Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 8, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba KILDONAN PARK GOLF COURSE R E D R I V E R C H I E F P E G U I S T R A I L M A I N S T P E R I M E T E R H W Y R I D G E C R E S T A V E S C O T I A S T H E N D E R S O N H W Y H E N D E R S O N H W Y River Ridge II 2701 Scotia St. Winnipeg, MB KILDONAN PARK Independent Assisted Living provides care and support 24/7 allowing residents to Age In Place safely and comfortably throughout the years! Call Chassity to Arrange Your Personal Tour 204.272.0369 Worry-Free Living At Its Finest Where Caring is Our Number One Concern™ www.allseniorscare.com MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2025WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ● A5 NEWS I WORLD Houthi drone strikes Israeli airport T EL AVIV, Israel — A drone fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels breached Israel’s multi-layered air defences on Sunday and slammed into the coun- try’s southern airport, the Israeli mil- itary said, blowing out glass windows, wounding one person and briefly shut- ting down commercial airspace. The damage to Ramon Airport ap- peared limited and flights resumed within hours. The Houthis claimed responsibility for the strike. The attack follows Israeli strikes on Yemen’s rebel-held capital that killed the Houthi prime minister and other top officials in a major escalation of the nearly 2-year-old conflict between Is- rael and the Iran-backed militant group in Yemen. In Gaza City, the Israeli military on Sunday levelled another high-rise tow- er that housed hundreds of displaced Palestinians and urged people to move south as it intensified its offensive on the city. Meanwhile, a breakthrough Israeli Supreme Court decision ruled that Is- rael was not providing Palestinian de- tainees in its custody with enough food to ensure basic sustenance. It ordered the state to “guarantee basic living con- ditions in accordance with the law” for the thousands of Palestinians in its de- tention facilities. Sunday’s ruling, made in response to a petition by Israeli human rights groups alleging starvation among Palestinians in the country’s prisons, marked a rare instance of Israeli legal restraint on its own war policies that have drawn in- dignation and outrage abroad. After Israel’s killing of Houthi Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi last Thurs- day, the militants vowed to escalate their attacks targeting Israel and mer- chant ships navigating the vital Red Sea trade route. One of several Houthi drones launched from Yemen on Sunday slipped through Israel’s sophisticated defence system and crashed into the passenger terminal at the Ramon Inter- national Airport near the resort city of Eilat, the Israeli Airports Authority said, diverting flights over southern Israel and inflicting light shrapnel wounds on a 63-year-old man. Houthi military spokesperson Brig.- Gen. Yahya Saree said the group had fired eight drones at Israel to signal that the rebels “will escalate their military operations and not back down from their support for Gaza.” He warned that Israeli airports “are unsafe and will be continuously targeted.” The Israeli military said it inter- cepted three Houthi drones near Is- rael’s border with Egypt and was in- vestigating why it failed to identify the fourth drone that struck Ramon Air- port as a threat. The Houthis have stepped up their aerial attacks on Israel in recent months, including by deploying war- heads with cluster munitions that scat- ter smaller bomblets over a large area and can evade Israeli air defences. Saying that they were acting in solidarity with the Palestinians, the Houthis began firing missiles and drones into Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel ignited the Is- raeli military’s devastating campaign in Gaza. Hamas militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted over 250 in their assault on southern Israel. While frequent, the aerial attacks from Yemen have not caused signifi- cant damage in Israel. Before Sunday’s assault, the most damaging Houthi attack was in May, when a Houthi missile struck near Israel’s main Ben Gurion Airport, prompting international airlines to can- cel flights to Tel Aviv for months. The Israeli military said it razed another high-rise building in Gaza City on Sunday, shortly after military spokesperson Avichay Adraee ordered the evacuation of people from a sev- en-story building in a southern Gaza City neighbourhood and nearby tents. Al-Ra’iya Tower crumbled in a flash, its facade cascading down into a heap of rubble and sending people scrambling for cover. Israel said the building targeted on Sunday had been used by Hamas for in- telligence-gathering activities. Hamas denied the accusation. It was unclear how many people had been killed or wounded in the attack. It’s the third Gaza City high-rise lev- elled in as many days as Israel ramps up its offensive to take control of what it portrays as Hamas’s last remaining stronghold, urging Palestinians to flee parts of Gaza City for a designated hu- manitarian zone in the territory’s south. Many Palestinians, exhausted from being displaced multiple times during the war, have opted to stay put rather than uproot themselves for jam-packed, increasingly unsanitary tent encamp- ments that are unprepared to handle the influx. Others reluctantly fled even as past Israeli attacks on humanitarian zones have reinforced the feeling that nowhere is safe in the enclave. “Every time we move to a place, we get displaced from it,” said Shireen Al- Lada, who fled south from eastern Gaza City after her house in the once-bust- ling urban neighbourhood of Zeitoun was destroyed. Officials at Gaza City’s Shifa Hos- pital reported that Israeli strikes on a school-turned-shelter and on tents and apartment buildings killed at least 13 Palestinians, including six children and three women. The Israeli military said it was tar- geting militants near the school and had warned civilians to evacuate. In central Gaza, Al-Awda Hospital said it had received five dead bodies, in- cluding that of a young girl, after Israel struck a gathering in the U.N.