A civil liberties organisation in New York is suing US President Joe Biden for allegedly failing in his duties under international and US law to prevent Israel from committing genocide in Gaza. The case filed by the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of multiple Palestinian groups and individuals said that Israel's acts, including "mass killings," targeting of civilian infrastructure, and forced expulsions, amount to genocide, reports The Guardian. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib accuses Biden of supporting genocide in Gaza, says colleagues more focused on silencing her According to the CCR, the 1948 international treaty against genocide demands the United States and other countries to utilise their strength and influence to put an end to the killings, it said. “As Israel’s closest ally and strongest supporter, being its biggest provider of military assistance by a large margin and with Israel being the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II, the United States has the means available to have a deterrent effect on Israeli officials now pursuing genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” mentioned the complaint. Biden calls for humanitarian 'pause' in Israel-Hamas war The complaint, filed in federal court in California, seeks the court to prevent the United States from providing Israel with weapons, money, and diplomatic support. It also demands the president, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin “to take all measures within their power to prevent Israel’s commission of genocidal acts against the Palestinian people of Gaza.” These include putting pressure on Israel to stop bombing Gaza, ease its siege, and prevent the forceful deportation of Palestinians, the report said. The CCR, which won a landmark case in the US Supreme Court in 2004 establishing the rights of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay, stated that the Hamas cross-border attack on October 7, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 were abducted, does not provide legal justification for the scale of Israel's assault on Gaza, which has killed over 11,000 Palestinians, including 4,600 children, and displaced 1.5 million people, it added. Biden wraps up his visit to wartime Israel with a warning against being 'consumed' by rage The case is being filed at the same time that the International Criminal Court is investigating Israel and Hamas for suspected war crimes. However, legal academics argue that genocide is a more difficult crime to establish and question whether the US president can be forced to conclude that Israel is committing genocide and so must intervene.

A series of stabbings at an Indigenous community and at another town nearby in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan left 10 people dead and 15 wounded, Canadian police said Sunday as they searched for two suspects. The stabbings took place in multiple locations on the James Smith Cree Nation and in the village of Weldon, northeast of Saskatoon, police said. Rhonda Blackmore, the Assistant Commissioner of the RCMP Saskatchewan, said some of the victims appear to have been targeted by the suspects but others appear to have been attacked at random. She couldn't provide a motive. "It is horrific what has occurred in our province today,” Blackmore said, adding there were 13 crime scenes where either deceased or injured people were found. It is among the deadliest mass killings in Canadian history. The deadliest gun rampage in Canadian history happened in 2020 when a man disguised as a police officer shot people in their homes and set fires across the province of Nova Scotia, killing 22 people. A man used a van to kill 10 pedestrians in Toronto in 2019. But mass killings are less common in Canada than in the United States. Read: 2 dead after all-night shooting rampage in Vancouver, Canada Blackmore said police began receiving reports before 6 a.m. of stabbings on the First Nation community. More reports of attacks quickly followed and by midday police issued a warning that a vehicle reportedly carrying the two suspects had been spotted in Regina, about 335 kilometers (208 miles) south of the communities where the stabbings occurred. Police said the last information they had from the public was that the suspects were sighted there around lunchtime. There have been no sightings since. “If in the Regina area, take precautions & consider sheltering in place. Do not leave a secure location. DO NOT APPROACH suspicious persons. Do not pick up hitch hikers. Report suspicious persons, emergencies or info to 9-1-1. Do not disclose police locations,” the RCMP said in a message on Twitter. Doreen Lees, an 89-year grandmother from Weldon, said she and her daughter thought they saw one of the suspects when a car came barreling down her street early in the morning as her daughter was having coffee on her deck. Lees said a man approached them and said he was hurt and needed help. But Lees said the man took off and ran after her daughter said she would call for help. “He wouldn’t show his face. He had a big jacket over his face. We asked his name and he kind of mumbled his name twice and we still couldn’t get it,” she said. “He said his face was injured so bad he couldn’t show it.” She said the man was by himself and "kind of a little wobbly.” “I followed him a little ways to see if he was going to be OK. My daughter said ‘Don’t follow him, get back here.’” Weldon resident Diane Shier said she was in her garden Sunday morning when she noticed emergency crews a couple of blocks away. Shier said her neighbor was killed. She did not want to identify the victim out of respect for his family. "I am very upset because I lost a good neighbor,” she said. The search for suspects was carried out as fans descended on Regina for a sold out annual Labor Day game between the Canadian Football League’s Saskatchewan Roughriders and Winnipeg Blue Bombers. The Regina Police Service said in a news release that with the help of Mounties, it was working on several fronts to locate and arrest the suspects and had "deployed additional resources for public safety throughout the city, including the football game at Mosaic Stadium.″ The alert first issued by Melfort, Saskatchewan RCMP about 7 a.m. was extended hours later to cover Manitoba and Alberta, as the two suspects remained at large. Read: Canada protests sound common refrain: ‘We stand for freedom’ Damien Sanderson, 31, was described as five feet seven inches tall and 155 pounds, and Myles Sanderson, 30, as six-foot-one and 200 pounds. They may be driving a black vehicle. Saskatchewan Crime Stoppers issued a wanted list last May that included Myles, writing that he was “unlawfully at large.” The Saskatchewan Health Authority said multiple patients were being treated at several sites. “A call for additional staff was issued to respond to the influx of casualties,” authority spokeswoman Anne Linemann said in an email. Mark Oddan, a spokesman with STARS Air Ambulance, said two helicopters were dispatched from Saskatoon and another from Regina. He said two carried patients to the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, while the third carried a patient to Royal University from a hospital in Melfort, a short distance southeast of Weldon. “The attacks in Saskatchewan today are horrific and heartbreaking. I’m thinking of those who have lost a loved one and of those who were injured,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted. James Smith Cree Nation declared a state of emergency. Deadly mass stabbings are more rare than mass shootings but have happened around the world. In 2014, 29 people were slashed and stabbed to death at a train station in China’s southwestern city of Kunming. In 2016, a mass stabbing at a facility for the mentally disabled in Sagamihara, Japan, left 19 people dead. A year later, three men killed eight people in a vehicle and stabbing attack at London Bridge.

