Delta plane crash investigators piece together Toronto Airport incident
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(TORONTO) –Investigators probing Monday afternoon’s Delta Flight 4819 plane crash at Toronto Pearson International Airport are piecing together what caused the dramatic incident, sources told ABC News.
The Delta regional jet — a CRJ 900 aircraft operated by Endeavor Air — originated in Minneapolis. The aircraft was left lying upside-down and ablaze on the snow covered Toronto runway after the crash, with its 76 passengers and four crew evacuated, according to Delta and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Toronto Pearson President and CEO Deborah Flint confirmed there were no fatalities, commending the “heroic and trained professionals” who responded to the crash. There were 22 Canadian citizens among the passengers, Flint said.
Twenty-one passengers were taken to hospitals, and as of Tuesday morning, 19 of them have been released, according to Delta.
Peel Regional Paramedic Services said none of the injuries were considered life-threatening.
Three people suffered critical injuries: one child, a man in his 60s and a woman in her 40s, according to medical transport organization Ornge.
What caused the plane to flip and catch fire was not immediately clear. Sources told ABC News on Monday that the investigation was already underway.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will lead the investigation and investigators from the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are assisting.
The Toronto Airport temporarily stopped flights in the wake of the crash, with departures and arrivals resuming at 5 p.m. ET Monday, the airport said. Two runways remained closed, which Flint said may impact operations.
“Our most pressing priority remains taking care of all customers and Endeavor crew members who were involved,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said. “We’ll do everything we can to support them and their families in the days ahead, and I know the hearts, thoughts and prayers of the entire Delta community are with them. We are grateful for all the first responders and medical teams who have been caring for them.”
The crash occurred during blowing snow and strong wind gusts in the region. Winds reached 40 mph on the ground and were even stronger several hundred feet in the air.
Toronto Airport Fire Chief Todd Aitken said the runway was dry and there were no crosswind conditions at the time of the crash.
Car drives into crowd at Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany. Via ABC News
(LONDON) — At least five people, including a 9-year-old, are now known to have been killed in the vehicle-ramming attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday, German officials said Saturday. The four other victims killed in the attack were adults, according to police.
At least 200 more people were injured when a car plowed into festive market-goers in the eastern German city, around 75 miles west of the capital Berlin, according to Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff.
The Magdeburg Christmas market will be closed for the remainder of the season, police told reporters Saturday.
At least 41 of those injured in the attack are in serious condition, according to police. Their lives are still thought to be in danger, according to Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
A suspect — a doctor from Saudi Arabia aged around 50 — was arrested, Haselhoff said. The man has lived in Germany since 2006. A rental car was used in the attack, the minister said.
He will be charged with 5 counts of murder and grievous bodily harm, according to police.
The first emergency call came in at 7:02 p.m. local time and the driver was stopped within three minutes of the attack, according to a police official. Police believe the suspect entered via the space left open for emergency vehicles to access the area.
Police believe the suspect acted alone.
The prosecutor said they are still clarifying the motive behind the attack, but said that it’s possibly linked to “dissatisfaction with the treatment of refugees from Saudi Arabia and how they’ve been treated in Germany,” but they will “need more time” to determine this.
Police said the suspect has undergone physical and psychological exams but police do not yet have the results.
At Magdeburg Cathedral, a huge crowd gathered on Saturday inside and outside for a memorial service to the victims. Attendees included the mayor, Sholz and first responders.
Elsewhere in the city, a smaller crowd held an anti-immigrant protest with a sign that said “Remigration” and waved German flags, as well as flags of Imperial Germany and ones reading “Homeland.”
U.S. law enforcement sources told ABC News that German authorities are treating the attack as a terrorist incident.
“We send our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed and injured and to all those affected by this terrible incident,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
“We stand in solidarity with the people of Germany in grieving the loss of life. The United States is ready to provide assistance as recovery efforts continue and authorities investigate this horrible incident,” Miller’s statement continued.