-admin- istered Nuseirat refugee camp. The Is- raeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike. Over 64,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry that does not distinguish between civil- ians and combatants. It says that more than half the casualties are women and children. U.S. President Donald Trump claimed on social media on Sunday that Israel accepted his terms for a cease- fire in Gaza and urged Hamas to do the same. It was not clear precisely what those terms were. “I have warned Hamas about the con- sequences of not accepting,” Trump wrote. “This is my last warning, there will not be another one!” Trump has previously issued similar such ulti- matums to Hamas. There was no immediate Israeli con- firmation of his claim, which came as preparations for the Israeli military’s advance on Gaza City move ahead and negotiations remain at an impasse. The Israeli prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Hamas confirmed it “received through intermediaries some ideas from the U.S.” and said it “welcomed any initiative” to end the war that in- volved the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Is- raeli jails. But the group said it had not dropped its insistence on a full-scale Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and formation of an independent Palestinian commit- tee to administer Gaza’s civil affairs — conditions that Israel has rejected in the past. It also gave no indication it would disband its armed wing. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted on Hamas’s full disarmament as a condition for a com- prehensive ceasefire. — The Associated Press MELANIE LIDMAN AND SAMY MAGDY YOUSEF AL ZANOUN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli army strike on a building in Gaza City, Sunday, after the Israeli army issued a prior warning. Man who evaded authorities with his children for years shot dead by police WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A New Zealand man who evaded authorities with his three chil- dren in remote countryside for nearly four years was shot and killed by a police officer today, law enforcement said. The December 2021 disappearance of Tom Phillips and his children — now about 9, 10 and 11 — confounded investigators for years as they scoured the densely forested area where they be- lieved the family was hiding. The family was not believed to ever have travelled far from the iso- lated North Island rural settlement of Marokopa where they lived, but credible sightings of them were rare. Phillips has not been formally identified, New Zealand’s Acting Deputy Police Commissioner Jill Rogers told reporters in the city of Hamilton today, but authorities believed he was the man killed. His relatives confirmed his death to local news outlets. A police officer was shot in the head and critic- ally injured during a confrontation with Phillips after he robbed an agricultural supplies store early this morning, Rogers said. A child with Phillips at the time of the burglary was taken into custody. The officer was undergoing surgery at a hospi- tal. Further surgeries were expected. The whereabouts of Phillips’s other two chil- dren was unknown and authorities held serious concerns for them, Rogers said. Acting Detective Inspector Andrew Saunders said the child taken into custody today was co-operating with the au- thorities. The farm supplies store targeted today was in a small town in the same sprawling farming region of Waikato, south of Auckland, as the settlement of about 40 people from where the family van- ished. The case has fascinated New Zealanders and the authorities made regular unsuccessful appeals for information. Sightings of Phillips were limited to CCTV footage that showed him allegedly committing crimes in the area. He was wanted for an armed bank robbery while on the run in May 2023, ac- companied by one of his children, in which he re- portedly shot at a member of the public. Author- ities believed Phillips had help. Phillips did not have legal custody rights for his children, Saunders told reporters in 2024. Au- thorities feared for the children’s safety and said they had not had access to formal education or health care since their disappearance. Law enforcement always believed that Phil- lips had help concealing his family and some residents of the isolated rural area expressed support for him. A reward of 80,000 New Zea- land dollars (US$47,000), large by New Zealand standards, and an offer of immunity from pros- ecution was offered for information about the family’s whereabouts last June, but it was never paid. December 2021 was not the first time Phil- lips prompted national news headlines after dis- appearing with his children. The family went missing that September, launching a three-week land and sea search after Phillips’s truck was found abandoned on a wild beach near where he lived. Authorities eventually ended the search, con- cluding the family might have died, before Phil- lips and the children emerged from dense forest where he said they had been camping. He was charged with wasting police resources and was due to appear in court in January 2022, but weeks before the scheduled date, he and the children vanished again. The police did not immediately launch a search because Phillips, who is experienced in the out- doors, had told family he was taking the children on another trip. He never returned. Less than a year later, with the trail cold, the authorities said Phillips and the children might have moved elsewhere in New Zealand and changed their names. But the search began again after several sightings of Phillips in 2023 in the same region where he had vanished. He was last seen on CCTV in August this year as he robbed a grocery store in the night, accom- panied by one of his children. The children’s mother issued a statement to Radio New Zealand today in which she said she was “deeply relieved” that the “ordeal” for her children had ended. “They have been dearly missed every day for nearly four years, and we are looking forward to welcoming them home with love and care,” said the woman, who has been identified in New Zea- land news outlets only by her first name, Cat. — The Associated Press CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-MCLAY CHRISTEL YARDLEY / WAIKATO TIMES VIA AP New Zealand’s Acting Deputy Police Commissioner Jill Rogers says a police officer was shot in the head and critically injured during the confrontation. ;