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The strike on the high-rise came nearly an hour after the military ordered people to evacuate the 12-story building, which also housed Al-Jazeera, other offices and residential apartments. The strike brought down the entire structure, which collapsed in a gigantic cloud of dust.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike on Saturday targeted and destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets. Hours later, Israel bombed the home of Khalil al-Hayeh, a top leader of Gaza’s ruling militant Hamas group.

The Israeli military said Al-Hayeh’s home served as part of what it said was the militant group’s “terrorist infrastructure.” Al-Hayeh is a senior figure in the Hamas political leadership in Gaza, and the attack marked a further escalation, signaling that Israel is going after Hamas’ top leadership, and not just military commanders. His fate after the strike was not immediately known.

Earlier, AP staffers and other tenants safely evacuated the building after the military telephoned a warning that the strike was imminent within an hour. Three heavy missiles struck the 12-story building, collapsing it in a giant cloud of dust.

For 15 years, the AP’s top-floor office and roof terrace were a prime location for covering Israel’s conflicts with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, including wars in 2009 and 2014. The news agency’s camera offered 24-hour live shots as militants’ rockets arched toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes hammered the city and its surrounding area this week.

“The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today,” AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement. “We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.”

“This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life,” he said, adding that the AP was seeking information from the Israeli government and was engaged with the U.S. State Department to learn more.

The building also housed the offices of Qatari-run Al-Jazeera TV, as well as residential apartments. The Israeli military said Hamas was operating inside the building, a standard explanation, and it accused the militant group of using journalists as human shields. But it provided no evidence to back up the claims.

Hours earlier, another Israeli air raid on a densely populated refugee camp killed at least 10 Palestinians from an extended family, mostly children, the deadliest single strike of the current conflict.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists demanded Israel “provide a detailed and documented justification” for the strike.

“This latest attack on a building long known by Israel to house international media raises the specter that the Israel Defense Forces is deliberately targeting media facilities in order to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza,” the group’s executive director, Joel Simon, said in a statement.

Since Monday night, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, which has pounded the Gaza Strip with strikes. In Gaza, at least 139 people have been killed, including 39 children and 22 women; in Israel, eight people have been killed, including a man killed by a rocket that hit in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv, on Saturday.

The latest outburst of violence started in Jerusalem and spread across the region over the past week, with Jewish-Arab clashes and rioting in mixed cities of Israel. There were also widespread Palestinian protests Friday in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot and killed 11 people.

The spiraling violence has raised fears of a new Palestinian “intifada,” or uprising, when peace talks have not taken place in years. Palestinians on Saturday were marking Nakba (Catastrophe) Day, when they commemorate the estimated 700,000 people who were expelled from or fled their homes in what was now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. That raised the possibility of even more unrest.

U.S. diplomat Hady Amr arrived Friday as part of Washington’s efforts to de-escalate the conflict, and the U.N. Security Council was set to meet Sunday. But Israel turned down an Egyptian proposal for a one-year truce that Hamas rulers had accepted, an Egyptian official said Friday on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.

As the hostilities continued, an Israeli bombardment struck a three-story house in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp on Saturday morning, killing eight children aged 14 and under and two women from an extended family.

Mohammed Hadidi told reporters his wife and five children had gone to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday with her brother’s wife and three of their children. All were killed instantly, he said. The only known survivor from Hadidi’s family was his 5-month-old son Omar; another son, 11-year-old Yahya, was missing, he said.

Children’s toys and a Monopoly board game could be seen among the rubble, as well as plates of uneaten food from the holiday gathering.

“There was no warning,” Jamal Al-Naji, a neighbor living in the same building, said. “You filmed people eating and then you bombed them?” he said, addressing Israel. “Why are you confronting us? Go and confront the strong people!”

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hamas said it fired a salvo of rockets at southern Israel in response to the airstrike.

The strike on the building housing media offices came in the afternoon, after the owner received a call from the Israeli military warning that the building would be hit within the hour. A video broadcast by Al-Jazeera showed the building’s owner, Jawwad Mahdi, pleading over the phone with an Israeli intelligence officer to wait 10 minutes to allow journalists to go inside the building to retrieve valuable equipment before it is bombed.

“All I’m asking is to let four people … to go inside and get their cameras,” he says. “We respect your wishes, we will not do it if you don’t allow it, but give us 10 minutes.” When the officer rejected the request, Mahdi said, “You have destroyed our life’s work, memories, life. I will hang up, do what you want. There is a God.”

Al-Jazeera, the news network funded by Qatar’s government, broadcast the airstrikes live as the building collapsed.

