Gun Violence

Security forces in Jordan are searching for three gunmen who opened fire at a church in Karak governorate on Friday, killing eight people and injuring dozens more, according to Jordan’s Ministry of Health.

King Abdullah II said those behind the attack would face the “harshest penalties”, as he offered his condolences to the victims’ families. He has ordered a review of the country’s security procedures for responding to terrorist attacks.

Authorities are calling this rare attack on a Christian place of worship an act of terror, with the perpetrators yet to be identified.

Here’s what we know about how the attack unfolded, and what was behind it.

What happened during the church shooting in Karak?

On Friday afternoon, three masked gunmen opened fire during a funeral in a Greek Orthodox church in the village of Hamoud.

Survivors said they heard an explosion just after the start of the service. Two attackers who arrived in a vehicle were joined by a third carrying a semi-automatic rifle. They entered the church and opened fire for several minutes.

One survivor, Nasser al-Burqan, a lawyer, told the Reuters news agency that one of the attackers, standing about two metres (6.5 feet) away, pointed a handgun at him and opened fire.

“When everything finally quietened down, I looked out the window behind me, and I saw two [assailants] – one was masked, the other was not; he was carrying a handgun,” said al-Burqan, a lawyer.

Later, his son, who had also been present, called him to say he had been shot in the leg and was being treated in hospital.

Tarek Ammarin, who was visiting a relative injured in the attack, now in hospital, said: “A massacre, a massacre in every sense of the word.”

Bahjat al-Rushda, mayor of Shihan village in Karak, joined a list of officials condemning what he called a “wicked” attack.

“God willing, this country will remain safe,” he said.

State news channel Al-Mamlaka reported that security forces were deployed to the church and were in pursuit of the two suspects who had arrived in a vehicle.

How many people were killed or injured?

Eight people were killed in the shooting, including seven who died at the scene and one who succumbed to her injuries hours after the attack, Jordan’s Petra news agency reported on Saturday.

Of the 40 people injured, 27 are still in hospital. The Director of Prince Ali Military Hospital in Karak said one person is in critical condition, after undergoing surgery.

Who carried out the attack?

The identity of the three attackers has not been confirmed, with government statements referring to them as “unknown assailants”.

Security camera footage of the attack has been circulating online, however. Video broadcast by Al-Mamlaka shows three people shooting outside the church and running towards its entrance.

Other footage also shows the attackers opening fire on a group of men outside the building trying to flee.

Jordan’s Interior Minister Mazin Al-Farrayeh said a group of “extremists” that have “no relationship to humanity” were responsible for the attack, though no specific groups were mentioned.

Why was the church targeted?

Prime Minister Jafar Hassan said on Friday that the attack was a by-product of terrorist ideology and “blind extremism”, but did not give specifics about the attackers.

The motive remains unclear since the attackers’ identities have yet to be revealed.

Where is Karak, and what do we know about its Christian community?

Karak governorate is about 120km (75 miles) south of Amman and is home to many from Jordan’s Christian minority, which makes up about 300,000 of the country’s population of 11.5 million people.

Taylor Luck, senior Middle East correspondent at the Christian Science Monitor, told Al Jazeera that Jordan’s Christians “pride themselves on [their] interfaith solidarity and coexistence”.

He said that Christians and Muslims have lived side-by-side in Karak for generations and that if the attack had been carried out in an attempt to divide the community, it is more likely that the “community come[s] back even stronger”.

Jordan is also home to many biblical sites that draw visitors from around the world.

What has the response been to this shooting?

Several countries, including Azerbaijan, Iraq, Poland, Palestine and Qatar, have issued statements condemning the attack and expressing their solidarity with Jordan.

Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo, a leading Sunni religious institution, offered his condolences to the families of the victims, calling the shooting a “heinous terrorist attack”.

“This crime contradicts the teachings of the Abrahamic religions and reveals that its perpetrators are devoid of all compassion, humanity and morality,” he wrote in a social media post.

The United States embassy in Jordan also released a statement on X offering condolences to victims and survivors of the attack.

“On behalf of the American people, we offer our most heartfelt condolences to the victims and survivors of the terror attack today at a church in Karak, Jordan,” it said.

The Jordanian Prime Minister declared three days of mourning following the attack, with flags to be flown at half-mast over government and public buildings.

Has Jordan experienced similar attacks before?

Yes, although they are rare.

In 2016, the ISIL (ISIS) group carried out a series of attacks across Karak, including a deadly siege on a Crusader-era castle in which 10 people were killed, including a Canadian tourist and seven police officers. Dozens of others were injured.

Four attackers were later killed by Jordanian security forces following a long standoff.

Guatemalan police say they arrested two men in connection with the killing of Juan Francisco Solorzano Foppa.

Lawyer Juan Francisco Solorzano Foppa, known for his high-profile cases against powerful businessmen in Guatemala, has died after being shot by two men during a visit to a sports centre.

The attack on Saturday at the Campo Marte sports complex in Guatemala City resulted in the deaths of Foppa and another man, Gustavo Adolfo Aguilar Gamarro, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Shortly after, the Guatemalan police said they arrested two men and seized a carbine-style firearm and a motorcycle in connection with the case.

Foppa was a 43-year-old former prosecutor and anticorruption lawyer who denounced wrongdoing by some of Guatemala’s most powerful politicians, business leaders and companies, and in 2023 briefly joined the defence team of a prominent journalist.

President Bernardo Arevalo condemned the attack. “I strongly condemn the cowardly murder of former prosecutor Juan Francisco Solorzano Foppa,” he wrote on his official X account. “Both the direct perpetrators and those who ordered the crime must face the full weight of the law.”

Arevalo said he has instructed his government to coordinate with the relevant authorities to solve the crime.

“Those who believe that terror can intimidate the people of Guatemala and the government I lead are mistaken. In honour of Foppa, in honour of our homeland, in honour of justice.”

Foppa headed the Criminal Investigations Directorate within the Public Prosecutor’s Office before he took charge of Guatemala’s tax authority (SAT) from 2016 to 2018, when he helped prosecute dozens of powerful Guatemalan business figures and recover unpaid taxes.

In 2025, Foppa alleged a connection between the Barrio 18 gang and the National Unity of Hope party, as well as links between criminal gangs and the judicial system. In 2023, he briefly joined the defence team of Guatemalan journalist Jose Ruben Zamora, who has become an international symbol of resistance to the criminalisation of journalism and the erosion of judicial independence in Central America.

Foppa had to leave the Zamora case after being accused by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of obstructing the proceedings and destroying or concealing information, a charge he denied but ultimately accepted as part of a plea agreement, saying he did not believe he would receive a fair trial.

For months before carrying out Canada’s deadliest school shooting in almost four decades, Jesse Van Rootselaar was consulting an unlikely adviser on how to perpetrate mass murder.

“In a hallway, indoors, or a crowded classroom, the 870 [Remington shotgun] is brutal … Close quarters is its playground,” OpenAI’s ChatGPT guided the 18-year-old, according to reports.

On February 10, 2026, Van Rootselaar shot his mother and half-brother at home before going to a school in the small British Columbia town of Tumbler Ridge, where he killed another six people – including five students – before taking his own life.

Earlier this week, on October 14, US authorities charged a Washington State man with allegedly conspiring with Van Rootselaar to plan the attack. But the mass shooting incident has raised questions that go beyond the traditional legal understanding of culpability.

The British Columbia government in September filed a civil lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of failing to prevent the incident and claiming they were aware of the conversations that turned deadly. Families of the victims also filed separate lawsuits. OpenAI’s leadership issued a public apology for their failure to notify authorities.

The company has not responded to requests from Al Jazeera for its comments on the lawsuits.

But as the case against OpenAI progresses, it has spurred a familiar debate: Where should a line be drawn between reporting potentially dangerous behaviour and protecting an individual’s privacy?

“The question of whether companies should be required to turn such information over to law enforcement is extraordinarily difficult, particularly if they don’t already screen chats for indications of such types of threats,” United States-based civil liberties lawyer Jenin Younes told Al Jazeera.

“Forcing companies to implement a surveillance system implicates very serious civil liberties concerns, and that’s probably a bridge too far for me,” Younes added.

“On the other hand, AI gives individuals access to types and quantities of information they didn’t have previously that may facilitate the commission of mass casualty events, a concern it’s not easy to dismiss.”

AI’s ability to distinguish thoughts from threats

One of the biggest challenges facing AI companies is determining whether a user expressing violent thoughts actually intends to act on them.

In August, Anthropic, the company behind AI chatbot Claude, flagged a user to San Francisco police after discovering conversations allegedly threatening its CEO, Dario Amodei.

According to the San Francisco Standard, citing a police report, the user had claimed to possess an AR-15 gun and suggested he had Amodei “in his sights”.

However, when contacted by the newspaper, the man said he was joking and had no intention of carrying out any form of violence. The person was neither charged nor detained, the Standard said.

Fazl Barez, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford specialising in AI safety and governance, said current AI models cannot “reliably” determine whether an interaction with an AI chatbot “is purely hypothetical or is likely to lead to harmful behaviour”.

“Suppose you are a creative writer working on a fictional story and want to explore how a murder plot might unfold. From the context, it may be clear that this is simply a fictional narrative. If the threshold for flagging potentially harmful content is too low, such a writer could be wrongly flagged,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Similarly, consider a graduate student in biology or chemistry studying pathogens that, if misused, could have serious consequences. They might be trying to understand the risks associated with these pathogens and how to mitigate them. Such discussions may be necessary for legitimate research and education. Even when the subject matter is sensitive, they should not automatically be flagged without considering the broader context.”

The researcher said identifying a credible threat may require examining a user’s interactions across multiple conversations, rather than relying on isolated statements.

Barez said someone experiencing intrusive violent thoughts might turn to a chatbot for support, while another person planning an attack may reveal their intentions gradually across several conversations.

“Distinguishing between the two requires careful consideration of context, intent and patterns of behaviour, rather than relying on individual statements alone,” he added.

Chinmayi Sharma, a law professor at Fordham University, said the debate has parallels with the duty imposed on mental health professionals to warn identifiable third parties about credible threats.

However, she said there was a key difference – therapists have professional training, knowledge of their patients and enforceable standards governing their conduct. AI companies do not necessarily have comparable safeguards.

“My concern with AI companies is that right now there’s not a concerted effort to hire mental health professionals, sociologists, individuals that would have the unique expertise on what the indicators of threat are here,” Sharma told Al Jazeera.

“Secondly, licensed professionals are accountable to concrete, legally enforceable standards in their discipline. We don’t have something like that for AI companies.”

The privacy dilemma

The privacy implications extend beyond whether AI companies can accurately identify threats. Millions of people use chatbots to discuss relationships, emotional distress, mental health concerns and deeply personal experiences.

Civil liberties lawyer Younes said many users may not realise how vulnerable those conversations could be to disclosure.

“They often reflect a person’s innermost thoughts, questions, and desires. The majority of people assume that these dialogues will never be viewed by another person,” Younes, president and legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said.

Younes warned that the consequences of greater monitoring could extend well beyond those planning violence.

“If people fear their chats can be turned over to law enforcement simply because they express disturbing thoughts/violent fantasies etc, many will be dissuaded from using them,” she told Al Jazeera.

Younes argued that forcing companies to establish systems for monitoring users and reporting conversations could raise serious constitutional concerns in the US, including protections against unreasonable searches.

Meanwhile, Fordham’s Sharma also raised an issue about who could be disproportionately affected by heavy monitoring by AI chatbots.

“The concern is always there about either intentional or unintentional targeting, because if you have models trained on what we consider dangerous speech, they’re almost always going to reflect biases,” she said. “Certain minorities’ speech is over‑flagged as a threat, while other comparable speech is not.

“Even in a world in which everyone is benevolent, we should still be concerned about disparate outcomes,” she said, warning that machines could reproduce such disparities at scale.

‘Not a licensed therapist’ – When do AI companies become liable to report?

While AI companies may face moral pressure to prevent violence, their legal obligations are less clear, legal experts say.

Bryan Choi, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Boulder, said US law recognises a duty to warn in certain circumstances, including when mental health professionals become aware of imminent threats or when a special relationship exists between parties.

But those principles do not necessarily apply to AI companies.

“Under present case law, it seems unlikely that a company such as OpenAI would be held to have such duties to warn,” Choi told Al Jazeera. “The chatbot is not a licensed therapist. There is no special relationship between the company and the victims.”

Choi said existing negligence and product liability laws could potentially be applied to AI companies, but proving responsibility would present significant challenges.

Finding a balance

Fordham’s Sharma suggested that independent institutions could help establish reporting standards rather than leaving decisions entirely to private companies or requiring immediate disclosure to police.

Such bodies she said could develop procedures for assessing threats and explore ways of sharing only relevant information while protecting users’ identities and other personal details.

Meanwhile, Younes argued that users should, at a minimum, be clearly informed about whether their conversations are monitored and what circumstances could lead to information being shared with law enforcement.

“This is almost certainly an issue that will be wrestled with over the coming years, and I’m not sure anyone knows the solution at this particular point in time,” she said.

