At least 5 dead in ‘terrorist attack’ on aerospace facility in Turkey, officials say
Ismail Kaplan/Anadolu via Getty Images
(LONDON) — Several people were killed in a “terrorist attack” at Turkish Aerospace Industries facilities near the capital of Ankara on Wednesday, Turkey officials said.
At least five people were killed and 22 injured in the attack, according to Turkey’s vice president, Cevdet Yilmaz. Among those injured were seven special forces members who responded to the attack, he said.
Two attackers — a man and a woman — were killed and Turkish authorities are working to identify them, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.
“I condemn this heinous attack,” Yerlikaya said in a post on X. “Our struggle will continue with determination and resolve until the last terrorist is neutralized.”
Turkish Defense Minister Yaşar Güler alleged the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, was behind the attack. The Kurdish separatist movement is labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
“We give these PKK scoundrels the punishment they deserve every time, they do not come to their senses,” he said in remarks to the media on Wednesday. “I repeat what I always say, we will not let go of them until the last terrorist is eliminated.”
Yilmaz also said that PKK appears to be responsible for the attack, but that the investigation is still ongoing.
Security camera footage from the attack showed two armed attackers approaching the entrance of the facility carrying backpacks.
The Turkish Aerospace Industries site is about 25 miles outside Ankara.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte called the incident “deeply concerning.”
“NATO stands with our Ally Turkey. We strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and are monitoring developments closely,” he said in a statement on X.
White House national security adviser John Kirby also condemned the attack.
“Our prayers are with all of those affected and their families and, of course, also the people of Turkey at this very difficult time,” he said during a White House briefing on Wednesday. “While we don’t yet know the motive, or who is exactly behind it, we strongly condemn this act of violence.”
ABC News’ Somayeh Malekian, Morgan Winsor and Trisha Mukherjee contributed to this report.
(HONG KONG and LONDON) — The Chinese military test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific on Wednesday, marking the first known launch of an ICBM in decades, officials said.
The People’s Liberation Army launched the ICBM carrying a “dummy warhead” into the “high seas” at about 8:44 in the morning, the Chinese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. The missile splashed down into the area where they had planned for it to fall, the ministry said. Local media reported that the launch was the first such test since 1980.
“This test launch is a routine arrangement in our annual training plan,” the ministry said. “It is in line with international law and international practice and is not directed against any country or target.”
China’s official Xinhua news agency said “relevant countries” had been notified in advance. But Japanese officials weren’t notified prior to the launch, the country’s chief cabinet secretary told reporters on Wednesday afternoon in Tokyo.
“There was no notification beforehand and, according to the comprehensive analysis, we have been confirmed that it flew over our territory and there was no damage recorded,” Hayashi Yoshimasa said, according to an official translation.
The Chinese military’s Rocket Force has been under some domestic scrutiny over the past year, after some top generals were purged last summer over alleged corruption related to equipment procurement. The test-firing may be viewed internationally as a signal of the military’s readiness, despite those purges, which saw two former defense ministers expelled from the Communist Party.
The test launch comes days before Beijing is set to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the PRC on Oct. 1.
The test-fire also comes as the U.N. General Assembly meets in New York, where U.S. President Joe Biden spoke on Tuesday of his efforts to build a strong trilateral relationship with Japan and South Korea. Those relationships have been part of Biden’s strategy to counter China’s influence in the region.
“These partnerships are not against any nation,” Biden said on Tuesday. “They’re building blocks for a free, open, secure, peaceful Indo-Pacific.”
The United States in April said it had deployed mid-range missiles to Philippines. And Yoshimasa of Japan said on Wednesday that China’s defense budget had been increasing rapidly “without any visibility,” adding that China has been expanding their presence near Japanese territory “with a lack of transparency” about their movement.
“This is a very serious concern for Japan and the international society,” Yoshimasa said.
(NEW YORK) — Conservationists in Latin America, home to some of the most important ecosystems in the world, are persisting in their environmental work despite political challenges that can sometimes stand in the way and the dangers they face, multiple experts told ABC News.
Central and South American countries are facing some of the most significant environmental challenges in recent history. Drought is widespread throughout the region — especially in Uruguay, northern Argentina and southern Brazil, according to a 2023 report by the Global Drought Observatory.
In Mexico, water pollution adversely impacts indigenous groups, according to a 2021 paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. In Brazil, deforestation, in the form of illegal logging as well as land clearing for agriculture, is widespread, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
Fire activity in Brazil and Bolivia has reached levels not seen in over a decade as a prolonged drought parched landscapes in both countries, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. The Amazon rainforest, the Cerrado tropical savanna and the Pantanal wetlands are currently experiencing record-breaking wildfires as a result of these conditions, according to officials in that country.
The lives of conservationists working in Latin America are often in danger as they work to alleviate these crises, Isaac Nahon-Serfaty, a communications professor at Ottawa University who has studied mining in southern Venezuela, told ABC News.
In 2023, nearly 200 land and environmental conservationists were killed worldwide, according to a report by Global Witness, an international NGO that fights against natural resource exploitation, conflict, poverty, corruption and human rights abuses. The vast majority of the deaths — about 85% — occurred in Latin American countries, mostly in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, the report found.
Many conservationists will avoid working in high-conflict areas due to the danger, Mauricio Bianco, vice president of Conservation International Brazil, an environmental nonprofit, told ABC News.
In Venezuela, speaking out against Nicolás Maduro, who has served as president since 2013, can bring severe consequences, Nahon-Serfaty claimed.
Virgilio Trujillo Arana, a 38-year-old Indigenous Uwottuja man who had spoken out against illegal mining in the Venezuelan Amazon, was fatally shot in 2022. While unsolved, the murder was seen as an attempt to silence those who demonstrate against Maduro’s agenda, Nahon-Serfaty said.
Maduro’s administration did not comment on Arana’s death at the time, but the United Nations warned about the violent groups that control gold mines in the country.
The U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela recommended that the allegations made by Indigenous peoples of the State of Amazonas regarding violent attacks against their leaders “should be seriously investigated.”
Environmental threats, meanwhile, not only affect the natural ecosystem. They also impact the watersheds and food systems and, therefore, the economy as well — making it difficult for residents in the region to thrive, Rachael Garrett, a professor of conservation and development at the University of Cambridge, told ABC News.
“It’s a huge public health toll on people living in these areas. It’s devastating for biodiversity,” Garrett said. “So there is not really any part of life that it won’t impact.”
Researchers and conservationists are able to make the biggest difference before the loss occurs — before the drought sets in, the forests and the Indigenous peoples within are lost and the wildfires spark, Garrett said. The race against time motivates them, because the consequences can be irreversible in a short amount of time, she added.
“We can make a difference very quickly,” Garrett said. “We have to persist, because the consequences of not doing so are so catastrophic.”
Conservation groups have to focus on strengthening and protecting delicate ecosystems as well as Indigenous groups who are facing extinction — before the tipping point occurs, Bianco said.
These groups must also prioritize the restoration of forests and the management of agricultural land in a sustainable way, he said.
While government involvement is necessary for policy change, conservation groups in Latin America have learned to lean on Indigenous and local communities as well as grassroots organizations to accomplish their work at the project level, according to Bianco.
Even with government protections and policy in place, a sense of “lawlessness” makes it nearly impossible for them to be enforced, Garrett said. It has been difficult to track progress in these regions due to a lack of transparency, as governments in places like Brazil and Venezuela often do not release any or accurate information on the state of the environment, according to Garrett and Nahon-Serfaty.
Environmental crime is the third-largest area of criminal activity in the world, according to the FBI. Illegal activity associated with timber and wildlife trafficking, fishing, waste trade, pollution and animal cruelty generate up to $280 billion per year worldwide.
Earlier this week, Brazil’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva said current punishments for environmental crimes such as arson are inadequate during an appearance on Bom Dia Ministro, a publish service program. Lula’s administration has advocated for harsher punishment for environmental crimes.
