massacre

The Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are collecting bodies after the deadly takeover of North Darfur capital, US researcher says.

A researcher at Yale University in the United States says the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are digging mass graves in el-Fasher, the city in Sudan’s western Darfur region that has seen mass killings and displacement since the RSF took over last month.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale’s School of Public Health, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that the RSF “have begun to dig mass graves and to collect bodies throughout the city”.

“They are cleaning up the massacre,” Raymond said.

The RSF seized control of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, on October 26, after the withdrawal of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which has been fighting the paramilitary group for control of Sudan since April 2023.

More than 70,000 people have fled the city and surrounding areas since the RSF’s takeover, according to the United Nations, while witnesses and human rights groups have reported cases of “summary executions”, sexual violence and massacres of civilians.

A report from Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab on October 28 also found evidence of “mass killings” since the RSF took control of el-Fasher, including apparent pools of blood that were visible in satellite imagery.

UN officials also warned this week that thousands of people are believed to be trapped in el-Fasher.

“The current insecurity continues to block access, preventing the delivery of life-saving assistance to those trapped in the city without food, water and medical care,” Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet, a senior UN refugee agency (UNHCR) official in Sudan, said.

Sudanese journalist Abdallah Hussain explained that, before the RSF’s full takeover, el-Fasher was already reeling from an 18-month siege imposed by the paramilitary group.

“No aid was allowed to access the city, and no healthcare facilities [were] operating,” Hussain told Al Jazeera from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday. “Now it’s getting even worse for the citizens who remain trapped.”

Amid global condemnation, the RSF and its supporters have tried to downplay the atrocities committed in el-Fasher, accusing allied armed groups of being responsible.

The RSF’s leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, has also promised an investigation.

But Raymond at the Humanitarian Research Lab said: “if they want to actually have an investigation, then they need to withdraw from the city [and] let UN personnel and the Red Cross and humanitarians enter … and go house-to-house looking to see who’s still alive”.

“At this point, we can’t let the RSF investigate themselves,” he said.

Raymond added that, based on UN figures and what can be seen on the ground in el-Fasher, “more people could have died [in 10 days]… than have died in the past two years of the war in Gaza”.

“That’s what we’re talking about. That’s not hyperbole,” he told Al Jazeera, stressing that thousands of people need emergency assistance.

More than 68,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, 2023.

Fighters with Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces recorded themselves conducting an execution while surrounded by dead bodies inside el-Fasher’s Saudi Hospital. As Hiba Morgan reports, it’s the latest example of RSF paramilitaries filming their own actions.

THREE suspected Hamas terrorists appeared in court in Germany yesterday as police claimed to have foiled a chilling terror plot.

The trio – caught with weapons including an AK47 assault rifle, pistols and ammunition – were feared to be about to export October 7-style horror to Europe.

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Investigators believed they were plotting attacks on Israeli or Jewish sites – like the synagogue attacked in Manchester yesterday.

Germany’s federal prosecutor alleged that they had been procuring firearms in recent months to prepare for a terrorist massacre.

Several pistols and a large cache of ammunition were among weapons taken when police swooped 24 hours before the Manchester attack.

No evidence of a connection between the two incidents had emerged last night – but fears of Palestinian terror spreading across Europe was sparking security concerns.

Two of the Berlin suspects are German citizens but the third was said to have been born in Lebanon.

They were named only as – named as Abed Al G, Wael F M and Ahmad I.

Hamas has carried out hundreds of attacks against Israeli civilians but rarely operated outside the region and they denied involvement.

Details of the plot remained unclear last night – and it was also uncertain whether they were acting on Hamas orders or were self-motivated Palestinian sympathisers.

The worrying arrests came as Hamas appeared spent as a fighting force in Gaza as Donald Trump called on them to surrender or face an unbridled Israeli onslaught.

A German federal judge ruled that the Berlin trio should remain in jail ahead of a full trial for alleged membership in a foreign terrorist organization and plotting serious acts of violence.

