Search for answers in deadly South Korean plane crash mystery
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(SEOUL) — A team of U.S. investigators arrived in South Korea to assist local aviation officials as they comb the wreckage of the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 aircraft that crashed Sunday, killing 179 people.
Three members of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board are leading the U.S. team, which also includes advisers from the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and CFM International, a jet-engine manufacturer. Some of those advisers will be on site and others will remain in the U.S., the NTSB said.
“Additional NTSB investigative staff are standing by to assist if needed, including specialists in recorders, powerplants, and survival factors, among other specialties,” the board said in a statement.
In the wake of the deadly plane crash at Muan International Airport, local officials are also now investigating similar aircraft models that are operating in airports around the country.
Jeju Air Flight 2216 was landing just before 9 a.m. when the plane went off the runway and crashed into a wall. There were a total of 175 passengers and six crew members aboard the Boeing 737, which had taken off from Bangkok, Thailand.
A total of 179 people aboard the flight were killed, with two flight attendants — a man and a woman — being the only survivors of the crash.
Officials were continuing to identify the victims of the crash. Five of the remains were still unidentified as of Tuesday, local officials said. The remains of four individuals being transported to their respective families for funeral.
Authorities are conducting a full investigation into over 100 aircraft that are the same model, B737-800. The planes are currently operating in six local airlines, officials said.
The investigation includes reviewing the maintenance history of the engines, landing gears and the aircraft’s operation records.
“There are no plans to suspend operations, but they will examine those parts once more and check them thoroughly during the inspection process,” said Song Kyung-hoon, head of Jeju Air’s Management Support Division.
The Muan International Airport runway will be closed for the investigation until Jan. 7, officials said.
The two flight attendants who survived the crash were recovering at separate hospitals in Seoul on Monday, according to the Korean Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport.
Neither survivor had life-threatening injuries, the ministry said, adding that both had awoken in the hospital without a clear recollection of what had happened after they heard a blast during the landing.
The man, who was identified only by his surname Lee, was receiving treatment for fractures in an intensive care unit. He was alert and speaking with medical staff, Ju Woong, director of the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital, said at a press conference on Monday.
“[Lee is] fully able to communicate,” Woong added. “There’s no indication yet of memory loss or such.”
The woman, a 25-year-old flight attendant named Koo, was also recovering, though not in intensive care, according to hospital staff and officials, as well as the Korean Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport.
ABC News’ Sam Sweeney and Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.
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 and KYIV) — Russia on Thursday launched an intercontinental ballistic missile toward southeastern Ukraine, officials in Kyiv said, but a U.S. official told ABC News that Russia launched “an experimental medium-range ballistic missile against Ukraine” near Dnipro.
The official said the United States briefed Ukraine and other close allies and partners in recent days on Russia’s possible use of this weapon in order to help them prepare. According to the official, Russia likely only possesses “a handful” of these experimental missiles.
Two U.S. officials previously told ABC News it was not an ICBM but instead an intermediate-range ballistic missile, or IRBM.
Ukraine’s military was “95% sure” the strike was with an ICBM, a Ukrainian official told ABC News, but added that they were still examining the missile parts on the ground and had not yet reached a final conclusion.
“Today it was a new Russian missile. All the parameters: speed, altitude — match those of an intercontinental ballistic missile,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement on social media. “All expert evaluations are underway.”
Moscow did not immediately confirm the launch, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declining to comment, saying questions about it should instead be directed to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in remarks Thursday following the missile launch, said Russia has the right to use its weapons against the military facilities of countries employing their weapons against Russia.
The Ukrainian Air Force announced Thursday morning 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. local time, 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 U.S. officials said the assessment of the launch, the type of missile and warhead, and the damage in Dnipro was continuing. The distance from what Ukraine said was the launch point to the strike location in Dnipro is about 600 miles, a distance shorter than what an ICBM would be expected to travel.
Two experts told ABC News the projectile, seen in video circulating online, looks likely to be “a ballistic missile with MIRV-ed capabilities.”