Scholz offered his condolences to those affected. “My thoughts are with the victims and their families,” Scholz said in a statement. “We stand by their side and by the side of the people of Magdeburg. My thanks go to the dedicated rescue workers in these anxious hours.”
Friday’s ramming incident came almost exactly eight years after a similar terror attack at a Christmas market in the German capital. On Dec. 19, 2016, a man drove a truck into a crowd at a market in Berlin, killing 13 and injuring dozens.
U.S. law enforcement officials have warned of similar vehicle-ramming attacks on American soil, particularly over the festive season.
A joint threat assessment about New Year’s Eve in New York City’s Times Square, for example, noted the use of vehicle-ramming alone or in conjunction with other tactics “has become a recurring tactic employed by threat actors in the West.”
The NYPD, out of an abundance of caution, will surge resources to similar areas around the city, including Christmas markets, according to NYPD deputy commissioner for counterterrorism Rebecca Weiner.
“We know this is a very festive time, it is a busy time in the city, and we are going to make sure that all of our holiday markets, all of our holiday activities are protected by our counter weapons teams, by officers on patrol, all our counter-terrorism officers, our critical response command,” Weiner told ABC New York station WABC.
(LONDON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday joined Russian President Vladimir Putin in claiming Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lacks legitimacy, the American leader alleging — without providing evidence — that Zelenskyy currently has a 4% approval rating among his compatriots.
In reality, respected polls in Ukraine show that Zelenskyy has over 50% approval among Ukrainians. The most recent, published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in early February, showed that 57% of respondents said they trusted Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy’s level of support is diminished from the extraordinary highs of earlier in the war. He scored 77% trust in a KIIS poll from December 2023 and 90% in May 2022, around three months after Russia’s invasion. The February poll did show a 5% bump in trust from December 2024.
Still, the 50% or more regularly scored by Zelenskyy in various polls is higher than those achieved by many democratic leaders around the world.
Aides in Kyiv were quick to point out on Wednesday that Zelenskyy’s recent score of 57% in the KIIS poll was higher than Trump’s backing in recent U.S. surveys — for example, 46.6% with 538, 47% with YouGov/The Economist and 48% with Gallup.
There is currently no politician in Ukraine considered to have stronger support than Zelenskyy. Only Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, is considered a real potential challenger, though he is serving as Kyiv’s ambassador to the U.K. and has not yet entered politics.
Hours after historic U.S.-Russia talks concluded in Saudi Arabia, Trump suggested to reporters at Mar-a-Lago that Zelenskyy’s alleged low public approval meant the country should hold a new presidential election, its 2024 contest having been postponed because Ukraine has been under martial law since Putin’s invasion three years ago.
“That’s not a Russia thing, that’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also,” Trump said.
Trump’s claims indicated that he — like Putin — may now be seeking Zelenskyy’s removal as part of any deal to end the war.
Putin appears to see removing Zelenskyy as a key goal, both as a victory he can present to Russians and as a potential opportunity to install a pro-Russian leader in his place. That is why the Russian president is pushing for elections to be held before any final peace deal.
Trump now appears to perhaps hold a similar view.
Zelenskyy pushed back firmly on Wednesday, fact-checking Trump and saying he was suffering from exposure to Russian disinformation.
“If someone wants to replace me right now, then right now it won’t work,” the president told reporters in Kyiv before a planned meeting with Trump’s Ukraine-Russia envoy Keith Kellogg.
“If we are talking about 4% then we have seen this disinformation, we understand that it comes from Russia,” he added. “And we have evidence.”
The president said he would conduct opinion polls for trust ratings for world leaders, including Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Zelenskyy said he took Trump’s comments “calmly.”
“As for President Trump, with all due respect to him as a leader of the American people, who we deeply respect and are thankful for all his support, but President Trump, unfortunately, is living in this disinformation space,” Zelenskyy continued.
(LONDON) — The South Korean State Council passed a resolution to officially lift martial law, according to the South Korean Prime Minister’s office.
Shortly before the vote, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said troops have been withdrawn, hours after he declared an “emergency martial law.”
Yoon had declared martial law in a televised speech late Tuesday, the Yonhap news agency reported. The president said the measure was necessary due to the actions of the country’s liberal opposition, the Democratic Party, which he accused of controlling parliament, sympathizing with North Korea and paralyzing the government.
The move sparked protests, and hours after the declaration, the National Assembly voted early Wednesday morning local time demanding that the president lift the martial law order. A majority of parliament — all 190 members who were present, out of the 300-person body — voted to lift the decree — requiring that it then be lifted, under the South Korean constitution.
Following the National Assembly’s vote, Yoon said he withdrew the troops that had been deployed to carry out martial law and “will lift martial law as soon as we have a quorum in the cabinet.” The State Council then convened to vote to officially lift it.
The country’s Democratic Party called on Yoon to resign following what it called the “fundamentally invalid” declaration of martial law. The opposition party said it will begin impeachment proceedings if the president doesn’t resign.
“This is a serious act of rebellion and perfect grounds for impeachment,” a Democratic Party spokesperson said in a statement after martial law was lifted.
Explaining his decision to declare martial law on Tuesday, Yoon accused the opposition-dominated parliament of “paralyzing” judicial affairs and the administration via 22 proposed cases of impeachment issued since the body convened in June.
After withdrawing the troops, he continued to call out the National Assembly, urging parliament to “immediately stop the outrageous behavior that is paralyzing the functioning of the country with impeachments, legislative manipulation and budget manipulation.”
Yoon’s conservative People Power Party has been locked in a fierce budget dispute with the liberal opposition Democratic Party.
“The handling of the national budget also cut all major budgets to have control over the essential functions of the state, the budget that was formed to crack down on drug crimes and maintain public security,” Yoon said Tuesday. “This undermines the essential functions of the state and leaves the public in a drug paradise and public security panic.”
“The National Assembly, which should be the basis of liberal democracy, has become a monster that collapses the liberal democracy system,” he added.
Following the declaration of martial law, the Democratic Party called on its lawmakers to assemble at the National Assembly building in Seoul, Yonhap reported. Party leader Lee Jae-myung said Yoon’s martial law declaration was an “unconstitutional” measure that “goes against the people.”
“President Yoon declared emergency martial law for no reason,” Lee said, as quoted by Yonhap.
Police and soldiers gathered around the National Assembly on Tuesday night after Yoon spoke. Footage from the scene also showed crowds descending on the building, some people making their way inside. Yonhap reported clashes between security personnel and National Assembly staffers as the former tried to enter the building.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon — a member of Yoon’s People Power Party — was among those who called for an immediate reversal of the declaration. “As mayor, I will do my best to protect the daily lives of citizens,” he added in a post to Facebook.
President Joe Biden’s administration was not alerted of the declaration beforehand, according to the White House National Security Council.
“We are relieved President Yoon has reversed course on his concerning declaration of martial law and respected the ROK National Assembly’s vote to end it,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson told ABC News in a statement. “Democracy is at the foundation of the U.S.-ROK alliance, and we will continue to monitor the situation.”
Biden told reporters he was “just getting briefed” on the martial law declaration, following a speech in Angola on Tuesday evening local time.
His administration is in contact with the South Korean government, the White House National Security Council said.
The U.S. Embassy in Seoul warned Americans in the country that “the situation remains fluid” in the wake of martial law being lifted.
“U.S. citizens should anticipate potential disruptions,” the Embassy said in a security alert. “When in public, you should pay attention to your surroundings and exercise routine safety precautions.”
Tuesday’s martial law declaration marked the first since the country’s democratization in 1987. Martial law was last declared in 1979 after the assassination of dictator Park Chung Hee.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story was updated to reflect that Yoon had withdrawn troops but martial law had not yet been lifted.
ABC News’ Will Gretsky, Joe Simonetti, Fritz Farrow and Shannon K. Kingston contributed to this report.
