FLORIDA: No mention of fire arms or gun control, President Donald Trump's statement Thursday skirted the big issues and demanded to know how a “disturbed” former student with an obsession with firearms slipped through the net to sow carnage at a Florida high school, killing at least 17 people in the latest gun massacre to rock the nation.
The 19-year-old suspect Nikolas Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder over Wednesday’s deadly rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, America’s worst school shooting since the Sandy Hook massacre left 20 children and six teachers dead in 2012.
After a night of questioning in police custody, the young man was reportedly transferred to a local Florida jail early yesterday.
Trump ordered flags to fly at half-staff and was to deliver a televised address later Thursday, to a nation stunned by the mounting toll of school shootings which US authorities have so far appeared powerless to stop.
Wednesday’s harrowing shooting spree saw terrified students hiding in closets and under desks as they texted for help, while the gunman stalked the school with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle.
Fifteen people were killed at the school itself, and two later died in hospital. One of those killed was a football coach in Parkland, a city of about 30,000 people, located 50 miles north of Miami.
The president weighed in on the tragedy on Twitter by pointing to indications the shooter — who had been expelled for disciplinary reasons — was “mentally disturbed.”
“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior,” Trump wrote.
“Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!“
Cruz was reportedly known to have firearms at home and had talked about using them.
A teacher at the school said Cruz had been identified previously as a potential threat to his classmates.
“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” math teacher Jim Gard said in a Miami Herald interview.
“There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”
According to a BuzzFeed report, the FBI had been informed Cruz could carry out a school shooting last year, after the teen commented on a video: “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”
The creator of the video tipped off both the FBI and YouTube, BuzzFeed said.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Thursday called Cruz a “deeply disturbed person,” and questioned how the teenager “escaped detection, was able to acquire this weapon, and then go on and kill 17 people and injure many more.”
“This was someone that people knew was a danger,” Rubio said.
The United States has been hit by almost 20 school shootings since the start of the year, a terrifying phenomenon that is part of a broader epidemic of gun violence in a country that loses 33,000 people to gun-related deaths each year.
While the latest mass shooting has inevitably reignited questions about America’s permissive gun laws, Trump — who is the first president to have addressed the NRA gun lobby — is staunchly opposed to any additional gun control.
Opponents of gun control have consistently sought to steer public debate away from the issue, and onto the behavior and motives of people using the weapons.
When questioned at a press conference late Wednesday, Florida Governor Rick Scott — who described the massacre as “just pure evil” — declined to make a statement on gun control.
“There’s a time to continue to have these conversations about how through law enforcement, how through mental illness funding that we make sure people are safe, and we’ll continue to do that,” said Scott, a Republican.
Cruz had mixed in with students fleeing the school before being caught, officials said.
“We have already begun to dissect his websites and things on social media that he was on and some of the things... are very, very disturbing,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.
“If a person is predisposed to commit such a horrific event by going to a school and shooting people ... there’s not anybody or not a lot law enforcement can do about it.”
“This is a terrible day for Parkland,” Israel said.
The FBI said it was assisting local law enforcement with the investigation.
Parkland Mayor Christine Hunschofsky said a police officer was always stationed at the school and there was a “single point of entry.”
Since January 2013, there have been at least 291 school shootings across the country — an average of about one a week, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit group that advocates for gun control.
“It is pretty clear that we’re failing our kids here,” said Melissa Falkowski, a teacher who squeezed 19 students into a closet to shield them from harm.
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Trump demands answers after 17 gunned down at Florida school
Trump demands answers after 17 gunned down at Florida school
Young Palestinian boy drowns in muddy water flooding his Gaza tent camp, UN says
JERUSALEM: The UN said Thursday that a Palestinian boy in the Gaza Strip drowned in floods that engulfed his tent camp, with videos showing rescuers trying to pry his body out of muddy waters by pulling him by the ankle. It was the latest sign of the miseries that winter is inflicting on the territory’s population, with many left homeless by the devastation from two years of war.
Health officials also reported the death of another 9 year-old boy in Gaza Thursday, but the circumstances were not clear.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli forces carried out a sweep of arrests, seizing around 50 Palestinians, many from their homes, a Palestinian group representing prisoners said.
As 2026 begins, the shaky 12-week-old ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has largely ended large-scale Israeli bombardment of Gaza. But Palestinians are still being killed almost daily by Israeli fire, and the humanitarian crisis shows no signs of abating. At least three Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the ceasefire came down, killed by militant attacks or explosive detonations.
Young boy drowned from flooding
UNICEF said Thursday that 7-year-old Ata Mai had drowned Saturday in severe flooding that engulfed his tent camp in Gaza City. Mai’s was the latest child death reported in Gaza as storms, cold weather and flooding worsen already brutal living conditions. Almost the entire population of more than 2 million people have lost their homes, and most are living in squalid tent camps with little protection from the weather.
UNICEF said Mai had been living with his younger siblings and family in a camp of around 40 tents. They lost their mother earlier in the war.
Video from Civil Defense teams, shown on Al Jazeera, showed rescue workers trying to get Mai’s body out of what appeared to be a pit filled with muddy water surrounded by wreckage of bombed buildings. The men waded into the water, pulling at the boy’s ankle, the only part of his body visible. Later, the body is shown wrapped in a muddy cloth being loaded into an ambulance.
Over past weeks, cold winter rains have repeatedly lashed the sprawling tent cities, causing flooding, turning Gaza’s dirt roads into mud and causing buildings damaged in Israeli bombardment to collapse. UNICEF says at least six children, including Mai, have now died of weather-related causes, including a 4-year-old who died in a building collapse.
