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US President Donald Trump has said homeless people must “move out” of Washington DC as he vowed to tackle crime in the city, but the mayor pushed back against the White House likening the capital to Baghdad.

“We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” he posted on Sunday. The Republican president also trailed a news conference for Monday about his plan to make the city “safer and more beautiful than it ever was before”.

Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said: “We are not experiencing a crime spike.”

Trump signed an order last month making it easier to arrest homeless people, and he last week ordered federal law enforcement into the streets of Washington DC.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social on Sunday.

“We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong.”

Alongside photos of tents and rubbish, he added: “There will be no ‘MR. NICE GUY.’ We want our Capital BACK. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The specifics of the president’s plan are not yet clear, but in a 2022 speech he proposed moving homeless people to “high quality” tents on inexpensive land outside cities, while providing access to bathrooms and medical professionals.

On Friday, Trump ordered federal agents – including from US Park Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the US Marshals Service – into Washington DC to curb what he called “totally out of control” levels of crime.

A White House official told National Public Radio that up to 450 federal officers were deployed on Saturday night.

The move comes after a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) was assaulted in an alleged attempted carjacking in Washington DC.

Trump vented about that incident on social media, posting a photo of the bloodied victim.

Mayor Bowser told MSNBC on Sunday: “It is true that we had a terrible spike in crime in 2023, but this is not 2023.

“We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.”

She criticised White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller for dubbing the US capital “more violent than Baghdad”.

“Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false,” Bowser said.

Washington DC’s homicide rate remains relatively high per capita compared to other US cities, with a total of 98 such killings recorded so far this year. Homicides have been trending higher in the US capital from a decade ago.

But federal data from January suggests that Washington DC last year recorded its lowest overall violent crime figures – once carjacking, assault and robberies are incorporated – in 30 years.

Trump has said there will be a news conference at the White House on Monday to outline their plans to stop violent crime in the US capital.

In another post on Sunday he said the event at 10:00 EDT (14:00 GMT) would address ending “crime, murder and death” in the city, as well as its “physical renovation”.

He described Bowser as “a good person who has tried”, adding that despite her efforts crime continues to get “worse” and the city becomes “dirtier and less attractive”.

Community Partnership, an organisation that works to reduce homelessness in Washington DC, told Reuters news agency that the city of 700,000 residents had about 3,782 people homeless on any given night.

Most were in public housing or emergency shelters, but about 800 were considered “on the street”.

As a district, rather than a state, Washington DC is overseen by the federal government, which has the power to override some local laws.

The president controls federal land and buildings in the city, although he would need Congress to assume federal control of the district.

In recent days, he has threatened to take over the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department, which Bowser argued was not possible.

“There are very specific things in our law that would allow the president to have more control over our police department,” Bowser said. “None of those conditions exist in our city right now.”

A prominent Al Jazeera journalist who had previously been threatened by Israel has been killed along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike.

Anas al-Sharif, who was one of Al Jazeera’s most recognisable faces in Gaza, was killed while inside a tent for journalists outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Sunday night.

Seven people in total were killed in the attack, including al-Sharif, Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to the Qatar-based broadcaster.

The Israel Defense Force admitted the strike, claiming the reporter had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organisation and was responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF forces”.

It claimed it had intelligence and documents found in Gaza as proof but rights advocates said he had been targeted for his frontline reporting on the Gaza war and that Israel’s claim lacked evidence.

Calling al-Sharif “one of Gaza’s bravest journalists,” Al Jazeera said the attack was “a desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza.”

Last month Israeli IDF spokesperson Avichai Adraee shared a video of al-Sharif on X and accused him of being a member of Hamas’ military wing. At the time the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, Irene Khan, called it “an unsubstantiated claim” and a “blatant assault on journalists”.

In July, al-Sharif told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that he lived with the “feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment”.

After the attack, the CPJ said it was “appalled” to learn of the journalists’ deaths.

“Israel’s pattern of labelling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.

“Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted. Those responsible for these killings must be held accountable.”

The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate condemned what it described as a “bloody crime” of assassination.

In January this year, after a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, al-Sharif drew widespread attention when, during a live broadcast, he removed his body armour while surrounded by dozens of Gaza residents celebrating the temporary halt in hostilities.

A few minutes before his death, al-Sharif posted on X: “Breaking: Intense, concentrated Israeli bombardment using ‘fire belts’ is hitting the eastern and southern areas of Gaza City.”

In a final message, which Al Jazeera said had been written on 6 April and which was posted to al-Sharif’s X account after his death, the reporter said that he had “lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.”

“Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half,” he continued.

The 28-year-old leaves behind a wife and two small children. His father was killed by an Israeli strike on the family home in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City in December 2023. At the time al-Sharif said he would continue to report and refused to leave northern Gaza.

Another Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza, Hani Mahmoud, said: “This is perhaps the hardest thing I’m reporting about the past 22 months. I’m not far from al-Shifa hospital, just one block away, and I could hear the massive explosion that took place in the past half an hour or so, near al-Shifa hospital.

“I could see it when it lit up the sky and, within moments, the news circulated that it was the journalist camp at the main gate of the al-Shifa hospital.”

Al-Sharif and his colleagues have been reporting from Gaza since the beginning of the conflict.

“It’s important to highlight that this attack is just a week after an Israeli military official directly accused Anas and directly ran a campaign of incitement on Al Jazeera and correspondents on the ground because of their work, because of their relentless reporting on the starvation and the famine and the malnutrition,” Mahmoud added.

Israel has killed multiple Al Jazeera journalists and members of their families, including Hossam Shabat, who was killed in March, and Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi, who were killed in August.

Chief correspondent Wael al Dahdouh’s wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in October 2023 and he himself was injured in an attack weeks later that killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa.

Israel, which does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza and which has targeted local reporters, has killed 237 journalists since the war started on 7 October 2023, according to Gaza’s government media office. The Committee to Protect Journalists said at least 186 journalists have been killed in the Gaza conflict. Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse