband and another child were seriously injured. Her body and that of her younger son were recovered from the rubble on Tuesday.

Ali Basma, who worked as a cleaner for the agency for seven years, was killed in a separate strike in the south. He worked at UNHCR’s office in the city of Tyre.

The U.N. refugee agency said it was “outraged and deeply saddened by the killing of two beloved members of the UNHCR family in Lebanon.”

It said the protection of civilians is a must under international humanitarian law.

BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike hit a building in a southern Beirut suburb on Tuesday afternoon, a Hezbollah TV station reported. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Later, Israel’s military said it had carried out a “targeted strike” in Beirut, without elaborating. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said “a number of people” were injured in the strike , which destroyed three floors of a six-story apartment building.

Al-Manar TV, which belongs to Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, said the strike occurred in the suburb of Ghobeiri, without giving any details.

The attack came after a Monday evening airstrike missed Ali Karaki, Hezbollah's top military commander in south Lebanon, the group said.

An Israeli airstrike on a nearby area on Friday killed 55 people, including top Hezbollah military commander Ibrahim Akil and 15 other Hezbollah members.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said on Tuesday afternoon that 10 more rockets from Lebanon were fired into Israeli territory, injuring a reservist and raining shrapnel onto a road in northern Israel.

The rockets came in two volleys, the first targeting the Upper Galilee area and the second an area south of Haifa known as Eliakim. Rocket fragments from a rocket that was intercepted injured the Israeli soldier, the military said.

Hezbollah said it had fired middle-range rockets at an Israeli army position in Eliakim.

Israel’s military has now said that there have been at least 110 rockets fired into Israeli territory from Lebanon since Tuesday morning. Israeli strikes on the other side of the border have killed over 550 people since Monday.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip— Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli airstrike hit a family house in central Gaza on Tuesday afternoon, killing at least six people, including three women .

The strike occurred in the Nuseirat refugee camp and also wounded 21 others, according to the Awda hospital in the camp, where the casualties were taken.

Footage circulated online showing a woman screaming and rushing to a building that was hit. A man was seen lying on the ground, without moving and bleeding from his head. There were several other people lying on the ground nearby.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday that the death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon over the past two days of escalation has reached 558, including 50 children and 94 women.

Health Minister Firass Abiad told reporters that 1,835 people have also been wounded since early Monday. They were taken to 54 hospitals around Lebanon, he said.

Abiad added that four paramedics were among those killed, and 16 paramedics and firefighters were among the wounded.

BEIRUT — A journalist working for the pan-Arab network Al-Mayadeen was killed in Israeli airstrikes while he was at his home in southern Lebanon, the network said Tuesday.

Hadi Al-Sayyed, 22, is the third journalist from the network killed in the ongoing conflict between the Israeli military and Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group. The network said he was wounded on Monday and died of his wounds on Tuesday.

According to the TV station, Al-Sayyed worked for the Al-Mayadeen’s online section and was at his house in the town of Burj Rahhal near the southern city of Tyre when it was hit in the airstrike.

Last November, Al-Mayadeen's correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Al-Maamari were killed in an Israeli strike while covering southern Lebanon.

Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah was killed in Israeli shelling last October while covering the clashes alongside colleagues from the news agency as well as reporters from Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV and France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse. His colleagues were all wounded but survived the attack.

JERUSALEM — Bombardment from Lebanon on Tuesday damaged a supermarket in Israel’s Arab city of Tamra, where the majority of residents are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The attack spread fear through the community, which has no shelters. It was not immediately clear whether the supermarket was hit by a rocket that permeated Israel’s missile defense system or by shrapnel falling from an interception.

“I came here immediately to see what exactly happened,” said Jamal Diab, a friend of the market’s owner. “I saw here lots of damage.”

Tamra has no shelters, according to its mayor, Mousa Abu Rumi. An Israeli state comptroller’s report found in 2018 that only 11 out of 71 Arab local communities have public shelters.

He told The Associated press that Tamra's residents have been instructed to find “the most protected place” nearby to seek shelter when they hear rocket sirens go off.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — A hospital in central Gaza said the bodies of two children killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday were brought there.

The Awda hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp said the strike hit a group of people in the nearby Bureij camp, and also wounded six other Palestinians.

The Health Ministry in the coastal territory, meanwhile, said Gaza’s hospitals received 12 dead and 43 wounded Palestinians over the last 24 hours.