The Gaza Ministry of Health says three children have died of hypothermia.
“Teams visiting displacement camps reported appalling conditions that no child should endure, with many tents blown away or collapsing entirely,” said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa division.
West Bank arrest raid
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Israeli troops had arrested at least 50 Palestinians across the West Bank and interrogated many of them overnight. Most of the arrests occurred in the Ramallah area, said the group, which is an official body within the Palestinian Authority.
“These operations were accompanied by widespread raids, abuse and assault against detainees and their families, in addition to extensive acts of vandalism and destruction inside citizens’ homes,” the group alleged.
Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the raid.
The society says that Israel has arrested 7,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem this year, and 21,000 since the war began Oct. 7, 2023. The number arrested from Gaza is not made public by Israel.
Violence in the West Bank has surged during the war in Gaza, with the Israeli military carrying out large-scale operations targeting militants that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. There has also been a rise in Israeli settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Boy in Gaza dies
A nine-year-old boy, Youssef Shandaghi, died in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, not far from the so-called “Yellow Line,” the ceasefire demarcation between the more than half of the Gaza Strip still held by the Israeli military and the rest of the territory, where most of the population lives.
Two officials from Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, Director Mohammed Abu Selmiya and Managing Director Rami Mhanna, said the boy was killed by Israeli gunfire coming from across the Yellow Line. Abu Selmiya cited the report from the doctor who received Shandaghi’s body. Israel’s military said it had no knowledge of the incident.
But an uncle of the boy said he was killed by unexploded ordnance he had come across while playing. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting accounts.
Israeli troops almost daily open fire on Palestinians who come too close to the Yellow Line, often killing or wounding some, according to medical personnel and witnesses. The Israeli military says it fires warning shots if someone crosses the line and fires at anyone judged to be posing a threat to troops. It has acknowledged some civilians have been killed, including young children.
Since the ceasefire began, 416 Palestinians have been killed and 1,142 wounded in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry. The overall Palestinian death toll from the war is at least 71,271. The ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its count, is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.
Health officials also reported the death of another 9 year-old boy in Gaza Thursday, but the circumstances were not clear.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli forces carried out a sweep of arrests, seizing around 50 Palestinians, many from their homes, a Palestinian group representing prisoners said.
As 2026 begins, the shaky 12-week-old ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has largely ended large-scale Israeli bombardment of Gaza. But Palestinians are still being killed almost daily by Israeli fire, and the humanitarian crisis shows no signs of abating. At least three Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the ceasefire came down, killed by militant attacks or explosive detonations.
Young boy drowned from flooding
UNICEF said Thursday that 7-year-old Ata Mai had drowned Saturday in severe flooding that engulfed his tent camp in Gaza City. Mai’s was the latest child death reported in Gaza as storms, cold weather and flooding worsen already brutal living conditions. Almost the entire population of more than 2 million people have lost their homes, and most are living in squalid tent camps with little protection from the weather.
UNICEF said Mai had been living with his younger siblings and family in a camp of around 40 tents. They lost their mother earlier in the war.
Video from Civil Defense teams, shown on Al Jazeera, showed rescue workers trying to get Mai’s body out of what appeared to be a pit filled with muddy water surrounded by wreckage of bombed buildings. The men waded into the water, pulling at the boy’s ankle, the only part of his body visible. Later, the body is shown wrapped in a muddy cloth being loaded into an ambulance.
Over past weeks, cold winter rains have repeatedly lashed the sprawling tent cities, causing flooding, turning Gaza’s dirt roads into mud and causing buildings damaged in Israeli bombardment to collapse. UNICEF says at least six children, including Mai, have now died of weather-related causes, including a 4-year-old who died in a building collapse.
The Gaza Ministry of Health says three children have died of hypothermia.
“Teams visiting displacement camps reported appalling conditions that no child should endure, with many tents blown away or collapsing entirely,” said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa division.
West Bank arrest raid
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Israeli troops had arrested at least 50 Palestinians across the West Bank and interrogated many of them overnight. Most of the arrests occurred in the Ramallah area, said the group, which is an official body within the Palestinian Authority.
“These operations were accompanied by widespread raids, abuse and assault against detainees and their families, in addition to extensive acts of vandalism and destruction inside citizens’ homes,” the group alleged.
Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the raid.
The society says that Israel has arrested 7,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem this year, and 21,000 since the war began Oct. 7, 2023. The number arrested from Gaza is not made public by Israel.
Violence in the West Bank has surged during the war in Gaza, with the Israeli military carrying out large-scale operations targeting militants that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. There has also been a rise in Israeli settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Boy in Gaza dies
A nine-year-old boy, Youssef Shandaghi, died in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, not far from the so-called “Yellow Line,” the ceasefire demarcation between the more than half of the Gaza Strip still held by the Israeli military and the rest of the territory, where most of the population lives.
Two officials from Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, Director Mohammed Abu Selmiya and Managing Director Rami Mhanna, said the boy was killed by Israeli gunfire coming from across the Yellow Line. Abu Selmiya cited the report from the doctor who received Shandaghi’s body. Israel’s military said it had no knowledge of the incident.
But an uncle of the boy said he was killed by unexploded ordnance he had come across while playing. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting accounts.
Israeli troops almost daily open fire on Palestinians who come too close to the Yellow Line, often killing or wounding some, according to medical personnel and witnesses. The Israeli military says it fires warning shots if someone crosses the line and fires at anyone judged to be posing a threat to troops. It has acknowledged some civilians have been killed, including young children.
Since the ceasefire began, 416 Palestinians have been killed and 1,142 wounded in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry. The overall Palestinian death toll from the war is at least 71,271. The ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its count, is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.
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