US helps Israel shoot down barrage of Iranian missiles

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US helps Israel shoot down barrage of Iranian missiles

2025-06-14 06:48 Last Updated At：06:51

WASHINGTON (AP) — American air defense systems and a Navy destroyer helped Israel shoot down incoming ballistic missiles Friday that Tehran launched in response to Israeli strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and top military leaders, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. has both ground-based Patriot missile defense systems and Terminal High Altitude Air Defense systems in the Middle East capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, which Iran fired in multiple barrages in retaliation for Israel's initial attack.

A Navy destroyer in the eastern Mediterranean Sea also shot down Iranian missiles heading toward Israel, one official said.

The United States also is shifting military resources, including ships, in the Middle East in response to the strikes.

The Navy directed the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, which is capable of defending against ballistic missiles, to begin sailing from the western Mediterranean Sea toward the eastern Mediterranean and has directed a second destroyer to begin moving forward so it can be available if requested by the White House, U.S. officials said.

American fighter jets also are patrolling the sky in the Middle East to protect personnel and installations, and air bases in the region are taking additional security precautions, the officials said.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public or to discuss ongoing operations.

President Donald Trump met with his National Security Council principals Friday to discuss options.

The forces in the region have been taking precautionary measures for days, including having military dependents voluntarily depart regional bases, in anticipation of the strikes and to protect personnel in case of a large-scale response from Tehran.

Typically around 30,000 troops are based in the Middle East, and about 40,000 troops are in the region now, according to a U.S. official. That number surged as high as 43,000 last October amid the ongoing tensions between Israel and Iran as well as continuous attacks on commercial and military ships in the Red Sea by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

The Navy has additional assets that it could surge to the Middle East if needed, particularly its aircraft carriers and the warships that sail with them. The USS Carl Vinson is in the Arabian Sea — the only aircraft carrier in the region.

The carrier USS Nimitz is in the Indo-Pacific and could be directed toward the Middle East if needed, and the USS George Washington just left its port in Japan and could also be directed to the region if so ordered, one of the officials said.

Then-President Joe Biden initially surged ships to protect Israel, a close U.S. ally, following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas that launched the war in Gaza. It was seen as a deterrent against Hezbollah and Iran at the time.

On Oct. 1, 2024, U.S. Navy destroyers fired about a dozen interceptors in defense of Israel as the country came under attack by more than 200 missiles fired by Iran.

Girls camp grieves loss of 27 campers and counselors in Texas floods that killed nearly 90 people

2025-07-08 03:28 Last Updated At：03:31

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Crews picked through mountains of debris and waded into swollen rivers Monday in the search for victims of catastrophic flooding that killed nearly 90 people over the July Fourth weekend in Texas, including more than two dozen campers and counselors from an all-girls Christian camp.

With additional rain on the way, more flooding still threatened in saturated parts of central Texas. Authorities said the death toll was sure to rise as crews looked for many people who were missing.

Operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, said they lost 27 campers and counselors, confirming their worst fears after a wall of water slammed into cabins built along the edge of the Guadalupe River.

“We have been in communication with local and state authorities who are tirelessly deploying extensive resources to search for our missing girls,” the camp said in a statement. Authorities later said that 10 girls and a counselor from the camp remain missing.

The raging flash floods — among the nation’s worst in decades — slammed into riverside camps and homes before daybreak Friday, pulling sleeping people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and automobiles. Some survivors were found clinging to trees.

Piles of twisted trees sprinkled with mattresses, refrigerators, coolers and canoes now litter the riverbanks. Search-and-rescue teams used heavy equipment near Kerrville to remove large branches while volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece.

In the Hill Country area, home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps, searchers have found the bodies of 75 people, including 27 children, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said.

Fourteen other deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials.

Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday that 41 people were unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.

Authorities vowed that one of the next steps will be investigating whether enough warnings were issued and why some camps did not evacuate or move to higher ground in areas long vulnerable to flooding.

Search-and-rescue crews at one staging area said Monday that more than 1,000 volunteers had been directed to an area of hard-hit Kerr County.

Families were allowed to look around Camp Mystic beginning Sunday morning. A man whose daughter was rescued from a cabin on the highest point in the camp walked a riverbank, looking in clumps of trees and under big rocks.

One family left with a blue footlocker. A teenage girl had tears running down her face as they slowly drove away and she gazed through the open window at the wreckage.

Reagan Brown said his parents, in their 80s, managed to escape uphill as water inundated their home in the town of Hunt. When the couple learned that their 92-year-old neighbor was trapped in her attic, they went back and rescued her.

“Then they were able to reach their tool shed up higher ground, and neighbors throughout the early morning began to show up at their tool shed, and they all rode it out together,” Brown said.

Among those confirmed dead were an 8-year-old girl from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at the camp, and the director of another camp up the road.

Two school-age sisters from Dallas were missing Sunday after their cabin was swept away. Their parents were staying in a different cabin and were safe, but the girls’ grandparents were unaccounted for.

On Thursday the National Weather Service advised of potential flooding and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare step that alerts the public to imminent danger.

Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months of rain.

Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said one of the challenges is that many camps are in places with poor cellphone service.

President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration Sunday for Kerr County and said he would likely visit Friday. He said it wasn't the time to talk about whether he was still planning to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency and added that he doesn't plan to rehire any of the federal meteorologists who were fired this year as part of widespread government spending cuts.

“This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it,” the president said.

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said recent cuts to FEMA and the National Weather Service did not delay any warnings.

“There’s a time to have political fights, there’s a time to disagree. This is not that time,” Cruz said. "There will be a time to find out what could been done differently. My hope is in time we learn some lessons to implement the next time there is a flood.”

Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Cedar Attanasio in New York; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; and Michelle Price in Morristown, N.J.