Ukraine’s military says Russian ICBM strikes Dnipro, a claim denied by Western official
Emergency responders are dispatched to the scene after a Russian attack that killed at least 13 people in Glukhiv, Sumy Oblast. The number of victims increased to 13, including 3 children. Search and rescue efforts continue for those trapped under the rubble of the partially destroyed dormitory building. (Photo by Ukraine State Emergency Service / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Russia on Thursday launched an intercontinental ballistic missile toward Ukraine, officials in Kyiv said, but a Western official told ABC News that the attack did not appear to be an ICBM.
It was instead a ballistic missile, which was aimed at Dnipro, in Ukraine’s southeast, the Western official said.
The claim was not immediately confirmed by Moscow, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declining to comment, saying questions about it should be instead directed to the Russian Defense Ministry.
The Ukrainian Air Force announced on Thursday morning that it had tracked the launch of the ICBM, along with six additional missiles, all of which were targeting the Dnipro region. The ICBM appeared to have been launched from the Astrahan region, in Russia’s southwest, Ukrainian military officials said.
All of the missiles were launched in about two hours, beginning at about 5 a.m., Ukraine said.
All were targeted at businesses and critical infrastructure, but only the missile that Ukraine identified as an ICBM struck the city, Ukraine said. The six other missiles were shot down. There were no reports of casualties or significant damage, officials said.
The launch of an ICBM, if confirmed, would arrive amid concerns that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could further escalate. Ukraine’s military this week first launched U.S.-made ATACMS missiles toward targets within Russia, days after U.S. President Joe Biden allowed for such use of the long-range weapons.
Kyiv launched on Tuesday six of the ATACMS at targets within Russian territory, according the Russian Defense Ministry.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would not confirm if Ukraine had used ATACMS to conduct a strike on an ammunition depot in the Bryansk region of Russia, but said Ukraine has ATACMS and “will use all of these,” against Russia.
Within hours of Russia announcing it had struck down five of the ATACMS on Tuesday, the Kremlin announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had updated the country’s nuclear doctrine, a move that lowered the bar for Russia to response with nuclear weapons.
Russian ICBMs are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, although it appeared the missile fired on Thursday was not.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Lauren Minore and Yulia Drozd contributed to this report.
(LONDON and SEOUL) — Refuse carried by a North Korean “trash balloon” landed inside the South Korean presidential compound in the capital city of Seoul on Thursday amid rising tensions between the two neighbors.
The South Korean Presidential Security Service “identified trash that blew up in the air and fell in the office compound early this morning,” the service said in a Thursday statement.
“After a safety inspection, the service collected the fallen objects after confirming they do not contain danger or contagiousness,” the service added. “The service is monitoring the situation in cooperation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
This is the second time one of North Korea’s trash balloons fell inside the South Korean Presidential Office Compound.
Cross-border balloons have been one element of the recent deterioration in inter-Korean relations, with the period of diplomatic thaw from 2017 giving way to new tensions since the election of conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in the spring of 2022.
The balloons have been found carrying household waste items including paper, vinyl and plastic bottles, according to the South Korean military. Some trash balloons carried manure.
Several fires have also been reported in metropolitan areas attributed to “heat timers” attached to the balloons.
North Korea launched a total of 5,500 trash balloons at South Korea on 22 occasions from May 28 to Sept. 23 this year, Lee Sung-joon — a spokesperson for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff — said last month.
Seoul estimated that North Korea spent 550 million won — around $411,600 — to produce the balloons, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
Lee said in September after 120 balloons were launched that Seoul would consider military action to down them if necessary. “If North Korea’s continued trash balloons are judged to pose a serious threat to the safety of our citizens or to have crossed the line, the military will take stern military action,” he said.
South Korean civic groups have also launched balloons across the border, much to Pyongyang’s chagrin.
Such balloons often carry rice, essential medicine and leaflets critical of leader Kim Jong Un’s regime. North Korea has repeatedly protested such action and threatened a response.
The frontier region has been particularly tense this month. On Oct. 15, Seoul said North Korea blew up two border roads and deployed “heavy equipment” for “further operations.”
South Korean troops along the border fired warning shots in response, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
The detonations followed a North Korean warning that it intended to permanently seal off border access routes, cutting rail and road connections and reinforcing defensive fortifications.
The explosions came shortly after Kim ordered his artillery forces — traditionally the most potent threat to the capital Seoul, which sits around 35 miles from the frontier — onto full alert, having accused Seoul of flying drones over Pyongyang.
The face-off on the Korean Peninsula may now spread to Ukraine, where Seoul, Kyiv and Washington, D.C. have accused Pyongyang of deploying troops in support of Russia’s invasion.
Yonhap reported that Seoul is now considering sending weapons to Ukraine in response, having so far only provided humanitarian aid.
Yonhap also said South Korea is considering sending military and intelligence personnel to Ukraine to probe North Korean battlefield performance and help with interrogations of captured North Korean fighters.
ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — At least five people have been hospitalized and 62 others detained after a night of violence targeting Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam Thursday evening, authorities said.
The violence occurred after a UEFA Europa League match between the Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club and the Dutch Ajax Football Club in Amsterdam on Thursday.