“Events that have not yet occurred will likely influence how these policies are shaped.”

A teacher fought the teenage shooter and a parent shot him dead, police say on Friday, a day after four people were killed.

The 16-year-old who killed three children and a teacher at an elementary school in the US state of Oregon was a former special-needs student at the school, police and school officials have said.

Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz identified the attacker on Friday, a day after the shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School, as Griffin J. John II.

He said the teenager attacked a classroom of special-needs students, where all the victims were shot.

Steven Cook, superintendent of Bend-La Pine Schools, said John was not enrolled in the local public school system at the time.

“That classroom was a special needs classroom, and the suspect was a special needs student in that school,” Cook told a news conference.

Krantz said John shot his way through locked doors with a 12-gauge shotgun, firing as many as 15 shots, and had about 44 rounds left when he was killed. Police are still trying to determine how he obtained the gun.

Under Oregon law, a minor may possess a shotgun if provided by a parent or with a parent’s consent.

The shooter’s mother, Shauntai Nickerson, separately told reporters outside her apartment: “I’m so sorry, I wish I could have done something.”

A teacher threw her phone at the gunman, then tackled and fought him, likely saving lives, Krantz said, calling her actions “heroic”. She was not injured.

A 36-year-old father, Kaylub Giamanco, who has two children at the school, then followed the gunman inside and shot him dead minutes after the first 911 call.

US President Donald Trump called Giamanco a “great hero”. “It’s a terrible thing, but thank goodness for a man that had a gun and knew how to use it,” Trump said.

The children killed were aged five, eight and 11, and the teacher was Meghan Lambert, 25, police said.

A seven-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher were taken to hospital in critical condition.

The shooting is the 28th mass killing in the US this year, according to a database by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.

The Gun Violence Archive in the US has documented 369 mass shootings in 2026, defined as incidents in which four or more people are shot.

The Everytown for Gun Safety group has counted at least 100 incidents of gunfire on school grounds this year, with 34 deaths.

Authorities have indicated that the shooter was killed by gunfire, though details remain scant about the attack.

At least four people have been killed, including three children, in a shooting at an elementary school in Oregon, part of the northwestern United States, according to statements from law enforcement to CBS and CNN.

The shooting on Thursday took place at Silver Rail Elementary school in the city of Bend, about 160km (100 miles) southeast of Portland.

Authorities have said the shooter is dead, though it is unclear whether he is among the four people included in the initial death toll.

“We’re in the process at this time of going room by room and evacuating each of the people who are in that school,” said Sheila Miller, the communications manager for the Bend Police Department on Thursday. “This is the kind of thing we never want to see happen in Bend. It’s devastating.”

Miller said authorities received a call about a shot fired into a car outside the school at 12:59pm local time (19:59 GMT) and arrived on scene within minutes.

The suspect was shot and killed shortly after, though Miller said she did not know whether police or a bystander had subdued the alleged assailant.

The number and condition of those injured were not immediately known.

Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said in a post on social media that the agency was on the scene assisting local law enforcement in the investigation.

“We will make every resource they need available,” he wrote.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek also said she was closely monitoring the situation.

Jeff Merkley, who represents Oregon in the US Senate, was among the political leaders to offer condolences in the wake of the shooting.

“My heart is with the Bend community and all of the students and families affected. No one should have to fear violence at school,” he wrote in a post on the social media platform X.

Man spreads flammable liquid in a room with 13 children while holding a lighter as police try to negotiate.

Brazilian police have rescued 13 children who had been taken hostage at a kindergarten in the southern city of Curitiba after killing the suspect, who threatened to set fire to the building, according to officials.

At least one of the children was wounded in Friday’s incident, the commander of the military police special forces unit in Parana state, Alexandre Lopes Dias, told reporters without elaborating on who or what injured the child.

Parana police spokesperson Leticia Martins told journalists outside the kindergarten that the suspect jumped the gate on Friday, broke into a classroom and held 13 children hostage.

He then spread a flammable substance in the room and held a lighter in his hand. He was carrying a knife and also what was initially believed to be a firearm, but later was found to be fake.

“Our negotiating teams were in place but saw no alternative but to neutralise him,” said Martins, who did not specify whether the suspect had expressed a specific reason for his actions.

The incident took place in the neighbourhood of Sao Braz in Curitiba, a city of 1.8 million residents located 400km (250 miles) south of Sao Paulo.

Lopes Dias told reporters the suspect was identified as a man who suffered from schizophrenia, but he did not reveal the man’s identity or how he was killed.