The latest fatalities brought the overall death toll in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7 to 41,467, and 95,921 wounded, said the ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said that 100 rockets had been fired from Lebanon into northern Israel since the early hours of Tuesday morning, setting several fires and damaging buildings in the country’s north in the second day of much-intensified hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.

The rockets came in five volleys throughout the morning, the largest of them containing 50 rockets toward the Upper Galilee area. The military said it had struck the launchers where the rockets were fired. Another heavily-targeted area was southeast of the Israeli city of Haifa.

Rocket sirens blared throughout the morning in the country’s north. A video circulating on Israeli media showed explosions on a highway, with drivers pulling over and lying on the ground next to their vehicles.

Galilee Medical Center, a northern Israel hospital, said that two patients arrived to the hospital with minor head injuries from a rocket falling near their car. Several others were being treated for light wounds from running to shelters and traffic accidents when alarms sounded.

Hezbollah has been sending heavy volleys of rockets into Israel as Israel intensifies its operation in Lebanon. In Monday, Israeli strikes killed nearly 500 people, Lebanese health officials say, and Israel’s military ordered the south of the country evacuated.

BEIRUT — Lebanese families displaced from villages farther south slept in shelters hastily set up in schools in Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon. Some who did not find shelter elsewhere slept in cars and parks and on the seaside corniche.

Monday’s heavy bombardment sent thousands fleeing from south Lebanon. Hotels in Beirut were quickly booked to capacity and apartments in the mountains surrounding the capital were snapped up by families seeking safe accommodations.

Some offered up empty apartments or rooms in their houses in social media posts, while volunteers set up a kitchen at an empty gas station in Beirut to cook meals for the displaced.

In the eastern city of Baalbek, the state-run National News Agency reported that lines formed at bakeries and gas stations as residents rushed to stock up on essential supplies in anticipation of another round of strikes on Tuesday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Data from fire-tracking satellites used by the United States showed the wide range of Israeli airstrikes that target southern Lebanon, an Associated Press analysis Tuesday showed.

NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System typically is used by experts to track wildfires across rural areas of the U.S. However, they also can be used to track the flashes and burning that follow airstrikes. That’s particularly true when an airstrike ignites flammable material on the ground, like munitions or fuel.

On Monday, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, killing nearly 500 people and wounding more than 1,600 others. Thousands of people fled southern Lebanon, jamming the main highway to Beirut in the biggest exodus since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

Data from Monday show significant fires breaking out across southern Lebanon, stretching from the border with Israel as far north as Mashghara in the Bekaa Valley, some 20 kilometers (more than 10 miles) from the border. The area of the strikes is over 1,700 square kilometers (650 square miles).

There were several areas that showed multiple, intense fires. One was near the southern coastal town of Naqoura, which hosts a base for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon known as UNIFIL. Others were in rural areas or villages.

Since its creation at the start of Israel’s occupation of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, the Shiite militia Hezbollah is believed to have stockpiled weapons and missiles throughout southern Lebanon as a deterrent to Israel.

JERUSALEM — The United States Embassy in Jerusalem has restricted American government employees from traveling to Israel’s north after a heavy exchange of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.

The embassy said Tuesday that employees require an armored vehicle and prior approval to travel to a large region of the north that includes the bustling coastal city of Haifa.

The U.S. State Department meanwhile urged American citizens to leave the country, where Israeli strikes killed nearly 500 people on Monday.

DEIR-Al-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian officials say Israel’s strikes early Tuesday killed at least seven people in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis. At least 15 others, including women and children, were injured in the strikes, they said.

The civil defense said the dead include five people who were killed in a strike on the Abu Harb family house in the Qizan al-Najjar area. The strike also wounded at least 10 others, it said.

Another strike hit a house in the Tahlia area in Khan Younis, killing at least two people and wounding five others, according to the rescue service. The casualties from both strikes were confirmed in hospital records in Khan Younis.

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians but rarely comments on individual strikes.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war. It does not say how many were fighters, but says a little over half were women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Around 100 of the captives are still being held in Gaza, and a third of them are believed to be dead.

Airlines in the United Arab Emirates, a key East-West travel hub, canceled flight Tuesday to Lebanon over the ongoing cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

Long-haul carriers Emirates and Etihad canceled flights, as did FlyDubai, the low-cost carrier.

The United Arab Emirates, which reached a diplomatic recognition deal with Israel in 2020, is home to a large Lebanese population.

Egypt’s flagship airliner also canceled its flights to Lebanon on Tuesday. EgyptAir operates two flights daily between Cairo and Beirut. It said the cancellation will stay in place until “the signal stabilizes.”