The launch of an ICBM, if confirmed as such, would arrive amid concerns that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could further escalate. This week, Ukraine’s military for the first time 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 on Tuesday launched six of the ATACMS at targets within Russian territory, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
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 respond with nuclear weapons. Russian ICBMs are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, although it appeared the missile fired on Thursday was not equipped with one.
Following that warning, Ukraine on Wednesday fired long-range British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russia for the first time, a Ukrainian military unit involved in the operation told ABC News. At least 10 of those missiles hit an estate in the village of Marino, the unit said.
They were targeting a command post where North Korean army generals and officers were present, the unit said. More than 10,000 North Korean troops are said to be operating alongside Russian forces in the Kursk region.
Ukraine’s 413th Separate Unmanned Systems Battalion, which helped provide fire control for the strikes, told ABC News that there was intelligence showing high-ranking North Koreans were present.
Zelenskyy cast the Russian strike on Thursday as a result of Russia and its leader being “terrified.”
“Obviously, Putin is terrified when normal life simply exists next to him. When people simply have dignity. When a country simply wants to be and has the right to be independent,” Zelenskyy said. “Putin is doing whatever it takes to prevent his neighbor from breaking free of his grasp.”
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Lauren Minore, Yulia Drozd and Natasha Popova contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — The stunning collapse of President Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria presents “a moment of historic opportunity,” President Joe Biden wrote on X on Sunday, as rebel fighters and Damascenes celebrated the end of their 14-year war against the authoritarian government.
But, the president added, “It is also a moment of risk and uncertainty.”
The uprising that began with a protest march in the southern city of Daraa in 2011 ended with celebratory gunfire in Damascus in 2024.
The surprise rebel offensive that surged out of northwestern Idlib province last month showed the regime in Damascus to be hollow. Its backers in Moscow, Tehran and Beirut were unable or unwilling to respond, perhaps because their attention and resources having been sapped by wars in Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere.
The story of the fall of Damascus was — arguably — written in Donetsk and Dahiya. The coup de grâce, though, was inherently Syrian.
The offensive that toppled Assad was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group with roots in al-Qaeda. The group is listed as a terrorist organization in the U.S. and European Union.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said over the weekend that the group’s background “is a concern,” noting that elements of the group are affiliated with organizations “that have American blood on their hands.”
HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has become the most recognizable face of the Syrian opposition. Speaking at Damascus’ 8th-century Umayyad Mosque on Sunday, Jolani said the opposition victory is “historic for the region” and that “Syria is being purified.”
It remains unclear whether and how Jolani — who is increasingly using his real name of Ahmed al-Sharaa, rather than his nom de guerre — will be able to exert control over the disparate groupings of rebel forces drawn from around the country.
What does the US think?
American officials are concerned that the power vacuum will allow ISIS to reconstitute. The U.S. launched 75 strikes against ISIS targets in central Syria on Sunday in a move that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said was designed “to keep the pressure on ISIS.”
“As this unfolds, there’s a potential that elements in the area, such as ISIS, could try to take advantage of this opportunity and regain capability,” Austin warned.
The future shape of U.S.-Syrian relations will depend on the composition and direction of the next government in Damascus.
The White House may be somewhat pleased by Jolani’s speech at the Umayyad Mosque on Sunday, in which he lamented how Syria became “a playground for Iranian ambitions.”
“We will remain vigilant,” Biden said on Sunday after Damascus fell. “Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses.” The president, however, added that the groups are “saying the right things now.”
“But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions,” Biden added.
Thomas S. Warrick — a former deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy in the Department of Homeland Security — said the U.S. “has a huge stake in what comes next,” even if it was not directly involved in Assad’s ousting.
A more stable Syria “that frees itself from Iranian and Russian dependence” could, Warrick wrote, allow millions of refugees to return home, end its role as a Hezbollah conduit to threaten Israel and perhaps even join the Abraham Accords at some point in the future.
“All these unthinkable things are now possible,” Warrick — now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative — wrote. “But this will not happen spontaneously, without outside help and support. Postwar planning for Syria needs to go into high gear.”
The incoming Trump administration will need to chart a policy approach to Syria. Some will be skeptical of success, but others — Warrick wrote — will note that “weakening Iranian influence, supporting Israel’s security, and peace in Lebanon are, collectively, one of the biggest wins that a Trump administration could hope to achieve.”
A Syrian power struggle
In a recent interview with CNN, Jolani said that Syrians should not fear HTS’s brand of Islamism. “People who fear Islamic governance either have seen incorrect implementations of it or do not understand it properly,” he said.
As the rebels reached Damascus, Assadist Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali said the outgoing regime would “extend its hand” to the opposition and assist with the transition of power. Jolani said on Sunday that Jalali will remain in his post to supervise state bodies during the transition.
Jolani and his HTS will have competition for influence in the new Syria.
The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army also took part in the offensive, with fighting still ongoing between the SNA and the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces — who are supported by the U.S. — in the northeast of the country. Ankara enjoys significant control over the SNA and other groups and can be expected to seek influence over the future direction of its neighbor.
“The opposition is not a homogenous movement and there is a risk that internal fractures within the HTS-led umbrella movement — which may become more salient in the weeks and months to come — may lead to discord and threaten Syrian stability,” Burcu Ozcelik of the Royal United Services Institute think tank in the U.K. told ABC News.
“A new transitional Syrian administration will soon need to take on the task of state-building, including the rebuilding of a national Syrian security force and a constitution-building process, as the Syrian state has been painfully hallowed out by the Assad regime,” Ozcelik said.
The next government will also need to address the question of Russian presence in Syria. Russian forces retain control of Khmeimim Air Base and Tartus naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, two key strategic facilities from which Moscow helped keep Assad in power.
“It is in Russia’s interest to seek to maintain access, but its ability to project power in and through Syria is now severely debilitated,” Ozcelik said.
“It will take time and negotiations with the new Syrian administration, a yet to be determined entity, before it is clear what Russia’s stakes in Syria will be,” Ozcelik added. “But this is now a radically transformed Syria, and Russia has no good options.”
Moscow is in touch with the opposition factions, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a Sunday statement. “All necessary measures are being taken to ensure the safety of our citizens in Syria,” it said. “Russian military bases in Syria are on high alert. There is currently no serious threat to their security.”
For Tehran, “there is no doubt that the fall of the Assad regime is a highly consequential defeat for Iran,” Ozcelik said. “Syria was the conduit for Iran’s systematic support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, this supply chain has now been cut off.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran is concerned about the “possibility of a renewed civil war or a sectarian war between different sects or the division of Syria and the collapse of Syria and its transformation into a haven for terrorists.”
Meanwhile, rebel-liberated territory is already being bombed by Israeli warplanes and occupied by Israeli soldiers. Israeli officials have said they intend to deny “extremist” elements access to the Assad regime’s advanced military capabilities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the regime’s collapse “is a direct result of the blows we have inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, the main supporters of the Assad regime.”
“The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus, offers great opportunity but also is fraught with significant dangers,” he added.
Assad’s legacy
Assad fled the country for Russia in the early hours of Sunday, state-owned Russian media said, having resigned the presidency following negotiations with opposition factions, per a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov announced Monday that President Vladimir Putin would grant his longtime ally political asylum in the country.
Assad’s departure ended 24 years of his rule — and 50 years of Assad family rule. Posters and statues of Assad, his brothers and his father, Hafez Assad, were being torn down by jubilant crowds around the country.
More than a decade of civil war left at least 307,000 people dead by the end of 2022, per United Nations figures. The fighting forced around 12 million Syrians — more than half of the country’s 2011 population of around 22 million — from their homes, around 5.4 million of whom were still living abroad as of late 2022.
Assad’s regime fought bitterly to retain control of much of the country during the hot phase of the civil war. But his victory proved a pyrrhic one.
The northern city of Aleppo fell to the Idlib rebels on Nov. 29 — a shocking development that helped spark renewed rebel uprisings all across the country.
In Daraa — known as the “Cradle of the Syrian Revolution” for its role in the 2011 unrest — opposition groups rose anew and began their march on the capital.
“Damascus has been liberated and the tyrant Bashar Assad has been overthrown, and oppressed prisoners in regime prisons have been released,” a rebel spokesperson said at the state television headquarters in Damascus after opposition forces seized the building.
“We ask people and fighters to protect all property in Free Syria,” the spokesperson added. “Long live Syria free for all Syrians of all sects.”
ABC News’ Hami Hamedi, Ellie Kaufman, Luis Martinez and Lauren Minore contributed to this report.
(TEL AVIV, Israel and GAZA STRIP) — The situation in northern Gaza is “beyond horrific” as people experience intense levels of hunger and overcrowded hospitals struggle to care for patients amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, international aid organizations warn.
Last week, Israeli forces ordered evacuations of several regions in the north, including Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahia, as they work to surround Hamas fighters who are allegedly in the area.
Medical staff in the north say they are getting calls from all over northern Gaza asking for help, but ambulances are unable to reach the injured.
“The situation is beyond horrific and is very difficult and indescribable,” Dr. Taghreed Al-Imawi, a member of the Palestinian NGO Juzoor for Health and Social Development and an OB-GYN doctor at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said in a statement. “We have seen more than 23 pregnant women among the injured coming to the hospital since last week, wounded either by shrapnel or gunfire, suffering from fractures.”
Kamal Adwan was one of three hospitals that doctors say were ordered to evacuate last week, but medical staff have refused to do so. The Israel Defense Forces has not confirmed if hospitals were ordered to evacuate.
In an audio message sent in Arabic to ABC News, Dr. Eid Sabah, the director of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan Hospital, said the maternity ward is overflowing with children who were transferred from the ICU to accommodate the growing number of patients.
“Medical supplies are dwindling to nothing — especially medical supplies related to surgery, maternity and critical care,” he said. “This is very dangerous and hard. The medical staff is exhausted and are not enough to cover critical patient care. They work 24/7 nonstop.”
He went on, “We only have seven or eight beds in the critical care ward. This is terrifying. Patients on artificial respirators are suffering … we emphasize that we don’t have food. The medical staff can’t eat, and they have to take care of suffering patients.”
Gazans in the north say they are cut off from access to food, medicine and clean drinking water, and are unable to feed their families.
“We have not gotten any food or water for the past 11 days, the suffering is getting worse by the day,” Ismail, a father of two currently in the vicinity of Jabalia, said through the nonprofit organization CARE International. “All the necessities for survival are lacking here in the north, no hospitals, no safe place, no safe drinking water, no medications for our children.”
A new report released Thursday from the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative warned that the risk of famine persists across the entire Gaza Strip, adding that the “worst case scenario may materialize.”
If humanitarian aid delivery continues to be restricted, concerning levels of food insecurity and malnutrition will intensify, the IPC said.
The entire Gaza Strip has been classified as Phase 4 under the IPC, meaning there are large food consumption gaps that “are reflected in very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality” and that only emergency strategies can mitigate those gaps.
Nearly 133,000 people, or about 6% of the population, are classified as Phase 5, the highest stage of food insecurity. The report estimates the number of people classified as Phase 5 — the equivalent to famine levels of starvation — is expected to triple between November 2024 and April 2025, with the north and Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt, being the most affected.
Although there was a temporary surge in humanitarian aid being delivered between May and August 2024, September had the lowest volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza since last March.
“This sharp decline will profoundly limit food availability and the ability of families to feed themselves and access services in the next few months,” the IPC report said.
The report also warned that about 60,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children ages 6 months to under 5 years old are expected to occur between September 2024 and August 2025 without significant intervention. Of those cases, 12,000 are predicted to be severe acute malnutrition.
The Israeli government has denied that conditions causing malnutrition exist inside Gaza and has said it works with international organizations to ensure necessary aid crosses the border into Gaza from Israel.