“During the entire negotiation, he stayed with all the children around him and one on his lap,” the police official said.

Children beaten

Talks lasted up to three hours. The children became agitated, and the attacker started hitting them, Lopes Dias told reporters.

“Once we realised that the kids were becoming increasingly upset and that the attacker started assaulting them physically, we opted for a tactical intervention to avoid a greater problem,” he explained.

Local media showed footage of tearful parents outside the school waiting for information as the negotiations between the suspect and police were ongoing. Minutes after what local media described as flash bangs, officers emerged carrying some of the children outside.

“We entered the classroom using a very tactical approach with little risk for the children,” Lopes Dias added.

Curitiba Mayor Eduardo Pimentel wrote on Instagram: “The 13 children are alive and safe! After anguishing and tense moments, this is the news we were all waiting for.”

Brazil in recent years has experienced multiple attacks on schools. In April 2023, a man killed four children with an axe at a day care in Blumenau, also in southern Brazil.

Curitiba City Hall said in a statement that the children and school staffers would receive psychological support.

The shooting prompted protests in New York City as officials defended ICE and Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the incident.

The United States Department of Homeland Security has defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) shooting of a man in New York City while his child was present. Federal officials used the incident to criticise sanctuary-city policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

New York officials have condemned the shooting and have called for ICE to end its operations in the city.

The shooting took place on Thursday afternoon when ICE officers attempted to arrest a man identified by New York City police as Oscar Belgal.

Homeland Security officials gave their account of the incident on Friday during a news conference, saying that Belgal refused to exit his car when approached by officers and then accelerated, striking two ICE vehicles.

They said officers then opened fire, grazing Belgal’s neck while his five-year-old child was in the back seat.

According to Homeland Security officials, Belgal received first aid and was taken to hospital before being transferred to a secure detention facility outside New York state. They did not disclose where Belgal is being held.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that the agents did not know the child was inside the vehicle when they fired.

ICE senior official Marcos Charles said agents had attempted to arrest Belgal as part of an investigation into suspected gang involvement in an earlier shooting of a US Customs and Border Protection officer.

According to US officials, Belgal is an undocumented migrant from the Dominican Republic who had previously evaded arrest and received a five-year sentence for grand larceny in April 2025.

“[Belgal] was a thug,” Mullin said at the Friday news conference. “The absolute worst of the worst.”

Mullin confirmed that officers were wearing body cameras but the footage has not been made public. New York City police released bodycam footage on Friday of police officers on the scene who had responded to a 911 call about the incident.

In other violent incidents involving federal immigration officers, video evidence has contradicted initial accounts from ICE and Homeland Security officials, including in Minneapolis, where footage of the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good challenged federal officials’ descriptions of the encounters.

The latest shooting prompted protests on Thursday night in the Bronx, where the shooting took place, with demonstrators condemning ICE and calling for the agency to be abolished. Tensions rose after NYPD officers clashed with some of the protesters.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the shooting and said he had called US President Donald Trump to demand an end to ICE enforcement in the city.

Speaking to reporters late on Thursday at the scene of the shooting, Mamdani said he had tried unsuccessfully to secure Belgal’s release in phone calls with Trump and Mullin.

“These actions are making the city less safe,” Mamdani said. “ICE is rotten to its core.”

Mullin accused Mamdani of prioritising politics over public safety and said Trump had offered to transfer Belgal to New York police custody if they pursued charges. Mullin said Mamdani refused this offer.

Nine inmates and one visitor killed in Sinaloa prison riot, local authorities say.

Ten people have been killed and 16 others injured in a fight at the El Castillo Penitentiary Centre in the city of Mazatlan, in Mexico’s northwestern state of Sinaloa, state authorities said.

The Sinaloa Public Security Secretariat said on Thursday that a fight inside the prison had left nine inmates and a family visitor dead.

Sinaloa’s Secretary of Public Security, Sinuhe Tellez, said in a video posted on social media that the visitor was a minor.

The 16 injured inmates were transferred for medical attention, the secretariat said.

An inter-institutional group of security forces moved in, and the prison is now “under control”, with authorities remaining at the site, the secretariat added.

Social work staff are contacting the families of the dead, Tellez said, noting that visits to the prison had been suspended as a precaution and the rest of the prison population was safe.

Sinaloa is a battleground for warring factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel and is one of six Mexican states the US State Department advises Americans not to visit over security concerns.

Officials have not said whether the violence at the prison was linked to that conflict.