Free Republic

Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk was walking alone Tuesday night to meet friends at a dinner where they would break their 13-hour Ramadan fast when six plainclothes officers suddenly encircled her on the street near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, surveillance video shows. The 30-year-old shrieked in fear when an officer in a hooded sweatshirt and hat grabbed her by the wrists as another pulled out a concealed badge on a lanyard and confiscated her cell phone. Soon afterward, the swarm of officers who had surrounded her on the sidewalk pulled cloth coverings over their mouths and noses, some...

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Thousands of Palestinians sheltering from the Israel-Hamas war at Gaza City’s main hospital fled south Friday after several reported strikes in and around the compound overnight. They joined a growing exodus of people escaping intense urban fighting in the north — including near other hospitals — as Gaza officials said the territory’s death toll surpassed 11,000. The search for safety across the besieged Gaza Strip has grown desperate as Israel intensified its assault on the territory’s largest city. The Israeli army says Hamas’ military infrastructure is based amid Gaza City’s hospitals and neighborhoods, and...