Police arrested members of Hamas in Berlin in December 2023 when four suspects were feared to be plotting to attack Jewish institutions in Europe.

By offering nothing except continual massacre for the Palestinians, and attempting to subjugate the surrounding areas to its will, Israel finds itself “in a predicament of its own making”, argues former Israeli adviser Daniel Levy.

Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, tells host Steve Clemons that Israel has put Arab leaders in a bind, as regional disgust grows towards Israel for its war crimes in Gaza.

And while Western governments and cultural institutions have been carrying water for Israel for decades, argues Levy, some have begun “acknowledging things they worked hard not to acknowledge for an awfully long time.”

Kyiv, Ukraine – Nadiya escaped the rapists and killers only because her father hid her in a haystack amidst the shooting, shouting and bloodshed that took place 82 years ago.

“He covered me with hay and told me not to get out no matter what,” the 94-year-old woman told Al Jazeera – and asked to withhold her last name and personal details.

On July 11, 1943, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), a nationalist paramilitary group armed with axes, knives and guns, stormed Nadiya’s village on the Polish-Ukrainian border, killing ethnic Polish men and raping women.

“They also killed anyone who tried to protect the Poles,” Nadiya said.

The nonagenarian is frail and doesn’t go out much, but her face, framed by milky white hair, lights up when she recalls the names and birthdays of her grand- and great-grandchildren.

She also remembers the names of her neighbours who were killed or forced to flee to Poland, even though her parents never spoke about the attack, now known as the Volyn massacre.

“The Soviets forbade it,” Nadiya said, noting how Moscow demonised the UIA, which kept fighting the Soviets until the early 1950s.

Nadiya said her account may enrage today’s Ukrainian nationalists who lionise fighters of the UIA for having championed freedom from Moscow during World War II.

After Communist purges, violent atheism, forced collectivisation and a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, the UIA leaders chose what they thought was the lesser of two evils. They sided with Nazi Germany, which invaded the USSR in 1941.

In the end, though, the Nazis refused to carve out an independent Ukraine and threw one of the UIA’s leaders, Stepan Bandera, into a concentration camp.

But another UIA leader, Roman Shukhevych, was accused of playing a role in the Holocaust – and in the mass killings of ethnic Poles in what is now the western Ukrainian region of Volyn and adjacent areas in 1943.

Genocide?

Up to 100,000 civilian Poles, including women and children, were stabbed, axed, beaten or burned to death during the Volyn massacre, according to survivors, Polish historians and officials who consider it a “genocide”.

“What’s horrifying isn’t the numbers but the way the murders were carried out,” Robert Derevenda of the Polish Institute of National Memory told Polskie Radio on July 11.

This year, the Polish parliament decreed July 11 as “The Volyn Massacre Day” in remembrance of the 1943 killings.

“A martyr’s death for just being Polish deserves to be commemorated,” the bill said.

“From Poland’s viewpoint, yes, this is a tragedy of the Polish people, and Poland is fully entitled to commemorate it,” Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevych told Al Jazeera.

However, rightist Polish politicians may use the day to promote anti-Ukrainian narratives, and a harsh response from Kyiv may further trigger tensions, he said.

“All of these processes ideally should be a matter of discussion among historians, not politicians,” he added.

Ukrainian politicians and historians, meanwhile, call the Volyn massacre a “tragedy”. They cite a lower death toll and accuse the Polish army of the reciprocal killing of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

In post-Soviet Ukraine, UIA leaders Bandera and Shukhevych have often been hailed as national heroes, and hundreds of streets, city squares and other landmarks are named after them.

Evolving views and politics

“[The USSR] branded ‘Banderite’ any proponent of Ukraine’s independence or even any average person who stood for the legitimacy of public representation of Ukrainian culture,” Kyiv-based human rights advocate Vyacheslav Likhachyov told Al Jazeera.

The demonisation backfired when many advocates of Ukraine’s independence began to sympathise with Bandera and the UIA, “turning a blind eye to their radicalism, xenophobia and political violence”, he said.