“This channel will not be silenced. Al-Jazeera will not be silenced,” Halla Mohieddeen. on-air anchorperson for Al-Jazeera English said, her voice thick with emotion. “We can guarantee you that right now.”

Later in the day, the White House responded by saying Israel had a “paramount responsibility” to ensure the safety of journalists covering the spiraling conflict. U.S. President Joe Biden has urged a deescalation in the 5-day conflict between Hamas and Israel, but has publicly backed Israel’s right to self-defense from Hamas rockets fired from Gaza.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Saturday that the U.S. had “communicated directly to the Israelis that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility.”

A furious Israeli barrage early Friday killed a family of six in their house and sent thousands fleeing to U.N.-run shelters. The military said the operation involved 160 warplanes dropping some 80 tons of explosives over the course of 40 minutes and succeeded in destroying a vast tunnel network used by Hamas.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said the military aims to minimize collateral damage in striking military targets. But measures it takes in other strikes, such as warning shots to get civilians to leave, were not “feasible this time.”

Israeli media said the military believed dozens of militants were killed inside the tunnels. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups have confirmed 20 deaths in their ranks, but the military said the real number is far higher.

Gaza’s infrastructure, already in widespread disrepair because of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas seized power in 2007, showed signs of breaking down further, compounding residents’ misery. The territory’s sole power plant is at risk of running out of fuel in the coming days.

The U.N. said Gazans already are experiencing daily power cuts of 8-12 hours and at least 230,000 have limited access to tap water. The impoverished and densely populated territory is home to 2 million Palestinians, most of them the descendants of refugees from what is now Israel.

The conflict has reverberated widely. Israeli cities with mixed Arab and Jewish populations have seen nightly violence, with mobs from each community fighting in the streets and trashing each other’s property.

Late on Friday, someone threw a firebomb at an Arab family’s home in the Ajami neighborhood of Tel Aviv, striking two children. A 12-year-old boy was in moderate condition with burns on his upper body and a 10-year-old girl was treated for a head injury, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.

The tensions began in east Jerusalem earlier this month, with Palestinian protests against attempts by settlers to forcibly evict a number of Palestinian families from their homes and Israeli police measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque, a frequent flashpoint located on a mount in the Old City revered by Muslims and Jews.

Hamas fired rockets toward Jerusalem late Monday, in an apparent attempt to present itself as the champion of the protesters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Hamas will “pay a very heavy price” for its rocket attacks.

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Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed.

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The gunshots rang out from a parking garage connected to a luxury high-rise condominium in a bustling area of River North near Dearborn Street.

Three men were shot during a gunfight at a parking garage on a busy Near North Side block Saturday morning, authorities said.

The men were “all shooting at each other” about 9:50 a.m. in the first block of West Grand Avenue, according to preliminary information from Chicago police.

Two men were taken with gunshot wounds in serious-to-critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, fire officials said. A third was taken to Stroger Hospital in fair-to-serious condition.

The gunshots rang out from a parking garage connected to a luxury high-rise condominium in a bustling area of River North near Dearborn Street.

Officers at the scene told an employee at a nearby business that there were five suspects and two were in custody.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Red Line trains were bypassing the Grand station as police investigated, according to an alert from the CTA.

Confused tourists trying to find the underground train line gawked at the rain-soaked crime scene. Residents in the area also stopped to try to learn more about what happened.

Police blocked vehicular traffic on Grand Avenue between Dearborn Street and Wabash Avenue. Meanwhile, pedestrians were blocked from walking on Grand Avenue between State Street and Dearborn.

At least 18 other people have been shot across the city in separate attacks since Friday evening.

This is a developing story. Check back soon for more.

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The Public League and Bogan High School lost an important figure in their community on Friday. 

The Public League and Bogan High School lost an important figure in their community on Friday.

Bengals boys basketball coach Arthur Goodwin, who led the Bengals to a state runner-up finish in 2019, died Friday. He was 54.

Goodwin won nine regional championships, two sectional titles and a Public League championship in 2015. His 2018-19 team that lost in overtime to East St. Louis in the Class 3A state championship won a school record 30 games.

But the impact Goodwin, a 1985 graduate of South Shore, had on the players in his program was resounding. Goodwin was not only a program builder but a nurturer of players. The behind-the-scenes care he had for those players and relationships he built — and the importance of that — will be missed.

Jordan “Tiger” Booker was a star for Goodwin and the Bengals. The small point guard was a dynamic force for Goodwin and team leader of the 2018-19 team. More importantly, he embodied everything Goodwin pushed his players to be.