Some governments in Latin America have displayed a disdain for protecting the environment in recent years, multiple experts told ABC News.
Multiple times during the administration of Jair Bolsonaro, who served as president of Brazil from 2019 to 2022, key government officials were caught on tape talking about the ways in which they planned to deceive the public, Garrett said. In 2020, Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles was recorded during a cabinet meeting advising fellow lawmakers to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a distraction from regulations protecting the Amazon rainforest from deforestation, according to Reuters.
“We need to make an effort while we are in this calm moment in terms of press coverage, because they are only talking about COVID, and push through and change all the rules and simplify norms,” Salles was heard saying in the recording of the ministers’ meeting, released by the Brazilian Supreme Court.
In a statement issued by Brazil’s Environment Ministry, Salles said, “I have always defended de-bureaucratization and simplifying norms, in all areas, with good sense and all within the law.”
“It’s part of this whole general new set of rules that politicians play by these days where they feel like there are no consequences for doing the wrong thing,” Garrett said in regard to the Bosolnaro administration’s pro-deforestation agenda.
Salles resigned in 2021 amid a probe into illegal logging in the country. It is unclear whether Salles has or will face legal consequences in the probe.
In Venezuela, initiatives to mine for gold, diamonds and other minerals in the southern part of the country, made first by former President Hugo Chávez and reinforced by Maduro, wreaked havoc on the Venezuelan side of the Amazonian jungle, said Nahon-Serfaty. To the north, oil spills into the Caribbean Sea are common due to the lack of regulations, he added, with a spill from the refinery in El Palito reported last month.
When corruption is embedded into a political system, it plays an invisible role in almost every decision those in power make, Garrett and Nahon-Serfaty said, especially when institutionalized through campaign financing systems and the individual agendas of the policymakers.
It can be near-impossible to pinpoint the root of the issue in these types of regimes, Garrett said.
“Corruption is one of this very insidious problems that is extremely difficult to deal with because you can’t study it,” Garrett said. “It’s hidden, and it can be institutionalized.”
It will be important for governments and authorities in Latin America to enforce environmental policies going forward, Bianco said.
The global spotlight will be on Brazil going into next year as it gears up to host COP30, the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Brazil was one of the countries with the weakest decarbonization pledges, going into COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021. The country has since ramped up its pledges under Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency in the years since, with new climate targets aiming to cut emissions by 48% by 2025 and 53% by 2030.
In Mexico, the use of environmental technologies to improve water and waste infrastructure is expected to grow in the coming years to ease the strain of drought. The country is also implementing federal regulations to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.
Those doing the work to achieve even more ambitious climate and environment goals must continue, despite the difficulties, Garrett said.
The Amazon creates an entire ecosystem of rainfall that much of southern Brazil and surrounding countries rely on, Garrett said. As deforestation creates a feedback loop of decreased rainfall and increased drought, the water system is threatened and the risk of severe wildfires heightens, driving indigenous communities out and placing food and water security at risk for all who rely on it.
“I can’t think of any better way to spend my own life than trying to help prevent these irreversible harms that will take away from the world of opportunities that future generations have to experience a healthy climate and biodiversity,” Garrett said.
Sara Bsaiso (left) and her sister Seham Besaiso in Gaza before Sara’s injury. — Courtesy of Seham Besaiso
(NEW YORK) — If someone asked Sara Bsaiso what her dream was one year ago, it would have been to finish her senior year of high school, complete her final exams and attend college or university.
However, those dreams were dashed when Sara became one of the more than 12,000 children and teenagers in the Gaza Strip who have been injured since the Israel-Hamas war began.
Sara suffered severe third-degree burns to much of her body and went months with limited medical care before she was able to be medically evacuated to the United States, she told ABC News. Two of her brothers were killed in the same strike that injured her, she said.
Now, sitting in a house in New Jersey, having undergone more than a dozen surgeries and with several more on the horizon, her dream now is to recover and for “stability.”
