At least 4 dead as massive fire engulfs Hong Kong high-rise apartment buildings
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(LONDON) — At least four people were killed and three others were injured as a major fire engulfed a residential apartment complex in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district on Wednesday, with photos and video from the scene appearing to show serious damage to several buildings.
“A fire broke out at Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po at 2.51 p.m. today … The fire was upgraded to No. 3 alarm at 3.02 p.m., and to No. 4 alarm at 3.34 p.m.,” according to a statement from the Hong Kong government.
By 6:22 p.m. local time the fire had been upgraded again to a No. 5 alarm, city officials said.
Officials said nine people had been transfered to two local hospitals, including four people who were pronounced dead.
Three people were in critical condition, one was in serious position and another was listed as stable, officials said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
A multi-storey apartment block in the Darnytskyi district is damaged by a Russian drone strike during a massive overnight attack on the capital, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on January 9, 2026. (Photo by Danylo Antoniuk/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images)NO USE RUSSIA. NO USE BELARUS. (Photo by Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(KYIV, Ukraine) — Russia attacked Ukraine overnight with a massive barrage of 242 drones and 36 missiles, including one that was nuclear-capable, the Ukrainian Air Force said Friday morning.
The missile types used in the attack, which began Thursday night, included 22 cruise, 13 ballistic and one medium-range ballistic, according to the country’s air force.
Ukraine’s air defense system destroyed or suppressed 226 drones, 10 cruise missiles and 8 ballistic missiles. However, strikes from 18 missiles and 16 drones were recorded at 19 locations across the country, the air force said.
The capital, Kyiv, was among the hardest-hit areas, where 40 facilities were damaged, including 20 residential buildings, officials said. At least four people were killed and 25 others were injured there, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, which said rescues were ongoing. The wider Kyiv region as well as the regions of Lviv, Kirovohrad and Cherkasy were also targeted.
The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed that the Oreshnik intermediate-range ground missile system was used in the “massive strike” on Ukraine’s “critical facilities” overnight.
The Oreshnik, used only for the second time by Russia, is capable of flying at hypersonic speeds and delivering multiple warheads.
The ministry said this was in response to an alleged Ukrainian drone attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state residence in the Novgorod region of northwestern Russia last month, which Ukraine has denied.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia used the intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) on the Lviv region in western Ukraine.
“Such a strike close to EU and NATO border is a grave threat to the security on the European continent and a test for the transatlantic community. We demand strong responses to Russia’s reckless actions,” Sybiha wrote in a post on X “We are informing the United States, European partners, and all countries and international organizations about the details of this dangerous strike through diplomatic channels.”
Sybiha called it “absurd” that Moscow justified the strike as a response to “the fake ‘Putin residence attack’ that never happened.”
“Another proof that Moscow does not need any real reasons for its terror and war,” he added. “Putin uses an IRBM near EU and NATO border in response to his own hallucinations — this is truly a global threat. And it demands global responses.”
(LONDON) — A month after a massacre that was reported in a war-ravaged city of Sudan shocked the world, the United Nations and others are warning that there’s nowhere near enough humanitarian aid being provided to the tens of thousands of residents who fled.
Many thousands more are believed to still be trapped inside El Fasher, the besieged capital of the Darfur region in Sudan’s west. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the powerful Sudanese paramilitary group that took over the city last month, is allegedly preventing people from leaving and stopping lifesaving supplies from coming in.
The U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Denise Brown, who returned from the Darfur region last week, said the amount of aid they were able to currently provide to the survivors from El Fasher wasn’t close to what is needed.
“We do not have enough food, we do not have enough of anything,” Brown told ABC News in a telephone interview last Friday. “The international community has to step up.”
Sudan has been embroiled in a brutal civil war since 2023, when fighting erupted in the capital of Khartoum between forces loyal to rival military leaders. It was the culmination of weeks of tensions between Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the head of the RSF. The two men were once allies who had jointly orchestrated a military coup in 2021 that dissolved Sudan’s power-sharing government and derailed its short-lived transition to democracy, following the ousting of a long-time dictator in 2019.
Officially formed in 2013, the RSF evolved out of the notorious Janjaweed militias used by the Sudanese government to crush an armed rebellion in the Darfur region in the 2000s. Sudanese forces and the Janjaweed were accused of committing war crimes in Darfur.
Ultimately, the International Criminal Court charged Sudan’s former dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir with genocide. The reported atrocities in El Fasher are seen by experts as a continuation of that genocide.