In the 2000s, anti-Russian Ukrainian leaders began to celebrate the UIA, despite objections from many Ukrainians, especially in the eastern and southern regions.

These days, the UIA is seen through a somewhat myopic prism of Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia, according to Likhachyov.

Ukraine’s political establishment sees the Volyn massacre and armed skirmishes between Ukrainians and Poles as only “a war related to the Ukrainians’ ‘fight for their land’”, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at Bremen University in Germany.

“And during a war, they say, anything happens, and a village, where the majority is on the enemy’s side, is considered a ‘legitimate target’,” he explained.

Many right-leaning Ukrainian youngsters “fully accepted” Bandera’s radicalism and the cult of militant nationalism, he said.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, thousands of far-right nationalists rallied throughout Ukraine to commemorate Bandera’s January 1 birthday.

“Bandera is our father, Ukraine is our mother,” they chanted.

Within hours, the Polish and Israeli embassies issued declarations in protest, reminding them of the UIA’s role in the Holocaust and the Volyn massacre.

Far-right activists began volunteering to fight Moscow-backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine in 2014 and enlisted in droves in 2022.

“In the situational threat to [Ukraine’s] very existence, there’s no room for reflection and self-analysis,” rights advocate Likhachyov said.

Warsaw, meanwhile, will keep using the Volyn massacre to make demands for concessions while threatening to oppose Ukraine’s integration into the European Union, he said.

As for Moscow, it “traditionally plays” the dispute to sow discord between Kyiv and Warsaw, analyst Tyshkevych said, and to accuse Ukrainian leaders of “neo-Nazi” proclivities.

Is reconciliation possible?

Today, memories of the Volyn massacre remain deeply contested. For many Ukrainians, the UIA’s image as freedom fighters has been bolstered by Russia’s 2022 invasion, somewhat pushing aside reflection on the group’s role in the World War II atrocities.

For Poland, commemoration of the massacre has become a marker of national trauma and, at times, a point of leverage in political disputes with Ukraine.

In April, Polish experts began exhuming the remnants of the Volyn massacre victims in the western Ukrainian village of Puzhniky after Kyiv lifted a seven-year moratorium on such exhumations. Some believe this may be a first step in overcoming the tensions over the Volyn massacre.

Reconciliation, historians say, won’t come easily.

“The way to reconciliation is often painful and requires people to accept historical realities they’re uncomfortable with,” Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog, told Al Jazeera.

“Both [Poland and Ukraine] are modern European democracies that  can handle an objective investigation of past atrocities in ways that a country like Russia unfortunately can not,” he said.

The nightclub is being replaced with a permanent memorial to one of the US’s worst mass shootings in modern history.

Survivors and family members of the 49 victims killed at an LGBTQ+ friendly nightclub in the United States have gotten their first chance to walk through it before it is demolished and replaced with a permanent memorial to what at the time was considered the worst mass shooting in modern US history.

In small groups over four days starting Wednesday, survivors and family members of those killed plan to spend half an hour at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where Omar Mateen opened fire during a Latin night celebration on June 12, 2016, leaving 49 dead and 53 wounded. Mateen, who had pledged allegiance to ISIL (ISIS), was killed after a three-hour standoff with police.

The Pulse shooting‘s death toll was surpassed the following year when 58 people were killed and more than 850 injured among a crowd of 22,000 at a country music festival in Las Vegas.

The city of Orlando purchased the Pulse property in 2023 for $2m and plans to build a $12m permanent memorial that will open in 2027. These efforts follow a fumbled attempt to create a memorial over many years by a private foundation run by the club’s former owner.

The existing structure will be razed later this year.

“None of us thought that it would take nine years to get to this point, and we can’t go back and relitigate all of the failures along the way that have happened. But what we can do is control how we move forward together,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said two weeks ago, when county commissioners pledged $5m to support the city of Orlando’s plan.

