Dutch prosecutors say man arrested after fatal stabbing is suspected of a terrorist motive

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers are scrambling to ensure that the U.S. Secret Service has enough money and resources to keep the nation’s presidential candidates safe amid repeated threats of violence. It’s unclear, though, how much they can do with only weeks before the election, or if additional dollars would make an immediate difference.

Days after a gunman was arrested on former President Donald Trump’s golf course, the House on Friday overwhelmingly passed bipartisan legislation 405-0 to require the agency use the same standards when assigning agents to major presidential candidates as they do presidents and vice presidents. The agency has told Congress that it has already boosted Trump’s security, but House lawmakers want it put into law.

The efforts come after an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in July, and after Secret Service agents arrested a man with a rifle hiding on the golf course at Trump’s Florida club over the weekend. The suspect in Florida apparently also sought to assassinate the GOP presidential nominee.

“In America, elections are determined at the ballot box, not by an assassin’s bullet,” Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., a chief sponsor of the bill, said in floor debate ahead of the vote. “That these incidents were allowed to occur is a stain on our country.”

With the election rapidly approaching and Congress headed out of town before October, lawmakers are rushing to figure out exactly what might help, hoping to assess the agency’s most pressing needs while ensuring that they are doing everything they can in an era where political violence has become more commonplace and every politician is a target.

“We have a responsibility here in Congress to get down to the bottom of this to figure out why these things are happening and what we can do about it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Tuesday. “This is not a partisan issue. We have both parties working on it.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday that “we’ve got to get the Secret Service into a position where its protectees are shielded in the most maximum way possible.”

Democrats and Republicans have been in talks with the agency this week to find out whether additional resources are needed. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the Democratic chairman of the spending subcommittee that oversees the Secret Service, said Congress wants to make sure that if it is spending new dollars, “it’s going to help the situation between now and the inauguration.”

Murphy said new money could go toward technology like drones, partnerships with other agencies that could provide immediate assistance and overtime pay for agents. It would likely be added to a stopgap spending bill that Congress will consider next week to keep the government running, either in the form of allowing the Secret Service to spend money more quickly or providing them with emergency dollars.

“I’m confident we are going to take care of this one way or the other,” Murphy said.

After the July shooting, House Republicans created a bipartisan task force focused on investigating the security failures of that day, and the panel will hold its first hearing next week. The House voted Friday to expand the committee’s mandate to include what happened in Florida, even though the Secret Service successfully apprehended the suspect before anyone was hurt.

In a letter earlier this month, the Secret Service told lawmakers that a funding shortfall was not the reason for lapses in Trump’s security when a gunman climbed onto an unsecured roof on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and opened fire. But Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. said this week that the agency had “immediate needs” and that he’s talking to Congress.

Secret Service officials also told lawmakers behind closed doors that they have already increased Trump’s security to the same level as Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden.

“There are a handful of specialized assets only the commander in chief gets, but the rest of his protection is at the same level,” Spencer Love, a Democratic spokesperson for the House task force, said after the agency briefed members on Wednesday.

In the Senate, Florida Sen. Rick Scott has also introduced a bill mandating similar protection for presidential candidates. Both bills would also require regular reports to Congress on the status of the candidates’ protection. Senate leaders have not yet said whether they will consider the legislation.

In a joint statement after the bill’s passage, Lawler and his co-sponsor, Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York, urged the Senate to take up the bill and President Joe Biden to sign it. They thanked Biden for expanding Trump’s security but said that “without the passage and implementation of this legislation, this enhanced protection will not be codified into law and is subject to change with time.”

Republicans have argued that an overhaul of the agency, and potentially reallocating agents, should be a higher priority than funding.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican who was himself shot at a baseball practice in 2017, noted this week that the Secret Service has received regular budget increases in recent years.

“It’s not about the money,” Scalise said, but “what they’re doing with the money.”

Rep. Mike Waltz, a Republican on the task force, said he pushed Secret Service officials Wednesday on what new resources they needed and they said they were still evaluating.

“I think it’s irresponsible to just throw money at it when they’re not even sure what exactly they need and how quickly they can get it,” the Florida lawmaker said, adding that he hopes the agency shifts to a more threat-focused approach to protecting officials and candidates.

It’s unclear, though, if Republicans would fight a funding boost.

“It’s been made implicitly clear that they’re stretched pretty thin,” said Democratic Rep. Glenn Ivey, a member of the task force. “I know that there’s some folks who see a $3 billion budget and think that should be enough. But when you look at where all of the bodies have to go, that’s a problem.”

BEIRUT (AP) — The Israeli military announced that its airstrike Friday on a neighborhood of Beirut killed Ibrahim Akil, a senior Hezbollah military official. There was no immediate confirmation of his death from Hezbollah.

The Israeli strike in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital killed at least nine people and wounded nearly 60 others, according to Lebanese health officials, and flattened two apartment buildings. The Israeli military also claimed that its strike killed other “top operatives” of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, without elaborating.

