DALLAS (AP) — Dallas Mavericks center Dereck Lively II left Game 3 of the Western Conference finals against Minnesota on Sunday night after getting hit in the back of the head by a knee from Karl-Anthony Towns.

The Mavericks said Lively was questionable to return with a sprained neck. The accidental contact caused his head to snap forward.

The rookie from Duke stayed on the court holding his head and was down for several minutes before appearing dazed as he was helped off the court and taken to the locker room.

Lively fell as Mike Conley was driving for a missed shot, and Towns was pursuing an offensive rebound when his knee hit Lively’s head in the second quarter.

The 20-year-old Lively and starting center Daniel Gafford played a big role in helping Dallas take a 2-0 lead in the series. Lively was 12 of 12 from the field in the series, including three makes in Game 3, when he was injured.

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

An Israeli airstrike on a Hamas compound in the Gazan city of Rafah has killed two top Hamas officials as well as dozens of civilians. 

While the exact number of killed remains unclear at this time, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it struck a Hamas compound in Rafah in which “significant Hamas terrorists were operating.”

The IDF, citing intelligence that it said indicated Hamas’ use of the area, said it carried out the strike “against legitimate targets under international law.”

IDF sources told Fox News Digital the strike eliminated Yassin Rabia, the commander of Hamas’ leadership in Judea and Samaria, as well as Khaled Nagar, a senior official in Hamas’ Judea and Samaria wing.

The IDF said that both men had perpetrated numerous terrorist attacks in the early 2000s in which Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed.

The IDF acknowledged reports that “several civilians in the area were harmed” from the airstrike and a subsequent fire. It said the incident is “under review.”

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Palestinian health and civil emergency service officials, meanwhile, say the airstrike killed at least 35 Palestinians and wounded dozens more.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the death toll is likely to rise as search and rescue efforts continue in Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, more than a mile northwest of the city center.

The Red Crescent Society said Israel had designated the location a “humanitarian area.” The neighborhood is not included in areas that Israel’s military ordered evacuated this month.

Footage from the scene showed heavy destruction. 

The airstrike was reported hours after Hamas fired a barrage of rockets from Gaza that set off air raid sirens as far away as Tel Aviv.

Smoke billows during Israeli bombardment in eastern Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 19, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP via Getty Images)

There were no immediate reports of casualties in what appeared to be the first long-range rocket attack from Gaza since January. Hamas’ military wing claimed responsibility. Israel’s military said eight projectiles crossed into Israel after being launched from Rafah and “a number” were intercepted and the launcher was destroyed.

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The war between Israel and Hamas has killed nearly 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count. Israel blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense, residential areas.

Around 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, severe hunger is widespread and U.N. officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine.

Displaced Palestinians arrive in central Gaza after fleeing from the southern Gazan city of Rafah on May 9. (AP/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Hamas triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack inside Israel in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized some 250 hostages. Hamas still holds some 100 hostages and the remains of around 30 others after most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must take over Rafah to eliminate Hamas’ remaining battalions and achieve “total victory” over the militants, who recently regrouped in other parts of Gaza.

Sunday’s strike came two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population sought shelter before Israel’s incursion this month. Tens of thousands of people remain in the area while many others have fled.

Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte conceded defeat in the final round of the Baltic nation’s presidential election.

Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda has declared victory in the final round of the Baltic nation’s presidential election, as partial results showed him far ahead in the two-way race against Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte.

Ballots from nearly 90 percent of polling stations on Sunday showed Nauseda, 60, winning roughly three-quarters of the vote, followed by Simonyte, 49, from the ruling centre-right Homeland Union party.

Simonyte conceded defeat in comments to reporters and congratulated Nauseda.

This is the second time Nauseda and Simonyte have competed in a presidential run-off election. In 2019, Nauseda beat Simonyte with 66 percent of the vote.

As president, Nauseda has a semi-executive role, which includes heading the armed forces, chairing the defence and national security policy body and representing the country at NATO and European Union summits.

The former senior economist with the Swedish banking group SEB, who is not affiliated with any party, won the first round of the election on May 12 with 44 percent of the votes, short of the 50 percent he needed for an outright victory.

Simonyte was the only woman out of eight candidates in the first round and came second with 20 percent.

Both Nauseda and Simonyte support increasing defence spending to at least 3 percent of Lithuania’s gross domestic product, from the 2.75 percent planned for this year, in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Like other Baltic nations, Lithuania worries it could be Moscow’s next target. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said he has no intention of attacking any NATO countries.

The uneasy relationship between Nauseda and Simonyte has also caught the limelight in foreign policy debates, most notably on Lithuania’s relations with China.

Bilateral ties turned tense in 2021, when Vilnius allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy under the island’s name, a departure from the common diplomatic practice of using the name of the capital, Taipei, to avoid angering Beijing.

China, which considers self-ruled Taiwan a part of its territory, downgraded diplomatic relations with Vilnius and blocked its exports, leading some Lithuanian politicians to urge a restoration of relations for the sake of the economy.