Race to save those missing in sunken superyacht off Sicily, but survival ‘improbable’
(LONDON and ROME) — Rescue teams are facing a “very hard” operation to find those still missing following the sinking of a superyacht off the coast of Sicily on Monday, a spokesperson for the onsite fire brigade teams has told ABC News.
Luca Cari said that the rescue operation for the six people still missing from the U.K.-flagged Bayesian yacht is ongoing as of Wednesday morning. The vessel was lost early on Monday in stormy weather around half a mile from the fishing village of Porticello, close to the city of Palermo.
Fifteen people have so far been rescued and one body has been recovered.
“For us, it remains a rescue operation,” Cari told ABC News when asked if emergency services were transitioning to a recovery operation.
Asked if there was any hope that the missing may be surviving thanks to air pockets inside the sunk vessel, Cari responded: “One can never exclude anything but it seems rather improbable.”
Cari said that 12 of the 18 divers leading rescue efforts on Wednesday are specialized cave divers who have extensive experience working inside caves.
Divers have been operating inside the yacht for two days, he added.
“But the job is very hard because there are large obstacles and [we] have to work in very narrow spaces,” he noted.
“It’s a long process and we can only operate in short spells,” Cari added.
Divers have to be rotated constantly, with each only able to stay underwater for around 12 minutes, he said.
Two Americans — Christopher and Neda Morvillo — are among the six people still missing, ABC News confirmed on Tuesday.
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.
Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah are believed to also be among the missing.
(PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea) — Pope Francis boarded an Australian Royal Air Force C-130 on Sunday and flew over the pristine jungles of Papua New Guinea, travelling to the faraway settlement of Vanimo as the 87-year-old continues reaching out to what he likes to call the “peripheries” of the Catholic Church.
He was warmly welcomed with a series of traditional performances. Speaking to a crowd of about 20,000, the Pope praised the missionaries doing God’s work in the remote region, where communities often depend on them for healthcare, education, access to running water, and electricity.
“You are doing something beautiful, and it is important that you are not left alone,” he said.
The pontiff brought close to a tonne of humanitarian aid, medicine and toys with him. He was gifted a traditional feathered headdress that he chose to wear for part of the event.
The Pope then met with a group of missionaries from Argentina, including one he personally knows, Father Miguel de la Calle, who told Vatican Media people had been “walking for days” to see the Pope.
“People are coming from all over — from the jungle, the mountains, from Indonesia across the border, from other provinces,” he said.
Earlier in the day, the Pope held mass in Port Moresby, to a packed stadium of about 35,000.
“Brothers and sisters, you who live on this large island in the Pacific Ocean may sometimes have thought of yourselves as a far away and distant land, situated at the edge of the world,” he said. “Today the Lord wants to draw near to you, to break down distances.”
This comes as Pope Francis continues the most ambitious trip of his pontificate; a 12-day, four country, two continent odyssey. Religious harmony was a key part of the Pope’s message on this first leg of his 12-day trip.
Papua New Guinea marks the furthest from Rome he’s ever been.
The Pope’s next stop: Timor-Leste, where over 97% of the population identifies as Catholic.
(LONDON) — Ukrainian forces are still seeking to advance deeper into Russia’s Kursk region, but appear to be coming up against increased Russian resistance more than a week since Ukraine launched its unprecedented incursion across the border.
Russia’s Defense Ministry and pro-Kremlin military bloggers reported Tuesday that Ukrainian forces again launched multiple attempts overnight to break through Russian defensive lines roughly 20 km, or about 12 miles, inside the Kursk region, seeking to further expand a bridgehead captured there in the first days of the Ukrainian offensive operation.
Those reports claimed the Ukrainian attacks were largely rebuffed, but that Russian positions remained under pressure. More Russian forces continue to also arrive to counterattack Ukraine’s surprise attack, which is the first foreign incursion into Russia since World War II.
On the border of Ukraine’s Sumy region, foreign journalists, including The New York Times, reported seeing columns of Ukrainian troops and armored vehicles continuing to cross over into Russia, passing unhindered through the border crossing.
Ukrainian troops are trying to expand their area of control from the border town of Sudzha in multiple directions. They have been attempting for several days to capture the village of Korenevo, which is about 40 km northwesterly, which would allow them to move toward a key highway, but so far have been unable to dislodge Russian units, according to Russian military bloggers.
Ukraine’s top commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy, told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday that Ukraine controlled roughly 1,000 square km, or about 386 square miles, of Russian territory in Kursk.
Ukrainian forces have not moved significantly forward in the past several days, suggesting that advancing has become more difficult as Russia recovers from the initial surprise and rushes more reinforcements to the region. Russia has been using aircraft and drones to target Ukrainian units.
An increased number of videos appearing to show destroyed Ukrainian vehicles have been appearing on pro-Russian social media accounts, including some associated with Russia’s military.
Russian analysts have also warned Ukraine could attempt to launch new incursions at other points along the border.
(WASHINGTON) — Israel and Houthis in Yemen have traded fire for the first time, escalating tensions nine months after commercial ships in the Red Sea started to come under threat from the rebel group — in a waterway the U.S. Navy has been patrolling since the war in Gaza began.