“When I was 17 years old, I had one dream and, now that I am 18 years old, my dreams have changed,” she told ABC News in Arabic. “My life goals have changed and the way [I] look at dreams in general has changed. The one thing I want right now is stability.”
‘I realized I am on fire’
On the day of the Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, Sara, then 17, was in her final year of high school. Sara said she had school in the morning and, as she was waiting to be picked up, she heard a noise that she thought was thunder.
“My dad said, ‘No, that is rockets hitting Tel Aviv’ and we all just started looking at each other,” Sara said. “I went to WhatsApp to ask my friends if they heard the same sounds. Everyone was confused and one of my teachers … was already at school and we told her the sounds are getting louder. [She said], ‘You should go home.’ That was the last time I talked to her, this teacher.”
Sara said her father felt the situation was too dangerous to remain in their home in Rimal — a neighborhood in Gaza City, located in the north — and told the family they should leave. Sara packed a bag that included her school uniform and some clothes and traveled with her eight siblings to her grandmother’s house nearby, also in Rimal.
They stayed there about one week before the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sent flyers ordering civilians to evacuate, Sara said. They fled to Rafah, in southern Gaza, where they stayed for six days before heading back to their grandmother’s house.
On the day of her injury, Dec. 7, Sara said she had just gotten a haircut and her 15-year-old brother, Ahmed, was outside making bread.
“I was just swishing [my hair] left and right,” she said. “We were all in the living room and I was just asking everyone what they thought of my new haircut. ‘What do you think of my hair? Do you see a difference?'”
She said Ahmed came into the house and asked her if she could bring inside her younger brother, Mohammed, who was scared of “fighting noises” outside.
Sara went outside to where her 8-year-old brother was and began to comfort him.
“I am at the door hugging him, telling him, ‘You are strong, don’t be scared,'” she recalled. “All of a sudden, as I tried to turn around, there is something so hot behind me. I took a minute to look at my arms, my legs and asked myself, ‘Where am I?’ Until I realized I am actually on fire.”
The family said a missile strike had hit the courtyard of Sara’s grandmother’s house — and Sara had been caught in the blast.
“It took me a minute to understand. By then, the slippers on my feet were melting so I couldn’t really run,” she said. “I just kept trying to run. …. When I reached the door, I couldn’t move anymore. So, I was about to fall down because my legs were melting.”
Sara said she felt her father grab her as she collapsed to the ground. She could feel water being poured on her and she could hear her brother, Mohammed, screaming. At the time, Sara said she took the screaming as a sign that he was still alive. What she didn’t know was that he had been severely burned as well.
Ahmed was killed instantly, and Mohammed died about a week later, according to the family.
Meanwhile, Sara suffered third-degree burns to about 60% of her body.
As of July 23, at least one quarter — or 22,500 — of those injured in Gaza are estimated to have “life-changing injuries” that will require rehabilitation services for potentially years, the WHO said during a briefing on Thursday. Major extremity injury is the most common injury, followed by amputation, burn, spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury, the WHO said.
Third-degree burns affect the outer layer of skin, the middle layer of skin and fat below the skin. A third-degree burn can also damage sweat glands, hair follicles and nerve endings, and needs to be treated by a health care provider.
In Gaza, where the health care system has nearly collapsed, proper care is much more difficult to obtain.
“The first two days, there was no medicine in my system,” Sara said. “I couldn’t feel pain anywhere. I just wanted to sleep. I was shivering from the cold. Then I started feeling worse and worse and developed a [104 F] fever. I could not speak and I was shaking in place.”
Sara’s family was able to locate medicine, but she said it was expired. When Sara noticed that one of her legs was turning green — discoloration is a prominent sign of gangrene — doctors who visited told her family her wounds had become infected.
Sara said her family was able to get an ambulance amid the fighting to take her to one of Jordan’s field hospitals operating in Gaza, where she stayed for a few days before returning to her grandmother’s house. Doctors were able to give her medicine, but Sara said the hospital was overwhelmed with people injured because of the war as well as people sheltering at the hospital.
