"So forgive me. I have a slightly inelegant position, but we have just had a massive barrage of rockets coming in here, not too far from us. So we have had to take shelter here by the roadside," Ward said breathing heavily on CNN's air while lying on her side on the ground. "We’re just about five minutes away. Gaza is in that direction. We can hear now a lot of jets in the sky. We can also hear the Iron Dome intercepting a number of those rockets as they were whizzing overhead and making impact in that direction, not too far from here."

Ward said the area she was reporting from is "Ground Zero for this entire operation of carnage," that broke out in Gaza over the weekend.

"Hamas militants came on a pickup truck. This was the first place where they breached that border wall and they basically drove down this strip, just spraying lead wherever they went," she said.

Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on Saturday, with government officials swiftly declaring war on the group in response. Hundreds are dead on both sides, and the U.S. State Department has confirmed that the fatalities include at least nine Americans.

"I decided to attend today in my personal capacity because I wanted to show solidarity and support with the Palestinian people who have been struggling under apartheid and who had been struggling for basic human rights for decades now," said Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Zainab Chaudry.

This comes two days after Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic militant group launched a surprise attack from Gaza.

Israel then declared war on Sunday and promised to retaliate against the militant group.

More than 1,100 people have been killed and thousands have been wounded on both sides, according to AP.

Chanudry said people from all walks of life were at the rally outside of the White House Sunday.

"There wasn't just Muslims or Palestinians. There was a very strong Interfaith showing," she said.

She said people around the DMV are left with conflicting emotions. Some expressed anger toward the Palestinian people while others - especially those at the rally - were somber, concerned as to what might happen next in the conflict.

"My immediate thought was concern for innocent life, what the consequences are going to be, what this will mean for civil society," said Chaudry.

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked McCarthy — who lost the gavel last week after eight House Republicans joined with Democrats to oust him — on Monday whether he would serve again as Speaker if Republicans are deadlocked on a replacement. 

“Look, the conference has to make that decision. I’m still a member. I’m going to continue to fight and act,” McCarthy said.

Pressed again on whether he would take the job again if the eight GOP members who opposed him retreated, McCarthy remained open to the possibility.

“Look, whatever the conference wants, I will do,” McCarthy said. “I think we need to be strong. I think we need to be united. The eight, in my view, don’t look to be — it was a personal thing.”

He expressed frustration with the Republicans who voted against a GOP-only stopgap proposal. The party's repeated failure to pass a temporary funding bill that included spending cuts and policy provisions prompted McCarthy to pass a “clean” stopgap to avoid a government shutdown, infuriating the hard-line GOP members who then voted to oust him.

McCarthy defended the decision, pointing to the war breaking out in Israel.

“They’re the ones who wanted a government shutdown,” McCarthy said. “We wouldn’t be paying our troops while we’re putting out a carrier strike fighter there – 30,000 American men and women in our armed services in the Middle East wouldn’t be being paid right now? I mean, what weakness would we be at?”

Some Republicans, such as Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), have argued that McCarthy should be reinstated as Speaker, particularly in light of the new war in Israel.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) are running to replace McCarthy as Speaker. The House GOP is set to have a candidate forum Tuesday and an internal conference election Wednesday.

Maya Alper was standing toward the back of the bar with teams of environmentally conscious volunteers, picking up trash and passing out free vodka shots to party-goers who reused their cups. Just after 6.a.m., as a light-blue dawn broke and the headliner D.J. took the stage, air raid sirens cut through the ethereal trap music. Rockets streaked overhead.

Alper, 25, jumped into her car and raced to the main road. But at the intersection she encountered crowds of stricken festival attendees, shouting at drivers to turn around. Then, a noise. Firecrackers? Panicked men and women staggering down the road just in front of her fell to the ground in pools of blood. Gunshots.

The open-air Tribe of Nova music festival will go down in Israeli history as the country's worst civilian massacre. Dozens of Hamas militants who had blown through Israel’s heavily fortified separation fence and crossed into the country from Gaza opened fire on young Israelis who had come together for a joyous night of electronic music. Some attendees were drunk or high on drugs, magnifying their confusion and terror.

“We were hiding and running, hiding and running, in an open field, the worst place you could possibly be in that situation,” said Arik Nani from Tel Aviv, who had gone to the party to celebrate his 26th birthday. “For a country where everyone in these circles knows everyone, this is a trauma like I could never imagine.”

While rockets rained down, revelers said militants converged on the open field while others waited near bomb shelters, gunning down people who were seeking refuge. Israeli communities on either side of the festival grounds also came under attack, with Hamas gunmen abducting dozens of men, women and children — including elderly and disabled people — and killing scores of others in Saturday's unprecedented surprise attack.

The staggering toll of the festival was becoming clear early Monday, as Israel's rescue service Zaka said paramedics had recovered at least 260 bodies. Festival organizers said they were helping Israeli security forces locate attendees who were still missing. The death toll could rise as teams continue to clear the area.

As the carnage unfolded before her, Alper pulled a few disoriented-looking revelers into her car from the street and accelerated in the opposite direction. One of them said he had lost his wife in the chaos and Alper had to stop him from breaking out of the car to find her. Another said she had just seen Hamas gunmen shoot and kill her best friend. Another rocked in his seat, murmuring over and over, “We are going to die." In the review mirror, Alper watched the dance floor where she had spent the past ecstatic hours transform into a giant cloud of black smoke.

Nowhere was safe, she said. The roar of explosions, hysterical screams and automatic gunfire felt closer the further she drove. When a man just meters away shouted “God is great!", Alper and her new companions sprung out of the car and sprinted through open fields toward a mass of bushes.

Alper felt a bullet whiz past her left ear. Aware the gunmen would outrun her, she plunged into a tangle of shrubs. Peering through thorns, she said she saw one of her passengers, the girl who had lost her friend, shriek and collapse as a gunman stood over her limp body, grinning.

“I can't even explain the energy they (the militants) had, it was so clear they didn't see us as human beings,” she said. “They looked at us with pure, pure hate.”

For over six hours, Alper — and thousands of other concert attendees — hid without help from the Israeli army as Hamas militants sprayed automatic gunfire and threw grenades.

Her limbs were so contorted into a tangled mess in the bush that she couldn't wiggle her toes. At different points, she heard militants speak in Arabic just beside her. A yoga devotee who practices meditation, Alper said she focused on her breath — “breathing and praying in every way I knew possible.”

“Every time I thought of anger, or fear or revenge, I breathed it out,” she said. “I tried to think of what I was grateful for — the bush that hid me so well that even birds landed on it, the birds that were still singing, the sky that was so blue.”

A tank instructor in the Israeli army, Alper knew she was safe when she heard a different kind of explosion — the sound of an Israeli army tank round. She shouted for help and soon soldiers were lifting her out of the bush. Around her lay the lifeless body of one of her friends. The girl from her car she had seen collapse was nowhere to be found — she believes that Hamas militants took her into Gaza.

Alper said the Israeli army, on its way to fight Hamas militants in the hard-hit kibbutz of Be’eri near the Gaza border, was at a loss as to know what to do with her.

At that moment, a pick-up truck full of Palestinian citizens of Israel pulled up. The men from the Bedouin city of Rahat were scouring the area to help rescue Israeli survivors. Helping Alper into their car, they drove her to the police station, where she collapsed, crying, into her father's arms.

“This is not just war. This is hell," Alper said. “But in that hell I still feel that somehow, we can choose to act out of love, and not just fear.”

“Yes, I can confirm that nine Americans unfortunately have lost their lives as a result of these horrific attacks in the region,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on CNN. “We are in close contact with the government of Israel as they continue to conduct security operations to locate missing US citizens, missing Israeli citizens.”

Israel’s military ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip on Monday, halting entry of food, fuel and supplies to its 2.3 million people as it pounded the Hamas-ruled territory with waves of airstrikes in retaliation for the militants’ bloody weekend incursion.

More than two days after Hamas launched its surprise attack from Gaza, the Israeli military said it had largely gained control in its southern towns where it had been battling Hamas gunmen. Israel’s vaunted military and intelligence apparatus was caught completely off guard by Hamas, resulting in heavy battles in its streets for the first time in decades.

Tanks and drones were deployed to guard breaches in the border fence to prevent new incursions. Thousands of Israelis were evacuated from more than a dozen towns near Gaza, and the military summoned 300,000 reservists — a massive mobilization in a short time.

The moves, along with Israel’s formal declaration of war on Sunday, pointed to Israel increasingly shifting to the offensive against Hamas, threatening greater destruction in the densely populated, impoverished Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, strikes leveled much of the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, which Israel said Hamas was using as a staging ground. On Monday, the Israeli military blared messages to residents to evacuate Rimal, a residential and commercial district of central Gaza City where offices of The Associated Press and other international media are located, a signal that heavy strikes were to come.

A major question remains whether it will launch a ground assault into the tiny Mediterranean coastal territory, a move that in the past has brought intensified casualties. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy “the military and governing capabilities” of the militant group.

As Israel hit more than 1,000 targets in Gaza, Palestinian militants continued firing barrages of rockets, setting off air raid sirens in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Video posted online appeared to show a plume of smoke near a terminal at Ben Gurion International Airport. There was no immediate word on casualties or damage from the latest bombardment.

Civilians have already paid a high price. Around 700 people, including 73 soldiers, have been killed in Israel, according to Israeli media outlets, citing rescue service — a staggering toll by the scale of its recent conflicts. The Gaza Health Ministry said 493 people, including 78 children and 41 women, were killed in the territory. Thousands have been wounded on both sides.

Palestinian militant groups claimed to be holding over 130 people abducted in Israel and dragged into Gaza. The armed wing of Hamas claimed on its Telegram channel that four of them were killed in Israeli airstrikes. That could not be independently confirmed.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” on Gaza, saying authorities would cut electricity and block the entry of food and fuel.

Gallant said Israel was at war with “human animals,” using the kind of dehumanizing language often employed by both sides at times of soaring tensions.

Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Gaza of varying strictness since Hamas seized power in 2007. In recent years Israel has provided limited electricity and allowed the import of food, fuel and some consumer goods, while heavily restricting travel in and out.

The Israeli seal will leave Gaza almost entirely dependent on its crossing into neighboring Egypt at Rafah, where cargo capacities are lower than other crossings into Israel.

An Egyptian military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, said more than 2 tons of medical supplies from the Egyptian Red Crescent were sent to Gaza and efforts were underway to organize food, and other deliveries, but the question of allowing in fuel was not yet decided.

Israeli Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters that Israeli bombardment was moving from district to district to destroy houses and buildings Israel says are being used by Hamas. Israel is planning to hit thousands of targets, he said. He said “hundreds” of Hamas militants were buried under rubble of buildings destroyed by Israel in the past 48 hours. His claims of the numbers – and his characterization of the dead as Hamas – could not be confirmed.

In the southern Gaza city of Rafah, an Israeli airstrike early Monday killed 19 people, including women and children, said Talat Barhoum, a doctor at the local Al-Najjar Hospital. Barhoum said aircraft hit the home of the Abu Hilal family, and that one of those killed was Rafaat Abu Hilal, a leader of a local armed group. The strike caused damage to surrounding homes.

Over the weekend, another airstrike on a home in Rafah killed 19 members of the Abu Quta family, including women and children, and five neighbors, said a survivor, Nasser Abu Quta, adding that there were no militants in the family house.

The U.N. said more than 123,000 people have fled their homes in Gaza – many after Israeli warnings of imminent bombardment. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said a school sheltering more than 225 people took a direct hit. It did not say where the fire came from.

Meanwhile, after about 48 hours of pitched battles, Hagari said the military has “control” of its border communities in southern Israel. Despite some isolated incidents early Monday, “at this stage, there is no fighting in the communities.”

He said 15 of 24 border communities have been evacuated, with the rest expected to be emptied in the coming day.

Earlier, Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua told The Associated Press over the phone that the group’s fighters continued to battle outside Gaza and had captured more Israelis as recently as Monday morning.

He said the group aims to free all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, which in the past has agreed to lopsided exchange deals in which it released large numbers of prisoners for individual captives or even the remains of soldiers.

Among the captives are soldiers and civilians, including women, children and older adults, mostly Israelis but also some people of other nationalities. Egypt's state-run Al-Ahram newspaper said Monday that Egyptian officials are trying to mediate a release of Palestinian women in Israel’s prisons in exchange for Israeli women captured by militants.

Mayyan Zin, a divorced mother of two, said she learned that her two daughters had been abducted when a relative sent her photos from a Telegram group showing them sitting on mattresses in captivity. She then found online videos of a chilling scene in her ex-husband’s home: Gunmen who had broken in speak to him near the two weeping daughters, Dafna, 15, and Ella, 8. Another video showed the father being taken into Gaza.

“Just bring my daughters home and to their family. All the people,” Zin said.

Hamas has ruled Gaza since driving out forces loyal to the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in 2007 and its rule has gone unchallenged through the blockade and four previous wars with Israel.