The Israeli National Security Headquarters told Israeli citizens staying in Amsterdam to “avoid movements in the street and shut oneself in hotel rooms.”
The Dutch Prime Minister, Dick Schoof, said the situation is now calm and that he is “horrified by the antisemitic attacks on Israeli citizens.” Israeli PM Netanyahu said he had been in touch with Schoof and called for increased security for Jewish communities in the Netherlands.
Tensions were rising in the lead up to the game last night, Amsterdam police on Wednesday night had reported a group of people pulled a Palestinian flag off the face of a building in the center of the city, and that police “prevented a confrontation” between a group of visitors and taxi drivers.
The Amsterdam Police have not yet commented on the incident but announced Wednesday evening that a “number of safety measures” had been taken before the match to ensure “that everything proceeds safely and orderly,” in a post on X.
Officials in Amsterdam said there will now be extra police on the move in the coming days and extra attention “for the extra security of Jewish institutions and objects.”
Amsterdam authorities will be holding a press conference at 12 p.m. on Friday where additional measures that will be taken today and in the coming days will be announced.
ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman and Victoria Beaule contributed to this report.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem on September 2, 2024. (OHAD ZWIGENBERG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
(TEL AVIV, Israel) — Officials in Israel’s defense establishment are now strenuously contradicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel maintain control of the narrow strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and warning that Netanyahu’s reluctance to sign a cease-fire deal with Hamas is pushing Israel into a potentially disastrous war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to Israeli military and senior defense officials who spoke with ABC News.
A war with Hezbollah in Lebanon “is easy to start, but very hard to end,” one such official said, on condition of anonymity. “We are losing the war, we are losing deterrence, we are losing the hostages.”
ABC News, along with other journalists and accompanied by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) personnel, was given access to the Philadelphi Corridor Friday — a narrow strip of territory roughly a half-mile wide that runs along the entirety of the southern Gaza border with Egypt. What were once blocks of apartments there are now piles of rubble amid a wasteland of dunes. Military officials told ABC News their work in the corridor was mostly done.
IDF and other Israeli military officials, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have called a cease-fire and hostage release deal with Hamas the key to reaching a solution to Israel’s current regional strife. Israel and Hezbollah, which has been launching frequent rocket attacks against northern Israel from Lebanon, have each agreed to the broad parameters of a deal to decrease hostilities, but Hezbollah has said its participation is contingent on Israel reaching a cease-fire deal with Hamas in Gaza — which Hamas says must include all Israeli forces leaving Gaza.
However, many Israeli officials, including several who spoke with ABC News in recent days, believe that Netanyahu is purposely trying to torpedo negotiations to free the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas by insisting that the Philadelphi Corridor remain under Israel’s control, though they did not speak to possible reasons for Netanyahu’s insistence.
“If Philadelphi was so important, why did we wait eight months [into the war] to take it?” one senior Israeli official told ABC News.
Those officials now say that Israel is “stuck” in Gaza, able to kill Hamas militants and yet unable to advance one of the Israel-Hamas war’s primary aims, which Israeli Defense Minister Gallant recently told a small group of reporters was the “moral and ethical commitment” to bring Israel’s remaining hostages home. One official said that given the current circumstances, the best Israel can hope for is the repatriation of perhaps 20-30 hostages out of the 100 or so believed to remain in Gaza.
U.S. Envoy Amos Hochstein has been shuttling between Beirut and Jerusalem attempting to broker a cease-fire deal with Hezbollah that would see the latter retreat about 10 kilometers north of their current position in Lebanon, replaced by Lebanese Army forces and personnel from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in exchange for small Israeli concessions along the Israeli-Lebanese border. This is the same deal Israeli officials have said has been on the table since January.
Adding urgency to the current situation are general concerns about whether Israel possesses sufficient munitions and missile and rocket/missile interceptors to defend itself in any confrontation with Hezbollah. One senior Israeli official told ABC News that Israel’s hawks, clamoring for war with Hezbollah, are unaware of how difficult it is for Israel to procure Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kits, necessary to convert so-called “dumb” bombs into precision guided weapons that use GPS coordinates to strike a target.
Israeli officials are also concerned that Hezbollah’s estimated arsenal of over 100,000 rockets and missiles could cause widespread damage across Israel. Those officials also warn of the potential for destruction on the Lebanese side. For example, during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, Israel’s air force crippled Lebanon’s electrical grid and flattened large swaths of south Beirut.
Israel is also contending with how to respond to a recent attack from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, after Israel says it intercepted and destroyed a Houthi surface-to-surface missile fired at Israel on Sunday.
The Houthi movement claimed responsibility for the missile attack, claiming in a statement that it was aimed at an “important military target” in the Tel Aviv region. The Houthis claimed the missile flew some 1,267 miles in less than 12 minutes and that Israeli anti-missile defenses “failed to intercept” the weapon. The IDF initially confirmed to ABC News that its defenses failed to intercept the missile but changed its conclusions upon further investigation.
The Israeli officials who spoke with ABC News said that Israel is vowing retaliation, and is investigating how the Houthis managed to twice penetrate Israel’s air defenses in two months.
“The Houthis are here to stay,” said one official, adding that the assessment is that they will likely keep attacking, regardless of a Hamas ceasefire.