“He was way more than a coach to me and all of us,” said Booker. “We talked about everything but basketball. The relationship and friendship went way beyond basketball. At Bogan, it’s a real family, and it’s because we had a coach like him.”

Booker reminisced about how he and his teammates would show up at Goodwin’s house at all hours of the day and night. The coach would open his door and the fun would begin.

“We would eat all his food in the kitchen and hook up our video games to his TV,” said Booker. “We would spend hours and hours in that house laughing.”

An emotional Booker, who played this past season at Odessa Junior College in Texas, said he talked to Goodwin nearly every day since he left high school.

“That’s going to be the hardest part,” said Booker, fighting back tears. “Not being able to do that …”

Bogan was known more for how they played than who played for them. Over the years there was consistently more heart, hustle and toughness than Division I talent in the program. Yet the Bengals have gone 258-81 over the past 12 years.

“It’s a big, big loss for so many people,” said Simeon coach Robert Smith, who has battled Goodwin and Bogan in the Red-South for many years. “He’s a great guy, a good friend and a coach who has done so much for kids in Chicago. This is tough.”

Bogan basketball was built by Goodwin. The program was virtually non-existent prior to the arrival of “Goodie,” the name everyone called the fun, easy-to-like and quotable coach. The Bengals arrived as a powerhouse over the past decade.

“Goodie took players and teams to another level,” said Smith. “He won all those games and had all that success and did so without big-named players. He got them to play hard, compete and play together.”

And no one wanted to go into Bogan and play a Goodie-coached team. With the combination of how Goodwin’s teams played and the cramped quarters of the Bogan gym, there was always extra emotion in any Bengals home game.

Veteran assistant coach Mark Lester has been on the Bogan bench with Goodwin for the past 11 years. Like Booker, Lester is going to miss the day-to-day conversations he had with Goodwin.

“For me personally, it’s like losing a brother,” said a choked up Lester. “We talked every single day for 11 or 12 years. That’s what is going to hurt –– the talks and discussions about life, basketball, everything.”

But Lester made a point of just how much Goodwin meant to Bogan and the important role he had in the building. Lester said Goodwin made an impact on all Bogan students.

“It wasn’t just the basketball players he cared about,” said Lester. “He was in that school every day, engaged with students, teachers and staff. When there was a problem, people would go to him. He knew how to lead, move things along.”

Lester watched and learned along the way as an assistant under Goodwin. He saw the relationships he built with his players and the impact they had. Lester says Goodwin was always able to deliver a message that kids could relate to, and it was because he knew them so well.

“He had an uncanny ability to identify the strengths and weaknesses of every kid, and he treated them each individually,” said Lester of Goodwin’s approach to his players. “He wanted to know everything about a kid. Everything. He wanted to know even after the players left his program. He wanted to keep up with where all of them were in their life. He never let any relationship go.”

Arthur Goodwin at Bogan

2009-10: 23-8
2010-11: 18-8
2011-12: 26-4
2012-13: 17-10
2013-14: 27-6
2014-15: 245-7
2015-16: 20-8
2016-17: 19-8
2017-18: 21-9
2018-19: 30-4
2019-20: 28-3
2020-21: 4-6
Total: 258-81

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The incidents with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez add to a portrait of the activist-turned-lawmaker who has shown little interest in governing, but has instead used her platform to float conspiracy theories, push Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election and further her own notoriety.

WASHINGTON — A year before her election to Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene searched for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at her Capitol office, taunting the New York Democrat to “get rid of your diaper” and “talk to the American citizens,” as shown in video unearthed by CNN.

“I am an American citizen. I pay your salary through the taxes that you collect from me through the IRS,” Greene says through the mail slot of a locked door. “I am a woman. I am a female business owner and I’m proud to be an American woman. And I do not support your socialist policies.”

The Georgia Republican continued: “If you want to be a big girl, you need to get rid of your diaper and come out and be able to talk to the American citizens.” Two men appear along with her in the video, also mocking Ocasio-Cortez and her staff through the mail slot.

The release of the since-deleted video, which was initially broadcast in February 2019 on Facebook Live, came the same week that Greene followed Ocasio-Cortez off the House floor, shouting that the Democrat supported “terrorists” and doesn’t “care about the American people,” as first reported by The Washington Post. She has been challenging Ocasio-Cortez to a debate on Twitter, entreaties that Ocasio-Cortez had been ignoring.

Asked Friday about the “context” of the 2019 video, Greene told reporters, “Walking around and talking to members of Congress who serve the taxpayers that, now we’ve got taxpayers aren’t even allowed to come talk to us, that’s the context.”