The opportunity to visit the nightclub comes on the ninth anniversary of the mass shooting.

About 250 survivors and family members of those killed have responded to the city’s invitation to walk through the nightclub this week. Families of the 49 people who were killed can visit the site with up to six people in their group, and survivors can bring one person with them. The club has been cleaned, and lighting has been installed ahead of the walk-throughs.

The people invited to visit are being given the chance to ask FBI agents who investigated the massacre about what happened.

Mental health counsellors will be available to talk to those who walk through the building in what could be both a healing and traumatic moment for them.

“The building may come down, and we may finally get a permanent memorial, but that doesn’t change the fact that this community has been scarred for life,” said Brandon Wolf, who survived the massacre by hiding in a bathroom as the gunman opened fire. He does not plan to visit the site.

“There are people inside the community who still need and will continue to need support and resources.”

Khan Younis, Gaza – Yazan Musleh, 13, lies in a hospital bed set up in a tent on the grounds of Nasser Hospital, his t-shirt pulled up to reveal a large white bandage on his thin torso.

Beside him, his father, Ihab, sits fretfully, still shaken by the bloodied dawn he and his sons lived through on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on thousands of people gathered to receive aid from the Israeli-conceived, and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Ihab, 40, had taken Yazan and his 15-year-old brother, Yazid, from their shelter in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, to the Rafah distribution point that the GHF operates.

They set out before dawn, walking for about an hour and a half to get to the al-Alam Roundabout roundabout in Rafah, near the distribution point.

Worried about the size of the gathering, hungry crowd, Ihab told his sons to wait for him on an elevation near the GHF gates.

“When I looked behind the hill, I saw several tanks not far away,” he says. “A feeling of dread came over me. What if they opened fire or something happened? I prayed for God’s protection.”

As the crowd moved closer to the gates, heavy gunfire erupted from all directions.

“I was terrified. I immediately looked towards my sons on the hill, and saw Yazan get shot and collapse,” he recalls.

Yazid, also sitting by his brother’s bedside, describes the moments of terror.

“We were standing on the hill as our father told us, and suddenly, the tanks opened fire.” He says. “My brother was hit in the stomach immediately.”

“I saw his intestines spilling out – it was horrifying. Then people helped rush him to the hospital in a donkey cart.”

Down by the gates, Ihab was struggling to reach his sons, trying to fight against the crowd while avoiding the shots still ringing out.

“Shooting was coming from every direction – from tanks, quadcopters.

“I saw people helping my son, eventually dragging him away.”

When Ihab managed to get away from the crowd, he ran as best as his malnourished body could manage, towards Nasser Hospital, in hopes that Yazan had been taken there. It felt like more than an hour, he says.

At Nasser Hospital, he learned that Yazan had been taken into surgery.

“I finally breathed. I thanked God he was still alive. I had completely lost hope,” he says.

The bullet that hit Yazan had torn through his intestines and spleen, and the doctors say he needs long and intensive treatment.

Sitting by him is his mother, Iman, who asks despairingly why anyone would shoot at people trying to get food. She and Ihab have five children, the youngest is a seven-month-old girl.

“I went to get food for my children. Hunger is killing us,” says Ihab.

“These aid distributions are known to be degrading and humiliating – but we’re desperate. I’m desperate because my children are starving, and even then, we are shot at?”

He had tried to get aid once before, he says, but both times he came away empty-handed.

“The first time, there was a deadly stampede. We barely escaped. This time, my son was wounded and again… nothing,” he says.

But he knows he cannot stop trying.

“I’ll risk it for my family. Either I come back alive or I die. I’m desperate. Hunger is killing us.”

The group distributing aid

The GHF, marketed as a neutral humanitarian mechanism, was launched in early 2025 and uses private US military contractors to “secure the distribution points”.

The GHF’s head, Jake Wood, resigned his post two days before distribution began, citing concerns that the foundation would not be impartial or act in accordance with humanitarian principles.