After breaking through Israeli barriers with explosives at daybreak Saturday, an estimated 1,000 Hamas gunmen rampaged for hours, gunning down civilians and snatching people in towns, along highways and at a techno music festival attended by thousands in the desert. Palestinian militants have also launched around 4,400 rockets at Israel, according to the military.

Hamas said it launched the attack in response to mounting Palestinian suffering under Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, its blockade of Gaza, its discriminatory policies in annexed east Jerusalem and tensions around a disputed Jerusalem holy site sacred to Muslims and Jews.

The Palestinians want a state of their own in all three territories, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, but the last serious peace talks broke down well over a decade ago, and Israel’s far-right government is opposed to Palestinian statehood.

On Sunday, the U.S. dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean to be ready to assist Israel and said it would send additional military ai

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The numbers were in flux and could change as a fuller accounting is compiled, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss initial reports received by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. 

Most, if not all, of those reported dead or missing are dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, the official said.

Earlier on Sunday, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, said American citizens are also among those who were taken captive. But he gave no details about them or those possibly killed.

“Unfortunately I can’t. We have a lot of dual citizens in Israel. I suspect there are several, but we’re still trying to sort through all of all this information after this horrific surprise attack and we’ll make sure to put that information out so that the loved ones of these people who were killed and who are held hostage, they know as quickly as possible,” Dermer told CNN’s ‘’State of the Union.’’

The Israeli government has formally declared war and given the green light for “significant military steps” to retaliate against Hamas for its surprise attack over the weekend.

The death toll has surpassed 1,100, and thousands were wounded on both sides. At least 700 people have reportedly been killed in Israel — a staggering toll on a scale the country has not experienced in decades — and more than 400 have been killed in Gaza.

The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands National Park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science.

The estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of aquatic plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake — which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years.

The new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient conifer pollen and quartz grains.

The reported age of the footprints challenges the once-conventional wisdom that humans didn’t reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps about 15,000 years ago.

“This is a subject that’s always been controversial because it’s so significant — it’s about how we understand the last chapter of the peopling of the world,” said Thomas Urban, an archaeological scientist at Cornell University, who was involved in the 2021 study but not the new one.

Thomas Stafford, an independent archaeological geologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was not involved in the study, said he “was a bit skeptical before” but now is convinced.

“If three totally different methods converge around a single age range, that’s really significant,” he said.

The new study isolated about 75,000 grains of pure pollen from the same sedimentary layer that contained the footprints.

“Dating pollen is arduous and nail-biting,” said Kathleen Springer, a research geologist at the United States Geological Survey and a co-author of the new paper. Scientists believe radiocarbon dating of terrestrial plants is more accurate than dating aquatic plants, but there needs to be a large enough sample size to analyze, she said.

The researchers also studied accumulated damage in the crystal lattices of ancient quartz grains to produce an age estimate.

Ancient footprints of any kind — left by humans or megafauna like big cats and dire wolves — can provide archaeologists with a snapshot of a moment in time, recording how people or animals walked or limped along and whether they crossed paths. Animal footprints have also been found at White Sands.

While other archeological sites in the Americas point to similar date ranges — including pendants carved from giant ground sloth remains in Brazil — scientists still question whether such materials really indicate human presence.

“White Sands is unique because there’s no question these footprints were left by people, it’s not ambiguous,” said Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas, who was not involved in the study.

She grew up in Sanford, where her mother worked as a seamstress. Arias went on to study fashion and textile design at North Carolina State University. After working for major brands in the fashion industry, like Vera Wang, she decided to bridge her two worlds using her own company, Descalza.

The idea for Descalza first came while Arias was still in college, interning at a clothing brand in Guatemala.

"When I see these textiles for the first time, I feel like I’m learning part of my history, part of my indigenous roots,” said Arias. She knew then that her mission was to work her way back to using those traditional fabrics.

Now, Descalza is a multi-country operation that Arias runs out of her garage in Wendell. The concept is a combination of the traditional fabrics from Latin America and North Carolina’s textile history. Arias sources all of her materials from Latin American countries with their own distinct weaving techniques.

After arriving in the United States, Descalza’s head seamstress, Magdalena Cruz, gets to work bringing Arias’s designs to life an hour away in Sanford. Cruz, who used to work in industrial textile factories, said she prefers Descalza’s smaller, artisanal setup, because of the quality that goes into the product.

“You never stop learning. Every day you make something new. I like everything about it, because it’s my passion,” said Cruz. She also likes that Descalza supports artisans around Latin America.

Using traditional techniques means Arias has had to adapt her designs to fit within the confines of the artisans’ machines. The most expensive item in her catalog is one example of this.

"This particular fabric is made on a traditional weaving loom. That loom is 36 inches wide, so it’s very narrow, and this skirt has also this volume. We had to engineer our pattern so that it fit length-wise instead of width-wise, because it doesn’t have any width,” said Arias.

Arias said she doesn’t have any plans to move production outside of North Carolina, even though it’s more expensive than outsourcing somewhere else.

“The reason I’m not producing everything in El Salvador, and the reason I’m having everything shipped to North Carolina is because North Carolina is a textile town. Like, North Carolina is also known as a place where makers live.”

In addition to the wealth of skilled textile workers in the state, she also said keeping manufacturing in the state where she grew up is a representation of her different worlds.

“There’s a phrase in Spanish, ‘Ni de aqui, ni de alla,’ not from here not from there. I wanted to change that and say, ‘no’. We’re de aqui y de alla. You can be from both and it’s ok. You can be proud of both and that’s okay. These fabrics and these pieces that we make are a reflection of that,” said Arias.

In a surprise move, Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel on Saturday, which has now left at least 600 dead in Israel and another 300 dead in Gaza. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said Sunday that he is in touch with constituents who are currently in Israel amid the attacks.

“Well, we have been in touch with dozens of constituents who are in Israel currently. Obviously, for their safety and security, I'm not going to get too specific. But we are working with them, as well as the consulate, to try and get them out as quickly as possible,” he said on CNN's “State of the Union.”

“Given the situation on the ground, we want to make sure that all of our residents here in the 17th District get home as quickly as possible,” he added.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) also said that he has been notified by 53 of his own constituents on Sunday, saying that they are “panicked” and “trying to find their way to get back to America.”

“If anybody — if you haven't been to Israel, in southern Israel by the Gaza border, by Gaza City, yes, it is really easy for them to come across that border. That's what we saw. We need to provide every assistance possible to Israel to get Americans back,” Donalds said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“And, listen, let me be very clear with Hamas. Touch an American's head and see what happens to you. That's my position. That needs to be the position of the president of the United States right now. We need to get those people back and support Israel in every way possible to see that happen,” he added.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that U.S. officials have received reports that several Americans have been killed in Israel and that they are working to verify the reports. It’s also been reported that Hamas has taken people in Israel, including women and children, as hostages.

“Yes, we have reports that several Americans were killed,” Blinken told CNN’s Dana Bash when asked whether Americans were killed or kidnapped in Israel.

“We’re working overtime to verify that. At the same time, there are reports of missing Americans, and there again, we’re working to verify those reports,” he said.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) was also in Jerusalem on Saturday as Hamas launched their first round of attacks. His office confirmed Sunday that the senator had safely departed Israel after needing to shelter in place with his staff.

“We have to get a Speaker elected this week, so we can get things on the floor like replenishing the Iron Dome, get a resolution that Ranking Member [Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.)] and I have been working on, a bipartisan resolution condemning Hamas for what they have done to Israel,” McCaul said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We want to get that on the floor by unanimous consent. Whether or not we have a Speaker in place, because I think we cannot wait. We have to get that message out as soon as possible.” McCaul added. 

McCaul’s comments come after hundreds of Israelis were killed by Hamas in an attack Saturday morning that some officials are describing as among the worst since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

His comments also follow an historic House vote last Tuesday, when it voted 216-210 to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), leaving a vacancy at the third-highest position in the United States government. Eight Republicans voted with all Democrats against McCarthy.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) have emerged as the top candidates in the race, but neither, as of Sunday afternoon, appear to have the votes to win the majority. House Republicans are expected to meet Tuesday for a candidate forum to narrow down the field to one candidate that could win the majority of the votes in the closely divided chamber.  

McCaul also warned about the message that having a vacancy in the Speakership has to U.S. enemies.

Asked whether Congress can pass more congressional aid to Israel without a Speaker, McCaul said, “Well it's not ideal. It wasn't my idea to oust the Speaker. I thought it was dangerous.”

“I look at the world and all the threats that are out there. And what kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we can't govern? While we're dysfunctional? When we don't even have a Speaker of the House?” McCaul continued. “I mean, how does Chairman [Xi Jinping] in China look at that when he says democracy doesn't work? How does the Ayatollah [in Iran] look at this, knowing that we cannot function properly? And I think it sends a terrible message.”