Sudan’s civil war has since become “one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century,” according to the U.N., with tens of thousands of people killed and millions more displaced. In January, the U.S. Department of State said both sides had committed war crimes and concluded “that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan,” citing the systematic murder of civilians, sexual violence and denial of humanitarian aid for civilians caught in the conflict.
El Fasher was the last stronghold of the Sudanese army and its allied militias in the wider Darfur region, under total siege for over a year and a half before falling to the RSF in late October. At least 80,000 people are estimated to have fled El Fasher and sought refuge in a massive displacement camp in the town of Tawila, with most making the 35-mile journey on foot. The camp was already home to around 600,000 displaced people, according to humanitarian aid workers.
Many of those from El Fasher bring with them horrific accounts of atrocities allegedly carried out by the RSF, including summary executions, gang rape and killing anyone who tries to flee the city. The U.N. believes as many as 50,000 people may still be trapped in El Fasher, considered to be detained there by the RSF, according to Brown.
An analysis of satellite imagery by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab found evidence of continuing mass killings in the days after the RSF took control of El Fasher, with blood-stained sand and piles of bodies apparently visible from space. Moreover, a U.N.-backed monitor for food security declared earlier this month that famine had taken hold in El Fasher and surrounding areas.
Brown said the U.N.’s capability to respond to the crisis is limited by a yawning shortfall in funding from countries and donors.
“We are 28% funded,” she told ABC News. “So what would the international community like me to do to respond to the needs of the people who are traumatized?”
Despite having less than a third of the funding needed, Brown said: “We’re one of the best funded humanitarian responses in the world, at 28%, and there have been cuts across the board by donors. So it’s a cumulative effect of those cuts.”
The United States has long been the U.N.’s largest donor but, under President Donald Trump, has recently withdrawn from several U.N. agencies, frozen funding for others and clawed back $ 1 billion in previously approved funds for the U.N.
“Everyone is calling and asking how can we help? Well, here is how you can help,” Brown told ABC News. “Money is not the solution to what’s going on in Sudan, but money is surely going to help our humanitarian response.”
In particular, Brown said, the U.N. was currently unable to provide enough care or psychological support for women and girls in the Tawila camp who had suffered sexual violence. The U.N. has hundreds of documented cases of gang rape and other sexual violence in the Darfur region, but that is believed to be just “the tip of the iceberg,” according to Brown.
The U.N. has been trying to negotiate with the RSF to allow humanitarian access into El Fasher — so far, unsuccessfully.
The head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, traveled with Brown to Darfur last week to meet with the RSF, requesting complete access throughout Sudan for humanitarian operations and providing the U.N.’s conditions for such an agreement.
“We need safe passage. We want a small team, no presence of any armed militia,” Brown told ABC News. “We need to go to the sites which we have identified as important. We need to be able to evacuate the injured and access to detainees.”
(NEW YORK) — Typhoon Kalmaegi was barreling on Thursday morning toward Vietnam after leaving a trail of destruction in the Philippines.
The storm was expected to make landfall later on Thursday or early on Friday, the U.S. Consulate in Vietnam said in a weather advisory.
Vietnam’s Prime Minister urged the country’s emergency response agencies and ministries to ready themselves as the country braces for the impact of the typhoon.
The Vietnamese National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said coastal areas may see waves up to 26 feet and a storm surge up to 2 feet. Winds were expected to be as strong as about 84 mph, the center said.
The country is already battling flash floods and landslides after record rainfall in late October. Those floods killed at least 35 people, officials told AFP.
Some 100,000 homes flooded and the country experienced more than 150 landslides, Vietnam’s environment ministry said, according to AFP.
The typhoon is expected to bring a heightened risk of flooding, flash floods and landslides, weather and state officials said.
“Additionally, infrastructure already weakened by previous flooding may be increasingly unreliable,” the U.S. Mission’s advisory added.
A trail of destruction in the Philippines
In the Philippines, where the typhoon made landfall on Tuesday amid heavy rains and flooding, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. approved a state of emergency declaration on Thursday.
That declaration was intended to “expedite government response efforts in areas” affected by the storm, according to a press release from the official Philippine Information Agency.
The storm killed at least 66 people, according to state-run media. The official Philippine News Agency reported that “most” of those deaths “were due to fallen debris, landslides and flooding.”
Another six Philippine Air Force personnel were killed in a helicopter crash on Tuesday while performing humanitarian assistance, officials said.
The country was already recovering from an offshore earthquake and typhoons in the last few months. The Philippine Area of Responsibility is hit an average of 20 per year, most in the world, according to the Philippines Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration.
Another potential super typhoon is approaching the country now, local officials said in a news release. That storm is expected to make landfall either Friday night or Saturday morning, officials said.