Five days later, on May 30, the Boston Consulting Group, which had been part of the planning and implementation of the foundation, withdrew its team and terminated its association with GHF.

International aid organisations have been unanimous in criticising the GHF and its methods.

‘We went looking for food for our hungry children’

Lying nearby in the tent ward is Mohammed al-Homs, 40, a father of five.

He had also headed out early on Sunday to try to get some food for his family, but moments after arriving at the al-Alam Roundabout roundabout, “I was shot twice – once in the leg and once in the mouth, shattering my front teeth,” he says.

“I collapsed, there were so many injured and dead around me. Everyone was screaming and running. Gunfire was coming from tanks, drones everywhere. It felt like the end of the world.”

He lay bleeding on the ground for what felt like an hour, as medical teams were not able to reach the injured.

Then, word spread that the gates had opened for distribution, and those who could move started heading towards the centre.

It was only then that people could start moving the wounded to a nearby medical point.

“This was my first time trying to get aid, and it will be my last,” Mohammed says.

“I didn’t expect to survive. We went looking for food for our hungry children and were met with drones and tanks.”

‘I never imagined I’d face death for a box of food’

Also in the tent is someone who had succeeded in getting an aid package on the first day of distribution, on May 27, and decided to try again on Sunday: 36-year-old Khaled al-Lahham.

Al-Lahham is taking care of 10 family members: his parents, one aunt, and seven siblings, all of whom are displaced in the tents of al-Mawasi.

He had managed to catch a ride with five friends that morning, driving as close as they could to the al-Alam Roundabout roundabout.

As the distribution time approached, the six friends started getting out of the car.

“Suddenly, there was loud gunfire all around and people screaming. I felt a sharp pain in my leg – a bullet had passed clean through my thigh,” says Khaled, who did not make it fully out of the car.

“I was screaming and bleeding while people around me ran and screamed. The shooting was frenzied,” he adds. “There were tanks, quadcopters – fire came from every direction.”

Injured, Khaled could not get out of the car and huddled there until one of his friends managed to return and drive him to the hospital.

“I never imagined I’d face death for a box of food,” Khaled says.

“If they don’t want to distribute the aid, why do they lie to people and kill them like this?

“This is all deliberate. Humiliate us, degrade us, then kill us – for food?”

TULSA, Okla. — Tulsa’s new mayor on Sunday proposed a $100 million private trust as part of a reparations plan to give descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre scholarships and housing help in a city-backed bid to make amends for one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.

The plan by Mayor Monroe Nichols, the first Black mayor of Oklahoma’s second-largest city, would not provide direct cash payments to descendants or the last two centenarian survivors of the attack that killed as many as 300 Black people. He made the announcement at the Greenwood Cultural Center, located in the once-thriving district of North Tulsa that was destroyed by a white mob.

Nichols said he does not use the term reparations, which he calls politically charged, characterizing his sweeping plan instead as a “road to repair.”

“For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city’s history,” Nichols said Sunday after receiving a standing ovation from several hundred people. “The massacre was hidden from history books, only to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off economic vitality and the perpetual underinvestment of local, state and federal governments.

“Now it’s time to take the next big steps to restore.”

Nichols said the proposal wouldn’t require city council approval, although the council would need to authorize the transfer of any city property to the trust, something he said was highly likely.

The private charitable trust would be created with a goal to secure $105 million in assets, with most of the funding either secured or committed by June 1, 2026. Although details would be developed over the next year by an executive director and a board of managers, the plan calls for the bulk of the funding, $60 million, to go toward improving buildings and revitalizing the city’s north side.

“The Greenwood District at its height was a center of commerce,” Nichols said in a telephone interview. “So what was lost was not just something from North Tulsa or the Black community. It actually robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivaled anywhere else in the world.”

Nichols’ proposal follows an executive order he signed earlier this year recognizing June 1 as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day, an official city holiday. Events Sunday in the Greenwood District included a picnic for families, worship services and an evening candlelight vigil.