Also Tuesday, Israeli media reported that Wizz Air, British Airways, Iberia and Azerbaijan Airlines were among several airlines to cancel flights to Israel’s major airport, Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.

Lebanese citizens who fled the southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes Monday, settle at a public park in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

A couple sit outside a school turned into a shelter in Beirut, after fleeing the Israeli airstrikes in the southern village of Houla, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept rockets that were launched from Lebanon, in northern Israel, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

Flames and smoke rise from an Israeli airstrike on Mahmoudieh mountain, as seen from Marjayoun town, south Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Civil defense workers carry an elderly, fleeing the south, as he arrives at a school turned into a shelter in Beirut, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike on the Mahmoudieh mountain, as seen from Marjayoun town, south Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Mourners transport the bodies of their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip during their funeral in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept rockets that were launched from Lebanon, in northern Israel, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept rockets that were launched from Lebanon, in northern Israel, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Lebanese citizens who fled the southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes Monday, sit in their cars at a highway that links to Beirut city, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Cars sit in traffic as they flee the southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes, in Sidon, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Lawyers for a Missouri man scheduled to be executed Tuesday evening have filed another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court that alleges there were racial bias and constitutional errors at his trial.

Marcellus Williams, 55, has long maintained innocence in the 1998 death of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home. The execution is opposed both by Gayle's family and the prosecutor's office that put Williams on death row — an unprecedented combination.

“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the clemency petition stated. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”

Williams is among inmates in five states who are scheduled to be executed in the span of a week — an unusually high number that defies a yearslong decline in the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S. The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. The others are scheduled to take place in Texas on Tuesday, and in Oklahoma and Alabama on Thursday.

Williams' hopes of having his sentence commuted to life in prison suffered dual setbacks Monday when, almost simultaneously, Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied clemency and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to grant a stay of execution.

Attorneys working on Williams’ behalf filed motions late Monday challenging the state Supreme Court’s decision.

“We have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay Marcellus Williams’ execution on Tuesday based on a revelation by the trial prosecutor that he removed at least one Black juror before trial based on his race,” Tricia Bushnell, an attorney for Mr. Williams, said in a news release.

The prosecutor in the 2001 murder case, Keith Larner, testified at an August hearing that he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams — a statement which Williams’ attorneys asserted showed improper racial bias.

Bushnell said Larner removed six of seven Black prospective jurors. The jury ultimately had 11 white members and one Black member. Larner contended that the jury selection process was fair.

The Missouri attorney general's office filed a response Tuesday saying the only effect of a stay of execution would be another delay in a case “that has already been delayed many years through Williams’ litigation of meritless claims.”

The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision Monday afternoon, affirmed a lower court ruling rejecting Williams’ arguments.

Parson accused Williams’ attorneys of trying to “muddy the waters about DNA evidence” with claims that courts have repeatedly rejected.

“Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence,” Parson said in a statement.

Parson, a former sheriff, has never granted clemency in a death penalty case. Williams’ execution would be the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell has sought to set aside Williams’ sentence, citing questions about his guilt. His office joined lawyers from the Midwest Innocence Project in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a stay.

“Even for those who disagree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of a doubt of any defendant’s guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option,” Bell said in a statement.

This marks the third time Williams has faced execution. He was less than a week away from lethal injection in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.

He was hours away from being executed in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay and appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case. But that panel never reached a conclusion.

Questions about DNA evidence also led Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor’s office who handled it without gloves after the original crime lab tests.

Without DNA evidence pointing to any alternative suspect, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed off on the agreement, as did Gayle’s family. But at the urging of Missouri's Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, the state Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place Aug. 28.

Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that Williams’ arguments all had been previously rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.

Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial said he broke into Gayle’s home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher knife. Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop computer were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors Williams confessed to the killing and offered details about it.

Attorneys for Williams said that fingerprints, a bloody shoeprint, hair and other evidence at the crime scene didn’t match Williams.

Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.

FILE - This photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections shows Marcellus Williams. (Missouri Department of Corrections via AP, file)

Lawyers seek Supreme Court intervention hours before a Missouri inmate's planned execution

FILE - Joseph Amrine, who was exonerated two decades ago after spending years on death row, speaks at a rally to support Missouri death row inmates Marcellus Williams on Aug. 21, 2024, in Clayton, Mo. (AP Photo/Jim Salter, file)

Lawyers seek Supreme Court intervention hours before a Missouri inmate's planned execution