Gunmen targeting bus in the occupied West Bank kill 3 people

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank on Monday, killing three people and wounding eight others. Violence has surged in the territory since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of Gaza ignited the ongoing war there.

The shooting occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory used by both Israelis and Palestinians. Israel’s military said two 70-year-old women and a 35-year-old policeman were killed. Widespread operations have been launched in the area looking for the attackers.

Palestinians have carried out scores of shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis, especially during the past 15 months of the Israel-Hamas war. Israel has launched near-nightly military raids across the territory that frequently trigger gunbattle with militants. There has also been a sharp rise in attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers, leading the United States to impose sanctions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “reach the despicable murderers” behind Monday’s attack and “settle accounts with them and with everyone who assisted them. No one will be spared.”

Hamas praised the attack in a statement, but did not claim responsibility for it.

While there has reportedly been recent progress in long-running talks aimed at a ceasefire and hostage release, the war in Gaza rages on with no end in sight.

Separately on Monday, Ahmed al-Farra, director of the children’s ward at Nasser hospital in the southern Gaza City of Khan Younis said a 35-day-old infant froze to death inside his family’s tent in the humanitarian area designated by the Israeli military on Friday.

Gaza Health Ministry official Zaher Al-Wahidi said babies and most children can’t tolerate weather conditions when temperatures dip low as 3 degrees Celsius.

Aid groups say Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and a breakdown of law and order in many areas make it difficult to provide desperately needed food and other assistance, and there is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing.

There is little wood for fire and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 838 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza. Most appear to have been militants killed in battles with Israeli troops, but the dead also include participants in violent protests and civilian bystanders.

At least 46 Israelis, including 19 soldiers, have been killed in violent attacks by Palestinian militants, according to the U.N.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.

Some 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank under Israeli military rule, with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority administering population centers.

Over 500,000 settlers with Israeli citizenship live in well over 100 settlements across the territory, ranging from small hilltop outposts to sprawling communities that resemble suburbs or small towns. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border in a massive surprise attack nearly 15 months ago, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health authorities, who say women and children make up more than half of those killed. They do not say how many of the dead were militants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.

Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem and Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed to this report.

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

Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and call for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and call for the release of hostages, held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

A man surveys the damage at a home after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza Strip hit in the town of Sderot, southern Israel Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Mourners attend the funeral of three members of Imad Al-deen family who were killed in the Israeli bombardment in Bureij, central Gaza Strip, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Mourners attend the funeral of three members of Imad Al-deen family who were killed in the Israeli bombardment in Bureij, central Gaza Strip, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

A man surveys a damaged home after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza Strip hit in the town of Sderot, southern Israel Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot, southern Israel, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

An Israeli army flare is seen over the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot, southern Israel, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Israeli policemen block a main road after gunmen opened fire on cars and a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank, killing at least three people, near the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 44 years after Jimmy Carter left the nation's capital in humbling defeat, the 39th president returns to Washington for three days of state funeral rites starting Tuesday.

Carter’s remains, which have been lying in repose at the Carter Presidential Center since Saturday, left the Atlanta campus Tuesday morning, accompanied by his children and extended family. Special Air Mission 39 will depart Dobbins Air Reserve Base north of Atlanta and arrive at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, with a motorcade into Washington and the Capitol, where members of Congress will pay their respects at a service scheduled for 4:30 p.m. EST.

Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, will then lie in state Tuesday night and again Wednesday. He receives a state funeral Thursday at Washington National Cathedral. President Joe Biden will deliver a eulogy.

There are the familiar rituals that follow a president’s death — the Air Force ride back to the Beltway, a military honor guard carrying a flag-draped casket up the Capitol steps, the Lincoln catafalque in the Rotunda.

There also will be symbolism unique to Carter. As he was carried from his presidential center, a military band played hymns — “Amazing Grace” and “Blessed Assurance” for the outspoken Baptist evangelical who called himself a “born-again Christian” when he sought and won the presidency in 1976. In Washington, his hearse will stop at the U.S. Navy Memorial, where his remains will be transferred to a horse-drawn caisson for rest of his trip to the Capitol. The location nods to Carter’s place as the lone U.S. Naval Academy graduate to become commander in chief.