Nichols also realizes the current national political climate, particularly President Trump’s sweeping assault on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, poses challenging political crosswinds.

“The fact that this lines up with a broader national conversation is a tough environment,” Nichols admitted, “but it doesn’t change the work we have to do.”

Jacqueline Weary, is a granddaughter of massacre survivor John R. Emerson, Sr., who owned a hotel and cab company in Greenwood that were destroyed. She acknowledged the political difficulty of giving cash payments to descendants. But at the same time, she wondered how much of her family’s wealth was lost in the violence.

“If Greenwood was still there, my grandfather would still have his hotel,” said Weary, 65. “It rightfully was our inheritance, and it was literally taken away.”

Tulsa is not the first U.S. city to explore reparations. The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, was the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination, offering qualifying households $25,000 for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city. The funding for the program came from taxes on the sale of recreational marijuana.

Other communities and organizations that have considered providing reparations range from the state of California to cities including Amherst, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Asheville, North Carolina; and Iowa City, Iowa; religious denominations like the Episcopal Church; and prominent colleges like Georgetown University in Washington.

In Tulsa, there are only two living survivors of the Race Massacre, both of whom are 110 years old: Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher. The women, both of whom were in attendance on Sunday, received direct financial compensation from both a Tulsa-based nonprofit and a New York-based philanthropic organization, but have not received any recompense from the city or state.

Damario Solomon-Simmons, an attorney for the survivors and the founder of the Justice for Greenwood Foundation, said earlier this year that any reparations plan should include direct payments to Randle and Fletcher and a victims’ compensation fund for outstanding claims.

A lawsuit filed by Solomon-Simmons on behalf of the survivors was rejected by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, dampening racial justice advocates’ hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.

Murphy writes for the Associated Press.

‘Cuchillo’ (Knife) accused of organised crime, aggravated kidnapping and homicide over murder of 13 miners.

Police have arrested the main suspect in the kidnapping and murder in early May of 13 gold miners in Peru.

Miguel Antonio Rodriguez Diaz, also known by the alias “Cuchillo” (Knife), was detained in the Colombian city of Medellin on Thursday, the Ministry of the Interior in Lima said.

The murders in early May put the spotlight on increasing violence provoked by a gold rush in Peru’s northern Pataz district. The burned bodies of 13 missing gold miners were recovered after being reported as kidnapped by illegal miners allied with criminal armed groups.

Diaz was detained in a joint operation by the Peruvian National Police, Interpol and the Colombian National Police, the Peruvian ministry stated. He is accused of “organised crime, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated homicide” and due to be extradited back to Peru.

Colombia’s police chief, Carlos Triana, wrote on X that the capture of Diaz was with the support of the United States Homeland Security Investigations agency, which is responsible for investigating transnational criminal gangs.

The suspect’s lawyer, Kevin Diaz, told local radio station RPP that his client had been in Venezuela for “a few days” before returning to Colombia, where he was arrested.

Wave of violence

The wave of violence sparked by the gold rush in Pataz has led the government to establish a military facility in the area.

Mining company La Poderosa, which owns the mine where the murders took place, claimed earlier this month that nearly 40 people, including contractors and miners, have been recently killed in the district by criminal gangs.

The threat is of national importance. As one of Latin America’s biggest gold producers, mining is a key economic avenue in Peru.

However, with the financial success of the market, illegal mining has taken off. The practice involves more money than drug trafficking, amounting to $3bn-4bn per year, according to the government.

That has helped bring an unprecedented wave of gang violence, with several areas of the country under a state of emergency.

Four months after the San Bernardino mass shooting, state lawmakers on Tuesday gave initial approval to five gun control bills, including measures that would outlaw assault rifles with detachable magazines, ban possession of clips holding more than 10 rounds and require homemade guns to be registered with the state.

The bills approved by the state Senate Public Safety Committee were introduced in response to the December shooting in San Bernardino that left 14 people dead and 22 others wounded at the hands of two terrorists.

