Two Americans among missing passengers from sunken superyacht
(LONDON) — Two Americans are among those still missing after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday, ABC News has confirmed.
Christopher and Neda Morvillo are among six people still unaccounted for who were aboard the U.K.-flagged Bayesian vessel which sank during a violent storm.
Christopher Morvillo is a partner at law firm Clifford Chance and represented the yacht’s owner — British tech tycoon Mike Lynch — in his recent fraud case brought by Hewlett Packard. He is a former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The search resumed Tuesday morning for the six people missing from the Bayesian. Among the bodies that may be trapped inside the vessel are those of Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah.
Some of the 15 people who were rescued are either still recovering or have now left the hospital.
(NEW YORK) — As leaders in the Middle East and the United States await Iran’s response to the Israeli assassination Wednesday of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, an expert on the situation said it could mean all-out war in the volatile region or lead to a quick resolution of the conflict in Gaza.
Israel is not only facing retaliation from Iran but also from Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israeli forces on Tuesday killed top Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in a precision missile strike in Beirut similar to one that took out Haniyeh, said retired Marine Col. Stephen Ganyard, a former Deputy Assistant U.S. Secretary of State.
Ganyard said the back-to-back assassinations of Haniyeh and Shukr could lead to an “all-out” war in the region or could be part of a larger plan by Israel to escalate tensions with Hezbollah and Iran to the point where they decide to settle the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
“There’s an old Russian, even Soviet strategic ploy, which is called ‘escalate to de-escalate,'” said Ganyard, an ABC News contributor. “So what the Israelis appear to be doing here is ramping things up very quickly, perhaps to reset the discussions with Hamas and Gaza, to have Hezbollah calm down and to put Iran on greater notice that they are in fact going to be a target in the future if their attacks continue, and that their proxies are very vulnerable to Israeli attacks.”
Haniyeh was killed Wednesday when a long-range missile fired from an Israeli aircraft struck a guest quarters in Tehran where Haniyeh was staying as he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, Iranian officials said.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called for “revenge.”
Ganyard said a number of elements had to come together to make this strike possible.
“What’s interesting about this is first they [Israel] had to have intelligence to know exactly which room that this leader was staying in and then they would have had to have the precision to hit just that room. And they do have these long-range weapons that have the ability to pick individual windows if needed,” Ganyard said.
He said Israel likely chose Tehran to kill Haniyeh because it has an “amazing amount of on-the-ground intelligence there.”
Ganyard said the assassination of Haniyeh was an embarrassment to Iran.
“Now will Iran go to war over a Hamas leader that was killed on its soil? There’s at least a hope that they won’t,” Ganyard said. “They will have to retaliate in some way because, obviously, they’re humiliated by Israel’s ability to take out a leader on their own soil.”
He said the real challenge for Iran is how far it is going to go because Haniyeh was not “one of its guys,” noting that Hamas is a Sunni organization and the leadership of Iran is Shia.
“So are you really going to start an all-out war with Israel based on somebody from one of your proxies, but not even a co-religious [person]?” Ganyard said.
Iran’s response could be similar to one it took against Israel in April when it launched 300 drones and missiles toward targets in Israel in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria, that killed seven people, including a top Iranian commander. Israel said 99% of the drones and missiles fired by Iran were intercepted by the country’s “Iron Dome” defense system.
“So the response back in April was quite muted. It was like, ‘Okay, you got revenge. It didn’t do anything to us. Let’s call it off, at least simmer things down,'” Ganyard said. “So, that’ll be interesting to see what happens. How far does Iran retaliate? What does ‘revenge’ truly mean? How far are they willing to walk up to that line without going to outright war with the Israelis?”
Ganyard said he believes Israel’s bigger threat is Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“Hezbollah has somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 ground-to-surface missiles that they can attack Israel with, some of which are precision weapons, which means that all of Israel’s infrastructure is at risk,” Ganyard said. “So the northern threat, Hezbollah, is really what’s going to concern Israel and what the response is from Hezbollah. And is Hezbollah willing to start that war?”