All of the pomp will carry some irony for the Democrat who went from his family peanut warehouse to the Governor’s Mansion and eventually the White House. Carter won the presidency as the smiling Southerner and technocratic engineer who promised to change the ways of Washington — and eschewed many of those unwritten rules when he got there.

“Jimmy Carter was always an outsider,” said biographer Jonathan Alter, explaining how Carter capitalized on the fallout of the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon. “The country was thirsting for moral renewal and for Carter, as this genuinely religious figure, to come in and clean things up."

From 1977 to 1981, Carter was the city’s highest-ranking resident. But he never mastered it.

“He could be prickly and a not very appealing personality” in a town that thrives on relationships, Alter said, describing a president who struggled with schmoozing lawmakers and reporters.

The gatekeepers of Washington society never embraced Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, either, not quite knowing what to make of the small-town Southerners who carried their own luggage and bought their clothes off the rack. Carter sold what had been the presidential yacht, a perk his predecessors had used to wine and dine Capitol power players.

Early in Carter’s presidency, Washington Post society columnist Sally Quinn tagged the Carters and their West Wing as “an alien tribe,” incapable of “playing ‘the game.’” An elite Georgetown hostess herself, Quinn nodded to Washington’s “frivolity” but nonetheless mocked “the Carter people” as “not, in fact, comfortable in limousines, yachts, or in elegant salons, in black tie” or with “place cards, servants, six courses, different forks, three wines ... and after-dinner mingling.”

He endured a rocky four years that left him without enough friends in the town’s power circles and, ultimately, across an electorate that delivered nearly 500 Electoral College votes to Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Long after leaving office, Carter still bemoaned a political cartoon published around his inauguration that depicted his family approaching the White House with his mother, “Miss Lillian,” chewing on a hayseed.

Carter often flouted the ceremonial trappings that have been on display in Georgia and will continue in Washington.

As president, he wanted to keep the Marine Band from playing “Hail to the Chief,” thinking it elevated the president too much. His advisers convinced him to accept it as part of the job. The song played Saturday as he arrived at his presidential center after a motorcade through his hometown of Plains and past his boyhood farm. It played again as his remains were carried out on their way to Washington.

He also never used his full name, James Earl Carter Jr., even taking the oath of office. His full name was printed on memorial cards given to all mourners who paid their respects in Atlanta.

He once addressed the nation from the White House residence wearing a cardigan, now on display at his museum and library. His remains now rest in a wooden casket being carried and guarded by military pallbearers in their impeccable dress uniforms.

“He was a simple man in so many ways,” said Brad Webb, an Army veteran who was one of more than 23,000 people who came to honor the former president at his library, which is on the same campus as The Carter Center, where the former president and first lady based their decades of advocacy for democracy, public health and human rights in the developing world.

“He was also a complicated man, who took his defeat and did so much good in the world," said Webb, who voted for Republican Gerald Ford in 1976 and Reagan in 1980. “And, looking back, some of the things in his presidency — the inflation, the Iran hostages, the energy crisis — were really things that no president can actually control. We get to look back with some perspective and understand that he was an excellent former president but also had a presidency we can appreciate more than we did as it was happening.”

People engage in a snowball fight as U.S. flags, along the base of the Washington Monument, fly at half-staff in memorial to former President Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100, in Washington, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Mourners view the casket of former President Jimmy Carter as he lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

Annabeth Mellon becomes emotional while viewing the casket of former President Jimmy Carter as he lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

Mourners hold remembrance cards as they view the casket of former President Jimmy Carter as he lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (Erik S. Lesser/Pool via AP)

A mourner carries a picture of former President Jimmy Carter as she stands near his casket as he lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (Joe Raedle/Pool via AP)

The joint services military honor guard stand around the casket of former President Jimmy Carter as he lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

Mourners view the changing of guard of the joint services military honor guard as the casket of former President Jimmy Carter as he lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)