3 buses explode in suspected terror attack near Tel Aviv: Israeli police
(TEL AVIV) — Israeli police are responding to a suspected terror attack on buses near Tel Aviv, the Israeli Police Spokesperson’s Unit said in a statement Thursday evening.
The two buses where bombs exploded were empty and in separate parking lots about 500 meters apart from each other, the mayor of Bat Yam, where the incident occurred, said. Bat Yam is on Israel’s southern coast and is just south of Tel Aviv.
There are no injuries from the explosions, police said.
“Multiple reports have been received of explosions involving several buses at different locations in Bat Yam. Large police forces are at the scenes, searching for suspects. Police bomb disposal units are scanning for additional suspicious objects,” the Israeli Police Spokesperson’s Unit said.
Police urged the public to avoid the areas and remain alert for any suspicious items.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
(TIBET) — At least 126 people were killed and more than 188 others were injured as a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck near Tibet’s holy city on Tuesday, according to Chinese state media.
The earthquake occurred in Dingri County, Shigatse City, Tibet, just after 9 a.m. with a focal depth of 10 kilometers, according to the China Earthquake Networks Centre. More than 3,600 houses had collapsed, state media said.
The U.S. Geological Survey placed the earthquake’s magnitude at 7.1, pinpointing the epicenter in Xizang, the local name for the Tibet Autonomous Region.
“The region near the India and Eurasia plate boundary has a history of large earthquakes,” the USGS said in a summary of the quake. “In the past century, there have been 10 earthquakes of magnitude 6 and greater within 250 km of the January 7, 2025, earthquake.”
The Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism’s exiled spiritual leader, said in a statement that he was “saddened” to learn of the deadly earthquake.
“It has caused the tragic loss of many lives, numerous injuries, and extensive destruction to homes and property,” he said. “I offer my prayers for those who have lost their lives and extend my wishes for a swift recovery to all who have been injured.”
The Chinese media also reported that as of 10 a.m. local time, multiple aftershocks were recorded, the largest of which was 4.4.
The death toll has risen steadily in the hours since the earthquake, according to Xinhua, a state media outlet. First reported at 53, with about 60 other injured, it climbed hours later to about 95 dead and 130 injured, the outlet reported.
(SEOUL) — Authorities in South Korea were working on Monday to confirm the identities of more than three dozen of the 179 people who were killed when a Jeju Air plane crash-landed at an airport on Sunday.
The bodies of 141 people had been identified through their fingerprints or DNA, but 38 of the dead remained unidentified, local officials said.
A day after the deadly crash, in which the Boeing 737 skidded along a runway, crashed into a wall, and burst into flames, officials had recovered the flight’s data recorders from the wreckage and were releasing information about both the dead and the two survivors. Six crew members and 175 passengers had been on the flight.
The acting president, Choi Sang-mok, who has been leading the country since Friday, ordered an emergency safety inspection of South Korea’s entire air fleet and operations.
The two survivors, a man and woman who were both crew members, were not in life-threatening condition, officials said. The man was receiving treatment in an intensive care unit and the woman was recovering, officials said.
Flight 7C2216 had taken off from Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport in Thailand before dawn on Monday, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracker.
As the aircraft approached South Korea’s Muan International Airport at about 9 a.m., the flight control tower issued a warning of a possible bird strike, the Korean Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport said on Sunday.
About a minute after that warning, a pilot sent a mayday distress signal, after which the tower issued permission for the aircraft to land, the ministry said.
The official death toll, provided by the National Fire Agency, climbed steadily in the hours after the crash. By nightfall on Sunday, local officials said all but two of the 181 people onboard had died in the crash.
The aircraft’s voice and data recorders, or “black boxes,” were recovered from the wreckage, the Air and Railway Investigation Committee said. The flight data recorder was found partially damaged and the cockpit voice recorder was collected intact, officials said.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Sunday it would send an investigative team — which was to include members from Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration — to assist South Korean officials. The results of that investigation will be released by the Republic of Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board, or ARAIB.
Efforts were being made to speed up the identifications of the remaining 38 people who died, but some bodies were too damaged for their fingerprints to be used.
Others were the bodies of minors, whose prints were not on file to compare, authorities said. According to the flight manifest, the youngest passenger on board was 3 years old. The manifest recorded five children under 10 years old on the flight.
Jeju Air, which operates an all-Boeing fleet, is a popular low-cost carrier in South Korea. The airline operated about 217 flights a day and carried more than 12 million people during 2023.
ABC News’ Sam Sweeney, Hakyung Kate Lee, Jack Moore, Will Gretsky, Victoria Beaule and Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Mouaz Moustafa, the head of the U.S.-based Syrian advocacy organization, the Syrian Emergency Task Force, told ABC News Tuesday there are believed to be well over 100,000 bodies in a “massive” grave discovered at a site 25 miles north of Damascus.
Opposition groups and rescue workers are still uncovering evidence of the alleged human rights abuses committed by toppled President Bashar Assad’s regime over his 24 years in power — and over 50 years of Assad family rule.
The overthrown president was in power from 2000 to his ousting on Dec. 8. His sudden fall in the face of a surprise, multi-pronged rebel offensive marked the end of a 14-year conflict between Damascus and a collection of anti-government forces.
Now, Syria’s rebel-led transitional government, NGOs and rescue workers are uncovering Assad’s vast network of prisons and suspected mass burial sites, where more than 100,000 people may have gone missing since 2011.
SETF believes it has identified three other “mass graves” so far, as well as two “smaller ones,” Moustafa said.
Moustafa told ABC News from the Syrian capital that the site in al-Qutayfah close to Damascus consists of “massive graves” where “lines or trenches were 6 to 7 meters deep, 3 to 4 meters wide and 50 to 150 meters long.”
“In my conversation with the gravediggers, they told me that four tractor trailer trucks each carrying over 150 bodies came twice a week from 2012 until 2018,” Moustafa said.
“The bulldozer excavator driver described how intelligence officers forced workers to use the bulldozer to flatten and compress the bodies to make them fit and easier to bury before digging the next line or trench,” he added.
The graves contained men, women, children and the elderly “tortured to death” by Assad’s regime, Moustafa said.
The Qutayfah burial site is in an area that was under military control, with the road in closed to civilian traffic.
Large villas nearby housed Iranian and Iraqi allies of the Assad regime, which became increasingly reliant on foreign partners in Moscow, Tehran and Baghdad to retain control as the brutal civil war wore on.
Syria’s Air Force Intelligence — considered the most powerful branch of Assad’s military — also maintained a presence nearby.
At the site, workers clad in white overalls piled large black plastic bags of human bones onto a truck. Some of the bags had Farsi — the official language of Iran — written on them.
Locals told ABC News they saw bags being dumped at the site in the days leading up to Assad’s fall, as rebels surged towards the capital from Idlib and Aleppo in the north and Daraa in the south.
In his first statement since fleeing Syria, Assad on Monday blamed a “terrorist onslaught” for the stunning collapse of his regime.
Assad made no comment on the longstanding human rights abuse allegations, abuses that the opposition and key Western governments say intensified after the outbreak of civil war in 2011.
The fall of his regime saw jubilant fighters and residents emptying Assad’s infamous prisons. More than 100,000 people are still believed to be missing, disappeared into Damascus’ fearsome security apparatus.
The leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group, which led the surprise offensive striking out of Idlib southwards towards Damascus, vowed that the transitional government would hold to account those implicated in Assad’s human rights abuses.
Ahmed al-Sharaa — also known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani — said shortly after the fall of Damascus, “We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people.”