One of the measures the panel sent toward the Senate floor would outlaw assault rifles with easily detachable bullet magazines like one of the weapons used in the mass shooting in San Bernardino.

The bill prohibits the sale of semiautomatic, centerfire rifles with a “bullet button,” a recessed button that, when pressed, allows removal of the magazine. Those who already own them must register them with the state as assault rifles.

Democratic state Sens. Isadore Hall of Compton and Steve Glazer of Orinda introduced the measure, SB 880, in response to the discovery of a gun with a bullet button that was in the possession of the San Bernardino terrorists.

“These weapons of war don’t belong in our communities,” Glazer told the Senate panel before it approved the measure he coauthored with Hall.

Hall said there is an urgent need to close a loophole in the law that bans assault weapons.

“For years, gun owners have been able to circumvent California’s assault weapons law by using a small tool to quickly eject and reload an ammunition magazine,” Hall said.

The measure is opposed by gun owner rights groups including the National Rifle Assn., according to its lobbyist, Ed Worley.

“We continue to oppose banning guns for citizens who have no criminal background,” Worley told the panel. “People should be able to own any kind of gun they want to own in the United States of America.”

The Senate panel also approved a bill by Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) that would ban the possession of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds, closing a loophole in a law that already prohibits their manufacture and sale in California.

Hancock noted that four large-capacity magazines were found among the weapons of the two shooters in San Bernardino. Since 1980, 435 people have been killed in 50 mass shootings involving large-capacity magazines, some of which can hold 100 rounds of ammunition, she said.

The magazines have already been banned in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“By banning these weapons statewide we would be taking a step to preventing future mass shootings and creating safer communities in California,” Hancock told the Senate panel.

Republican Sen. Jeff Stone voted against the bill.

“Today we want to make criminals out of law-abiding citizens who have been collecting guns,” Stone said.

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FOR THE RECORD

April 20, 11:35 a.m.: An earlier version of this story mistakenly attributed a quote to Sen. John Moorlach. The statement was from Sen. Jeff Stone.

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The measure was also opposed by others including Worley and Sam Paredes, the executive director of Gun Owners of California, who said millions of large-capacity clips are already in the hands of Californians.

“Here we are trying to confiscate people’s property,” Worley told the panel.

Paredes said many law enforcement officers are given large-capacity magazines.

“That is what they may need to protect themselves,” Paredes said. “Why should it be any different for a law-abiding citizen?”

The Senate committee also approved a bill that would allow the state to collect information on those who buy ammunition for firearms. An earlier law that would have required bullet purchasers to provide identification and a thumbprint was struck down by a court in 2010 on the grounds that its definition of handgun ammunition was vague.

That case is on appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The new bill by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De León (D-Los Angeles), SB 1235, would clarify that the previous law applies to all ammunition, including bullets for long guns and handguns as well as shotgun shells, which he hopes will address the lower court’s concerns.

The panel also approved a bill requiring those who build guns at home to register them with the state, get a serial number and undergo a criminal background check.

“These firearms are called ‘ghost guns’ because they are built at home … with no serial numbers or background checks involved,” De León told the panel before it approved the bill on a 5-3 party-line vote. “These are weapons that have the ability to kill or maim a human being.”

Hundreds of ghost guns have been seized in California, and they have been used in major crimes, including a mass shooting in 2013. The measure is backed by the California Police Chiefs Assn.

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“Gun-smithing has become easier than putting together Ikea furniture because of the 3-D printer,” said Chief Jennifer G. Tejada of the Emeryville Police Department. “This bill will decrease the number of untraceable firearms in California.”

The measure is opposed by groups including the NRA and Gun Owners of California.

“We’re going to take hobbyists who enjoy making guns and we’re going to make them criminals,” Worley said.

The panel also approved measures that would require firearms owners to report lost or stolen guns to authorities within five days and another to create a gun violence prevention research center at a University of California system campus.

Meanwhile, a bill that would have required all gun sales to be videotaped failed to pass an Assembly committee on Tuesday.

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