The incidents add to a portrait of the activist-turned-lawmaker who has shown little interest in governing, but has instead used her platform to float conspiracy theories, push Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election and further her own notoriety. Her combativeness toward colleagues has only grown after an unprecedented rebuke where the House stripped her of committee assignments, effectively ending her ability to shape legislation.

Another confrontation Friday involved a member of her staff.

Rep. Eric Swalwell said a staffer for Greene yelled at him to take his mask off after stepping off the House floor, an unusual of breach of decorum. Though the CDC has relaxed mask-wearing guidelines for those who have been vaccinated, many lawmakers continue to wear them, and they are still required on the House floor.

“I had a mask on as I stepped off the Floor. An aide with @mtgreenee yelled at me to take my mask off. No one should be bullied for wearing a mask,”’ Swalwell tweeted. “So I told the bully what I thought of his order.”

On Twitter Friday, Greene said she had witnessed the confrontation and claimed, “No one yelled.”

Greene’s behavior has alarmed some members of Congress, where feelings remain raw after the deadly Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters intent on overturning the outcome of the 2020 election.

“This is a woman that’s deeply unwell and clearly needs some help,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters Friday. “Her kind of fixation has lasted for several years now” and the “depth of that unwellness has raised concerns for other members, as well.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Greene’s behavior was “beyond the pale” and raised the possibility of an ethics investigation.

“This is beneath the dignity of a person serving in the Congress of the United States and is a cause for trauma, and fear among members, especially on the heels of an insurrection,” Pelosi said Thursday.

Yet so far, Republicans have shown little appetite for punishing Greene. They rallied around her in February after some of her past comments came to light, including her endorsement of calls to assassinate leading Democrats. That left it to Democrats, who were joined by 11 Republicans, in voting to strip her of her committee assignments.

As a congressional candidate, Greene posted a photo in 2020 of herself with a gun next to images of Ocasio-Cortez and fellow Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

Before her election, she also supported Facebook posts that advocated violence against Democrats and the FBI. One suggested shooting Pelosi in the head. In response to a post raising the prospect of hanging former President Barack Obama, Greene responded that the “stage is being set.”

In one 2018 Facebook posts, she speculated that “lasers or blue beams of light” controlled by a left-wing cabal tied to a powerful Jewish family could have been responsible for sparking California wildfires.

And in February 2019, Greene appeared in another online video filmed at the U.S. Capitol, arguing that Omar and Tlaib weren’t “really official” members of Congress because they didn’t take the oath of office on the Bible. Both women are Muslim.

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The shooting happened shortly after 3 a.m. in the 7800 block of South Loomis Boulevard, fire officials said.

Two people were killed and three others wounded in a shooting early Saturday at a party in Gresham on the South Side.

Several people were at a gathering in the 7800 block of South Loomis Boulevard when a gunman opened fire shortly after 3 a.m., according to Chicago police.

A 26-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the head and was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was later pronounced dead, police said.

A 21-year-old was also struck in the head and taken to the same hospital, where he later died, police said.

A 25-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder and was also taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, police said.

Another man, 23, suffered two gunshot wounds to the right arm and was transported to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in critical condition, police said. A fifth man, 21, was struck in the shoulder and listed in fair condition at the same hospital, according to police.

No arrests have been reported.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

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Red Line trains were bypassing the Grand station as police investigate, according to an alert from the CTA.

Three people were shot Saturday morning on the Near North Side, officials said.

The shooting happened about 9:50 a.m. near Dearborn Street and Grand Avenue, according to Chicago fire officials.

Two men were taken with gunshot wounds in serious-to-critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, officials said. A third was taken to Stroger Hospital in fair-to-serious condition.

Chicago police didn’t immediately release details.

Red Line trains were bypassing the Grand station as police investigate, according to an alert from the CTA.

At least 18 other people have been shot across the city in separate attacks since Friday evening.

This is a developing story. Check back soon for more.

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If BGA President and CEO David Greising were a teacher filling out Lightfoot’s report card, he’d say she has the most “room for improvement” in the category of “works well with others.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot cannot be “written off completely,” but she has “a lot of work to do” to have even a shot at re-election.

That’s the bottom-line, mid-term assessment of Lightfoot from David Greising, president and CEO of the Better Government Association.

If Greising were a teacher filling out Lightfoot’s report card, he’d say the biggest “room for improvement” is in the “works well with others” category.

So far, Lightfoot hasn’t. In fact, her abrasive, micro-managing style and thin-skinned propensity to take things personally and lash out is alienating people and driving them away.

“Lori Lightfoot’s pique, her vulgar statements, her open personal animosity toward some of the people she gets caught up with doesn’t necessarily seem to advance an agenda. It looks more like a lack of discipline on her part. She keeps shooting herself in the foot,” Greising told the Sun-Times.

Greising pointed to Lightfoot’s recurring tension with Gov. J. B. Pritzker and her string of recent losses in the Illinois General Assembly.

That includes expanded bargaining rights for the Chicago Teachers Union and a pension sweetener for Chicago firefighters — likely to be followed by a sweetener for Chicago police officer pensions, too.

“Why is she at odds with Gov. J.B.. Pritzker? … Can she potentially salvage that relationship and make it something constructive? Can she get something done in Springfield, which so far, she’s not done very well in? There are some things she could fix if she chooses to,” Greising said.

“But it gets back to that question of her personal discipline, her sense of isolation. What sometimes appears to be almost a sense of paranoia that she just is wary of everybody she’s dealing with. … If she can’t address those issues, then her viability if she chooses to run for re-election will be compromised.”

Aside from the persistent questions about Lightfoot’s temperament, Greising said the mayor’s greatest weaknesses have been in areas expected to be her greatest strengths: public safety and police reform.

Lightfoot made her political bones on those issues. She’s a former Chicago Police Board president who co-chaired the Task Force on Police Accountability amid the furor that followed the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.

In 2015, Mayor Rahm Emanuel was ordered to release the video of Officer Jason Van Dyke — later convicted of murder — shooting McDonald 16 times after Emanuel was accused of concealing the video until he was safely reelected.

Lightfoot personally drafted the policy requiring the city to release body-camera and dashcam video of police shootings and other incidents involving cop shootings within 60 days.

She promised during her inaugural address to stop the “epidemic of gun violence that devastates families, shatters communities, holds children hostage to fear in their own homes.”

Yet she hits the midway point with crime and violence far worse than when she walked in.

In March, shootings were up 70% over the same period a year ago. Homicides were up 50%. Carjackings more than doubled.

Her hand-picked police superintendent, David Brown, a retired Dallas police chief, seems overwhelmed by the job. His officers continue to be shot at in record numbers.

“The progress on policing so far has been utterly disappointing. … Some of the videos that have come out have been very disturbing. It almost seems that we’ve made zero progress on addressing some of the serious problems” in the Chicago Police Department, Greising said.

“The hope was that, because she had an inside view of what is wrong with the Chicago Police Department, she would have fixes in mind. And she doesn’t appear to have fixes of her own. Nor does … Brown seem to have a strategy that offers any hope that he really can fix this problem of a high level of violent crime, of rogue policing.”

Progressives had high hopes for Lightfoot, but have been bitterly disappointed by her failure to deliver the elected school board she promised as well as civilian oversight of CPD.

The mayor’s spotty record on environmental issues — including the Hilco smokestack demolition debacle in Little Village and General Iron’s now-stalled move from Lincoln Park to a Southeast Side that has been Chicago’s dumping ground for decades — will be another tough pill for progressives to swallow, Greising said.

The BGA president gives the rookie mayor her highest grades when it comes to the progress she has made toward righting Chicago’s financial ship and in her strong leadership during the pandemic.

He pointed in particular to the tough decision she convinced the City Council to make to raise property taxes by $94 million in 2021 followed by annual increases tied to the consumer price index.

But he saved some of his harshest criticism for her surprisingly poor record on the issues of government openness, transparency and her failure to honor Freedom of Information requests.

Greising pointed to Lightfoot’s “terrible” failure to promptly comply with Freedom of Information requests and to the secret City Council meetings held during the George Floyd demonstrations that the BGA sued the city to stop.

“The city is required to pay the legal fees of anybody who sues under Freedom of Information if the city is not complying with those requests,” and Emanuel wracked up $1.7 million in legal fees over eight years, Greising said..

“In two years, she’s a third of the way toward matching Rahm’s abysmal record,” Greising said.

“From a mayor who promised transparency — for this mayor to have this disappointing a record is really a surprise. … We would look for a lot better from her in the second half of her term.”

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Michael Garcia, 29, was arrested Friday and charged with felony counts of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and armed violence in the Jan. 16 incident, Chicago police said.

A man is facing several charges in connection with a shooting earlier this year in Cragin on the Northwest Side.

Michael Garcia, 29, was arrested Friday and charged with felony counts of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and armed violence in the Jan. 16 incident, Chicago police said.

Garcia allegedly fired on a 35-year-old man at 7:50 p.m. that day in the 5300 block of West Oakdale Avenue, leaving the man critically injured, police said.

Garcia is also charged with heroin and cocaine possession in connection with the shooting, police said.

He was expected to appear at a bond hearing Saturday.

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