Israel’s strike on Yemen’s port of Hodeidah on Saturday killed three and injured 87, the Yemeni Ministry of Health said, in a fighter jet assault over 1,000 miles away from Tel Aviv.
Israel says it was a response to a Houthi drone attack Friday that killed one person in Tel Aviv. The exchange of fire was a first for the conflict in the Red Sea, where Houthi attacks had forced an Israeli port to close but had not struck its territory.
The U.S. Navy has been engaged in a firefight with the Houthis since October, hitting Houthi launch sites and batting down incoming drones and ballistic missiles. Tallies of reporting from U.S. Central Command count 14 of these missiles and nearly 60 drones fired by the Houthis and destroyed by the U.S. Navy in June alone, which by some assessments has made the sea combat the United States’ most sustained naval fight since World War II.
The U.S., which in January designated the Houthis a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Group, has extended security assurances over the Red Sea — where their attacks have hit vessels flagged by a variety of nations — and turned up pressure on the homegrown rebel group to cease its fire.
In an interview with ABC News before the series of attacks over the weekend, U.S. Special Envoy to Yemen Tim Lenderking, the senior U.S. diplomat to Yemen, said a more severe official designation of the Houthis is increasingly under consideration.
“There’s more and more talk now about a designation under the [Foreign Terrorist Organization], which will have some tradeoffs, we feel, with our ability to support humanitarian and commercial activity in Yemen,” the special envoy told ABC News.
A FTO designation by the State Department, which would level the Houthis with al-Qaeda affiliates and Hamas, could make it more difficult for international humanitarian groups to operate within Yemen by requiring a license to interact with the Houthis, who control key ports including Hodeidah and the capital, Sana’a.
“It’s the Houthis that are driving this conversation and making these options on the table that we all thought, months ago, and when Joe Biden first came into office, were not the way to go,” Lenderking said.
“But when the Houthis are very clearly behaving and acting like a terrorist organization, it’s forcing these questions to the fore,” the diplomat said.
Twenty-four million people in Yemen — 80% of its population — require humanitarian assistance, with 4.5 million internally displaced. 20 million people are food insecure, according to the International Committee on the Red Cross.
The deputy head of delegation for the ICRC in Yemen, Freya Raddi, told ABC News that the initial January terror designation on the Houthis had “no concrete impact” on the organization’s humanitarian work.
“However, it is uncertain whether this will remain the case in the coming months … the ongoing escalation in the Red Sea has caused delays in importing ICRC assistance to Yemen,” Raddi said.
“The ICRC is concerned about any additional measures that may have adverse impacts on affected populations and the provision of impartial humanitarian assistance,” Raddi said, noting that 90% of Yemen’s food is imported and that “counterterrorism measures can create additional administrative and logistical burdens.”
“Humanitarian organizations cannot replace the commercial import system,” she said.
Israel said it acted alone in its Saturday attack against the Houthis, which it calls a part of Iran’s “axis of evil.” The Israeli defense minister phoned U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin before the attack to inform him, but the Pentagon repeatedly emphasized the U.S. had no role in the Israeli strikes.
The U.S. in January intercepted arms it said were intended for the Houthis from Iran, which just elected a new president, and sanctioned the Houthis’ financial networks, but it’s not clear whether the Houthis take orders from Tehran or sometimes act “outside of Iranian dictates or recommendations,” Lenderking said.
“We don’t see any change from the new leadership in Iran yet in any dimension, but certainly not with regard to the Yemen conflict,” said Lenderking of new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“There is a strong commitment by the Iranians, I think, to continue to support the Houthis,” he said.
Regional powers including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and neighboring Oman — a facilitator in talks between the Houthis and the internationally-recognized government – denounced Israel’s aerial attack on the Gulf country’s port, which engulfed the port in flames.
Protracted tensions on the Red Sea increasingly threaten a fragile peace within Yemen’s borders, where an April 2022 truce froze an eight-year civil war between the Houthis and the former government in Sana’a. The truce has “largely held,” Lenderking said, and a U.N.-led “roadmap” in December 2023 brought the Houthis and exiled government to the same table in agreement on a path forward.
Yet there are “very serious questions about what [the Houthis’] commitment is to a peace process in Yemen,” Lenderking said.
“They seem far more committed to burnishing their credentials as a member of [Iran’s] axis of resistance, and building ties with other terrorist organizations, deepening their ties with Iran. That seems to have been their focus rather than the Yemeni people, which is squarely where we want to see improvement in support made,” the envoy said.
The Houthis have said they would cease fire in the Red Sea if a cease-fire is reached in Gaza, which President Joe Biden has repeatedly said is his top priority along with a release of hostages held by Hamas. “He wants that work to continue full steam ahead over the next six months,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said of Biden Monday.
The president also assembled a coalition of nations to protect mariners and commercial shipping in the Red Sea when the Houthis began deploying drones and missiles.
Lenderking said that the multinational defense arrangement, which includes countries as far as Australia and as near as Bahrain, could be bolstered.
“Of course, the option remains to the United States and the seven allies that participate in this coalition to relook at that,” he said.
ABC News’ Luis Martinez and Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.