A Hezbollah official has confirmed that Akil was supposed to be in the building in the Dahiya district that was hit.

Akil has served on Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council, and has been sanctioned by the United States for being involved in two terrorist attacks in 1983 that killed more than 300 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli airstrike hit a neighborhood of Beirut on Friday, killing at least nine people and wounding nearly 60 others, Lebanese health officials said, the deadliest such Israeli attack on Lebanon’s capital since the 2006 war between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group.

Israel’s strike on a crowded southern suburb of Beirut targeted a senior Hezbollah military official, signaling a major escalation in the past 11 months of war.

It came shortly after Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 140 rockets and the region awaited the revenge promised by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah over this week’s mass bombing attack on pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members.

Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel prompted the Israeli military’s devastating offensive in Gaza, tensions have surged into regular cross-border attacks between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah. The exchanges of fire over the past year have largely struck evacuated communities in northern Israel and less-populated parts of southern Lebanon. The last time Israel hit Beirut was in a July airstrike that killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr.

Friday’s strike hit the sprawling Dahiya district during rush hour, as people were leaving work and children heading home from school.

Local networks broadcast footage that showed a high-rise building completely flattened in Jamous area, just kilometers from downtown Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. First responders scrambled through the tangled streets and combed through the rubble of at least two collapsed apartment buildings to search for more missing people. Health authorities said at least eight of the 59 wounded were in critical condition.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes security matters, said the strike targeted Ibrahim Akil, the head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force. An official close to Hezbollah also speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Akil was supposed to be in the building when it was hit.

It was not immediately clear whether Akil, who also served on Hezbollah’s Jihad Council, the group’s highest military body, was killed.

The United States has sanctioned Akil for his alleged role in carrying out the 1983 bombing that killed more than 300 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks. Last year, the State Department posted a $7 million reward for information leading to his identification, location, arrest or conviction and said he also directed the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Shortly after the Israeli airstrike on Beirut, Hezbollah announced two more attacks on northern Israel, one of which it said targeted an intelligence base from which it claimed Israel directed assassinations. Israel offered no immediate comment on those latest strikes.

Israel and Lebanon have been on edge since Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded en masse this week, killing at least 20 people and wounding thousands in Lebanon in attacks widely attributed to Israel.

Over the last day, Hezbollah said that it fired rockets at several Israeli military sites along the border with Katyusha rockets, including multiple air defense bases as well as the headquarters of an Israeli armored brigade.

The Israeli military said that 120 missiles were launched at areas of the Golan Heights, Safed and the Upper Galilee, some of which were intercepted. Fire crews were working to extinguish blazes caused by pieces of debris that fell to the ground in several areas, the military said. The military didn’t say whether any missiles had hit targets or caused any casualties.

Another 20 missiles were shot at the areas of Meron and Netua, and most fell in open areas, the military said, adding that no injuries were reported.

Hezbollah said that the rockets were in retaliation for Israeli strikes on villages and homes in southern Lebanon, not two days of attacks widely blamed on Israel that set off explosives in thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies.

On Thursday, Israel said its military had struck “hundreds of rocket launcher barrels” in southern Lebanon, saying that they “were ready to be used in the immediate future to fire toward Israeli territory.”

The army also ordered residents in parts of the Golan Heights and northern Israel to avoid public gatherings, minimize movements and stay close to shelters in anticipation of the rocket fire that eventually came Friday.

Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily fire since Oct. 8, a day after the Israel-Hamas war’s opening salvo, but Friday’s rocket barrages were heavier than normal.

Nasrallah on Thursday vowed to keep up daily strikes on Israel despite this week’s deadly sabotage of its members’ communication devices, which he described as a “severe blow.”

At least 20 were killed in the attacks and thousands were wounded when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The sophisticated attacks have heightened fears that the cross-border exchanges of fire will escalate into all-out war. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the attacks.

In recent days, Israel has moved a powerful fighting force up to the northern border, officials have escalated their rhetoric, and the country’s security Cabinet has designated the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel an official war goal.

Fighting in Gaza has slowed, but casualties continue to rise.

Overnight, Palestinian authorities said that 15 people were killed in multiple Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.

Those included six people, including an unknown number of children, in an airstrike early Friday morning in Gaza City that hit a family home, Gaza’s Civil Defense said. Another person was killed in Gaza City when a strike hit a group of people on a street.

Israel maintains that it only targets militants, and accuses Hamas and other armed groups of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas. The military, which rarely comments on individual strikes, had no immediate comment.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says that more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count, but says a little over half of those killed were women and children.

Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

More than 95,000 people have also been wounded in Gaza since Oct. 7, the Health Ministry said.

The war has caused vast destruction and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.

___ Julia Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Abby Sewell in Beirut, Fatma Khaled in Cairo, and David Rising in Bangkok, contributed to this report.