Israeli officials said it took out Shukr, the Hezbollah military commander in Beirut, because it believed he was responsible for a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday which killed 12 people, mostly children. Shukr was also wanted in connection to a 1983 bombing in Beirut of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks that killed 300 American and French soldiers.
Ganyard said the alleged Hezbollah strike in the Golan Heights pushed the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah “over the red line.” Hezbollah has denied any involvement in Saturday’s Golan Heights attack.
“How far it goes from here is really going to be a question for the Hezbollah and Iranian leadership,” Ganyard said.
(KYIV, Ukraine) — Nearly 200,000 people are being evacuated following one of the largest Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory, Russian officials said Wednesday.
The overnight strikes marked the biggest combined attack on Russia’s air force infrastructure since the start of the full-scale war, with three Russian military airfields targeted, sources in the Security Service of Ukraine told ABC News.
Russian air defense forces destroyed 117 Ukrainian drones and four Tochka-U missiles over eight regions of Russia overnight, including in Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod and Nizhny Novgorod, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
Local authorities did not confirm the airfields were attacked.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Belgorod region due to “daily Ukrainian attacks,” Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said Wednesday morning.
Nearly 194,000 people are going to be evacuated from the Kursk and Belgorod regions due to the Ukrainian military offensive, according to Russian outlets.
The last time Russians fled en masse from fighting inside the country was during the decadelong Second Chechen War, which started in 1999, according to the independent Russian outlet Agentstvo.
The overnight assault comes more than a week into Ukraine’s major incursion into Russia.
Ukraine’s top commander said Wednesday that Ukraine has advanced again inside Russia’s Kursk region as it continues to try to expand its unprecedented incursion there.
Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Ukrainian troops had advanced about 1 mile in different directions inside Kursk. Syrskyi also said Ukrainian forces had completed search-and-destroy operations for Russian forces still in Sudzha, the main border town from which Ukrainian forces have been expanding their bridgehead inside Russia, implying Ukraine now has full control over it.
Some Russian pro-Kremlin military blogger accounts in their latest reports gave similar pictures, suggesting Ukrainian forces had continued to consolidate their gains and were still pushing to expand their zone of control, though without any major advances.
“Unfortunately, for now the situation remains tough. The enemy for now still has the initiative and so, even if slowly, he is continuing to increase his presence in the Kursk region,” one military blogger, Yury Podolyak, wrote on his Telegram channel.
The blogger account Rybar, which is linked to Russia’s military, wrote the situation was “stabilizing” but nonetheless reported multiple efforts by Ukraine to break through Russian positions and intense fighting.
Ukraine continues to try to push in multiple directions from Sudzha. Ukrainian troops are still attempting to flank the village of Korenevo, which would allow them to move toward a key highway. Ukrainian troops are also reported to still be attempting to press north toward Lgov, a town closer to the Kursk nuclear power station, though for now they appear to remain at least 12 miles away.
Podolyak wrote that Ukraine has adapted its tactics, beginning to stop trying to make rapid advances with small columns of armored vehicles and instead was attempting larger, more consolidated assaults.
All indications are Ukraine is still on the attack in the Kursk region and Russian troops are battling hard to hold them back.
ABC News’ Tanya Stukalova contributed to this report.
(LONDON and GAZA STRIP) — When he left his home on Tuesday morning to get birth certificates for his newborn twins, Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan never imagined he would return with their death certificates instead.
In a matter of minutes, an Israeli strike on the Qastal Tower building, in Deir Al-Balah, where the Abu al-Qumsan family was living after having been displaced from the north of Gaza, killed his 3-day-old twins, Aser and Aysel, together with their mother, Dr. Jumann Arfa, and grandmother, according to family members.
The twins were born on Saturday, Aug. 10, as written on their birth certificate. On that day, Dr. Arfa shared the news in a Facebook post, with friends welcoming her babies in war-torn Gaza and praying for their health and safety.
Now the few comments to congratulate the birth below the announcement are overshadowed by hundreds of condolences to the family.