An employee opened fire Wednesday at a California rail yard, killing eight people before taking his own life as law enforcement rushed in, authorities said, marking the latest attack in a year that has seen a sharp increase in mass killings as the nation emerges from coronavirus restrictions. The shooting took place around 6:30 a.m. in two buildings at a light rail facility for the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the most populated county in the San Francisco Bay Area. “When our deputies went through the door, initially he was still firing rounds. When our deputy saw him, he took his life,” Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith told reporters. Deputies “were going through hallways saying, ‘Sheriff’s office!’ He knew at that time that his time for firing shots was over.” The victims, many of them longtime employees of the transit agency, were identified by the Santa Clara County coroner’s office Wednesday night as Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63, and Lars Kepler Lane, 63. Read:2 killed in shooting at Wisconsin casino; gunman slain Their jobs included bus and light rail operators, mechanics, linemen and assistant superintendent. One had worked for the transit authority since 1999. Singh had worked as a light rail train driver for eight or nine years and had a wife, two small children and many family members, said his cousin, Bagga Singh. “We heard that he chose the people to shoot, but I don’t know why they choose him because he has nothing to do with him,” he said. San Jose City Councilman Raul Peralez said Rudometkin was a close friend. “There are no words to describe the heartache we are feeling right now, especially for his family,” he wrote on Facebook. “Eight families are feeling this same sense of loss tonight and our entire community is mourning as well.” The attacker was identified as 57-year-old Sam Cassidy, according to two law enforcement officials. Investigators offered no immediate word on a possible motive. His ex-wife, Cecilia Nelms, told The Associated Press that Cassidy had a bad temper and would tell her that he wanted to kill people at work, “but I never believed him, and it never happened. Until now.” Nelms, teary-eyed and shaken by the news, said her ex-husband would come home wound up and angry about things that happened at work. As he talked about it, “he would get more mad,” she said. “He could dwell on things.” When Cassidy lost his temper, Nelms said there were times she was scared. He was someone who could physically hurt others, she said. Nelms said they were married for 10 years — Cassidy filed for divorce in 2005 — and had not been in contact for 13 years. She said he had been treated for depression. Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Russell Davis said he did not know the type of weapon used in the attack. Bomb squads searched the rail complex after receiving information about possible explosive devices, he said. Members of a union representing Valley Transportation Authority workers were meeting when the shooting began, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said, but it’s not clear the meeting was related to the attack. When she heard shots, transit authority mechanic Rochelle Hawkins said she dropped her phone. Read: Police: FedEx shooter legally bought guns used in shooting “I was running so fast. I just ran for my life,” she said. “I would hope everyone would just pray for the VTA family. Just pray for us.” Other friends and family members awaited news after being unable to reach their loved ones through calls or text messages. Some had tracked the missing person’s cellphone to the rail yard but had no information from authorities. Officials also were investigating a house fire that broke out shortly before the shooting, Davis said. Public records show Cassidy owned the two-story home where firefighters responded after being notified by a passer-by. Law enforcement officers cordoned off the area near the home and went in and out Wednesday. Doug Suh, who lives across the street, told The Mercury News in San Jose that Cassidy seemed “strange” and that he never saw anyone visit. “I’d say hello, and he’d just look at me without saying anything,” Suh said. Once, Cassidy yelled at him to stay away as he was backing up his car. “After that, I never talked to him again.” Cassidy had worked for Valley Transportation Authority since at least 2012, according to the public payroll and pension database Transparent California, first a mechanic from 2012 to 2014, then as someone who maintained substations. Gov. Gavin Newsom, speaking emotionally in front of a county office where flags flew at half-staff, said victims’ relatives were “waiting to hear from the coroner, waiting to hear from any of us, just desperate to find out if their brother, their son, their dad, their mom is still alive.” Another man wounded in the attack was in critical condition at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, spokesperson Joy Alexiou said. The bloodshed comes amid a rise in mass killings after the pandemic had closed many public places and kept people confined to their homes last year. A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks every mass killing over the last 15 years shows that the San Jose attack is the 15th mass killing so far in 2021, all of them shootings. Eighty-six people have died in the shootings, compared with 106 for all of 2020. It is the sixth mass killing in a public place in 2021. The database defines mass killings as four or more people dead, not including the shooter, meaning the overall toll of gun violence is much higher when adding in smaller incidents. At the White House, President Joe Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff and urged Congress to act on legislation to curb gun violence. “Every life that is taken by a bullet pierces the soul of our nation. We can, and we must, do more,” Biden said in a statement. San Jose, the 10th-largest city in the U.S. with more than a million people, is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley. Trains were already out on morning runs when the shooting occurred. Light rail service was suspended and replaced with bus bridges, agency Chairman Glenn Hendricks told reporters. Read: Police ID gunman in FedEx shooting as young male in 20s Wednesday’s attack was Santa Clara County’s second mass shooting in less than two years. A gunman killed three people and then himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019. The Gilroy attack was on Mayor Liccardo’s mind Wednesday as text messages flooded in, reporting the shooting and fire. “Not again,” he thought as he jumped in his car and raced to City Hall. Transit authority workers told him they knew Cassidy. “You try to understand what would possess someone to do that much harm,” Liccardo said by phone. “It’s unfathomable.”

Police on Tuesday identified a 21-year-old man as the suspect in the killing of 10 people at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket.