Israeli strikes kill dozens in Lebanon and isolated northern Gaza while Netanyahu and Trump speak

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes killed dozens of people including children on Sunday in Lebanon and isolated northern Gaza, as the world watched for signs of how the U.S. election might affect the wars between Israel and Iranian-backed militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he has spoken three times with Donald Trump since Tuesday’s election and they “see eye-to-eye regarding the Iranian threat and all of its components.” Israeli President Isaac Herzog is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday.

The Israeli airstrike in Lebanon killed at least 23 people, including seven children, in Aalmat village north of Beirut, far from the areas in the east and south where Hezbollah has a major presence. There was no Israeli evacuation warning. Israel’s military said that it hit a Hezbollah site used to store weapons, and the strike was under review.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles into Israel after war broke out in Gaza, in solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas. Israel retaliated, and a series of escalations have led to all-out war.

In northern Gaza, an Israeli strike on a home sheltering displaced people in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya killed at least 17 people, including nine women, according to Dr. Fadel Naim, director of Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City.

Israel's military said that it targeted a site where militants were operating, without providing evidence. It said the details of the strike were under review.

A separate strike hit a house in Gaza City, killing Wael al-Khour, a minister in the Hamas-run government, as well as his wife and three children, according to the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the government.

Israel has struck deeper inside Lebanon since September, when it killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his top commanders. Hezbollah has expanded its rocket fire from northern to central Israel. The fighting has killed more than 3,100 people in Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry, and more than 70 people in Israel.

After Israel's strike in Aalmat, around 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Beirut, legislator Raed Berro denied that any Hezbollah personnel or assets were in the building hit.

“Everyone can see, in front of cameras, that what is being pulled from under the rubble are women, children and elderly people who have nothing to do with weapons or rocket warehouses," Berro said.

Hassan Ghaddaf, who lived next door and was slightly wounded while heading to his balcony with morning coffee, said displaced people were in the building.

“I had seen them and got to know them the other day,” Ghaddaf said. “They were peaceful. On the contrary, they had someone from the Lebanese Internal Security Forces that works for the state, and we saw their garb and clothes in the rubble.”

In Syria, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, and the Defense Ministry said that seven civilians were killed, state news agency SANA reported. Britain-based opposition war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights suggested that Hezbollah was targeted. Israel didn't immediately comment.

The mid-month deadline is approaching for the Biden administration's ultimatum for Israel: Allow more aid into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on U.S. military funding.

Israeli forces have encircled and largely isolated Jabaliya and the nearby northern Gaza towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun for the past month, allowing only a trickle of humanitarian aid. Experts from a panel that monitors food security say famine is imminent or may already be happening.

The northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, has suffered the heaviest destruction of the 13-month war. Israel has sent forces back in, saying Hamas has regrouped.

Israeli strikes often kill women and children. The military says it only targets militants, whom it accuses of hiding among civilians.

Also on Sunday, Israel's military released what it called footage of Hamas abusing detainees. The soundless footage, dated from 2018 to 2020, appears to show hooded detainees chained in stress positions. In some clips, men beat or poke them with batons. It wasn't possible to independently verify the videos, which the military said that it recovered during operations in Gaza.

Rights groups have long accused the Hamas-run government in Gaza and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank of abusing detainees and violently quashing dissent. Israel has been accused of similar abuses, especially since the start of the war. Israeli prison authorities say they follow relevant laws and investigate allegations of wrongdoing.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third believed to be dead.

Israel's offensive has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities who don't distinguish between civilians and militants in their count, but say more than half the dead were women and children.

Israeli bombardment and ground invasions have left vast areas of Gaza in ruins and displaced around 90% of the population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands live in tent camps with few if any services.

Cease-fire talks mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt have repeatedly stalled, as have parallel efforts by the U.S. and others to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Qatar, a key mediator with Hamas, said Saturday that it had suspended its efforts and would resume them when “the parties show their willingness and seriousness to end the brutal war.”

Some Palestinians in Gaza responded with frustration.

“The Arab silence that controls the Arab capitals, that’s because of the fear of the American administration and Israel,” said Akram Jarada, displaced from Gaza City.

Samy Magdy reported from Cairo and Chehayeb from Beirut. Lujain Jo in Aalmat, Lebanon, and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Rescue workers use excavators to remove the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers and people search for victims under the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers and people search for victims under the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers use excavators to remove the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A man cleans a house, as a portrait hanging on the wall shows the late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers and people, centre, search for victims under the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers search for victims under the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A woman with a child pass at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers use an excavator to remove the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

People check a damaged car at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers search for victims under the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers use an excavator to remove the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers use excavators to remove the rubble of a destroyed house hit in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Aalmat village, northern Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A man accused of having a machine gun at Tuskegee University during a hail of gunfire that left one man dead and at least 16 others hurt told a federal agent that he fired his weapon during the shooting, but denied aiming at anyone.

The new details are contained in a newly unsealed federal complaint, which describes how one officer ran toward the gunfire. That officer found a dead body, and then saw Jaquez Myrick with a Glock pistol, the complaint states.

Myrick was later questioned by state and federal agents, who asked him whether he discharged his firearm during the shooting.

“Myrick then confessed to discharging the Glock but denied shooting at anyone,” a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who took part in the interview, wrote in the complaint.

Myrick, 25, of Montgomery, is accused of having a weapon with a machine gun conversion device and faces a federal charge of possession of a machine gun. The complaint does not accuse him of shooting anyone. No attorneys who could speak on Myric's behalf are listed in the federal court documents, and it was unclear from jail records whether he has one.

The complaint also details the chaotic scene and how Myrick was apprehended.

A Tuskegee police officer, one of the first to respond to reports of gunshots on the campus, heard the gunfire immediately but wasn’t able to drive his patrol car through a parking lot because it was so jammed with people and cars, according to the court records.

Officer Alan Ashley then left his car and ran toward the gunfire, soon finding a man dead from a gunshot wound, according to the complaint. Ashley then saw Myrick, armed with a Glock pistol, and took him into custody, the complaint states.

The city officer also gave the gun to the special agent who wrote the complaint.

“During a field examination, I found the pistol to function as a machine gun,” the federal agent wrote.

The shooting came as the school's 100th homecoming week was winding down. A dozen of the victims were hit by gunfire, with the others injured as they tried to escape the chaotic scene, authorities said. Many of the injured were students.

The man killed was identified as 18-year-old La’Tavion Johnson, of Troy, Alabama, who was not a student, the local coroner said.

The FBI joined the investigation and said it was seeking tips from the public, as well as any video witnesses might have. It set up a site online for people to upload video.

The shooting is the latest case in which a “machine gun conversion device” was found, something law officers around the nation have expressed grave concerns about. The proliferation of these types of weapons is made possible by small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online.

Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a Sweet Sixteen party in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead at a bar district in Sacramento, California.

“It takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,” Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in AP’s report on the weapons earlier this year.

The shooting left the entire university community shaken, said Amare’ Hardee, a senior from Tallahassee, Florida, who is president of the student government association.

“This senseless act of violence has touched each of us, whether directly or indirectly,” he said at the school’s homecoming convocation Sunday morning.

Sunday’s shooting comes just over a year after four people were injured in a shooting at a Tuskegee University student housing complex. Two visitors to the campus were shot and two students were hurt while trying to leave the scene of what campus officials described as an “unauthorized party” in September 2023, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

About 3,000 students are enrolled at the university about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Alabama’s capital city of Montgomery.

The university was the first historically Black college to be designated a Registered National Landmark in 1966. It was also designated a National Historic Site in 1974, according to the school’s website.

Homecoming parade floats sit on the campus of Tuskegee University a day after a shooting occurred, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024, in Tuskegee, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

This image taken from video provided by WSFA shows people standing near the scene of an earlier shooting at Tuskegee University, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024, in Tuskegee, Ala. (WSFA via AP)

This image taken from video provided by WSFA shows law enforcement at the scene of a shooting at Tuskegee University, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024, in Tuskegee, Ala. (WSFA via AP)

The entrance to Tuskegee University is seen, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024, in Tuskegee, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)