“I helped her raise funds for her to deliver the twins safely. I only spoke with her yesterday, my heart is truly broken,” a friend wrote.
The Israel Defense Forces in a statement to ABC News said, “The details of the incident as published are not currently known to the IDF.”
The military added, “The IDF is fighting against the murderous terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza following the massacre on October 7. Unlike the terrorist organization Hamas, the IDF targets only military objectives and employs various measures to minimize harm to civilians.”
Abu Al-Qumsan learned about the news from his brother-in-law, Fera Arafa, who told ABC News that he survived the explosion because he was out to buy bread.
“I went to register the children the day before. They said to come back tomorrow. So I went and I was waiting when someone called me, telling me that the apartment which I live in was bombed,” Abu Al-Qumsan told ABC News.
As soon as he got the call, Abu Al-Qumsan said he rushed to the nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital, where he was told the babies and mother had been taken.
Shock and pain overtook him when he saw with his own eyes that the news was true, he said. Videos show him collapsing and shaking, unable to contain his desperation. The couple married in July last year and lived in Gaza City, where she worked as a pharmacist and he worked as a sales representative until Oct. 13, 2023, when they were forced to evacuate to southern Gaza.
At Al-Aqsa Hospital, Arafa grieved as he held his brother-in-law and worried about the future of his remaining family.
Arafa told ABC News he was living in the same apartment as his mother, sister, her husband and their babies. The apartment that was “filled with joy and happiness since the twins came to this life,” he said.
Now a massive hole in the building is a reminder of the deadly attack that put an end to that happiness. It also punctuated the difficulties endured by Abu Al-Qumsan and his family in the last 10 months of war in Gaza: the displacement, the lack of resources, and the pregnancy, carried on during what international humanitarian organizations and the United Nations called a collapsed health system.
“Minutes before the explosion, I was outside the house, my mother phoned me and told me that she wanted bread,” Arafa told ABC News about the morning the Qastal tower apartment was hit. “Minutes after I ended my call with her, a friend called me and told me they had all been killed.”
Arafa said he was overcome by shock.
“What is the reason? I still can’t believe it. A few minutes ago, I was talking to my mother on the phone,” he said. “We are civilians, and we are looking for our livelihood to provide for our daily needs, we have no connection to organizations, parties, or the military, I do not know why we were bombed.”
What began as a simple task of securing birth certificates transformed into a heart-wrenching journey to bury his family and obtain their death certificates, but Mohammed’s sorrow is not unique, according to a spokesperson for the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, who told ABC News this is part of a larger tragedy affecting countless families.
“This attack wiped out the entire family from the civil registry, raising the number of newborn deaths to 115 children since the beginning of this conflict,” Dr. Khalil Al-Daqran, spokesperson for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and the Ministry of Health, told ABC News.
Al-Daqran said they are struggling to deal with the psychological pain too.
“The psychological and emotional impact on the father of the two children who were killed is profound. We have approximately 10,000 patients suffering from psychological disorders, most of whom are left untreated and are seen wandering the streets.”
As for the measures and protection for infants and newborns, Al-Daqran said the attacks are directed at every citizen in the Gaza Strip, making it impossible to protect children, and that the lack of aid and resources is affecting the youngest disproportionally.
Thousands of “children have been killed in this brutal conflict over the course of just 10 months. When the authorities closed the [border] crossings and deprived these infants and newborns of baby formula, the situation became even more dire. Tragically, a significant number of newborns have lost their lives due to malnutrition too,” he said.
Two days after the Abu al-Qumsan family lived their tragedy, the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants carried on a surprise attack that left over 1,200 killed and hundreds kidnapped, reached the grim milestone of 40,000, on top of the over 90,000 injured, the health ministry said.
According to the ministry, about 11,000 children are among the dead.
“These appalling atrocities have become tragically commonplace, as relentless, indiscriminate assaults continue to claim the lives of so, so many children and leave countless families devastated. Surely, surely, it must be stopped,” a spokesperson for the United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said in a statement to ABC News.