“I know the Jordanian hospital is better than being nowhere, but it was absolute torture,” Sara said. “There would be times where there is no time for them to perform surgery on me. There were many times the dressing would unravel or not be strong enough and puss would come through.”
Sara was unable to walk because her burn wounds kept opening up, so she would be carried on a stretcher or transferred by ambulance, her family said. Although Sara was bandaged, she said the dressings were painful because there was no medicine or ointment her family could use to properly wrap the wounds. Her family said she didn’t undergo surgery at a hospital in Gaza but, when her dressings were changed, medical staff would put her under anesthesia when they could.
Israel has said its goal is to eliminate Hamas, and claims Hamas uses schools, hospitals and civilian buildings “to conduct and promote terrorist activity.” Israeli officials also claim that the IDF tries to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas has denied that it is conducting its operations out of civilian buildings and has condemned any of Israel’s attacks that have killed civilians.
The IDF did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the alleged attack that led to Sara’s injuries or on the war itself.
The months-long journey to evacuate Sara
Pictures and videos of Sara’s story began to circulate on social media, and eventually made their way to Steve Sosebee, founder of HEAL Palestine. The non-profit organization was set up in January to address the humanitarian needs on the ground in Gaza.
“A friend of mine in Dubai saw her story on social media and forwarded to me and asked if we could help, considering that she was stuck in the north and that she was not able to go south and get treatment, get access to medical care at all,” he told ABC News.
Sosebee said the team in Gaza reached out to Sara’s family to coordinate her evacuation from Gaza City down to southern Gaza and then to cross into Egypt. The family decided that her sister, Seham Besaiso, would accompany her.
Sara and Seham left their grandmother’s house on Jan. 21 and made their way down to the Rafah border, Sara said.
When they arrived at the border that night, the guards did not see their names on the list of people eligible to cross over, according to Sara.
“We tried to find a hospital I could stay at until we could leave,” Sara said. “We stayed at a hospital, I don’t remember the name, but it was a circus. People losing their lives on the floor, people sleeping on the floor, people choking. It was not a place to be with an open wound.”
“Seham and I were crying unsure of what to do. The ambulance driver was very kind and was able to get us a spot in a medical tent in the south,” she added.
The next morning, after waiting at the border for several hours, Sara said the crossing guards found their names on a list and they were able to cross over into Egypt, where they remained for 17 days.
Sosebee said HEAL Palestine secured visas for the sisters and coordinated with Northwell Health Burn Care Center in Staten Island to take on Sara’s case. He helped Northwell send a medical team to Egypt to see if Sara could be moved out of a hospital and be put on a commercial flight to the U.S.
The team “determined that it was not possible for her to fly commercial, given the extent of her injuries in the current state that she was in,” Sosebee said.
The Northwell team concluded Sara needed to be put on a charter medical evacuation flight, Sosebee said. HEAL Palestine teamed up with a partner organization to help cover the cost of the charter, and launched a social media fundraising campaign.
The group was able to raise more than $180,000 to cover the cost of the charter flight as well as additional funds to cover the cost of her medical bills in Egypt and some of the medical bills she would incur in the U.S. Northwell also agreed to cover much of her costs, Sosebee said.
Sara is one of 21 children with medical needs HEAL Palestine has helped evacuate, according to Sosebee, and one of 5,000 people have been evacuated for treatment outside Gaza since October 2023, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
“When all of us came together and worked together on this, we were able to get a plane put together, to get the money raised for it, and to get [Sara] and her sister …. on that flight and on their way to the U.S.,” Sosebee said. “The finances and the money [are] secondary to the health and the obligation that we have to step up and do all we can to get her the medical care that she needs, and it’s minimal in comparison to what Northwell provided in the treatment that they gave her.”
Receiving care leads to dancing down a hallway
The journey took 24 hours, and Sara and Seham arrived in the U.S. on Feb. 6.
Seham said visitors are not typically allowed to stay overnight in the burn center due to infection control procedures, but they let her stay on Sara’s first night.
“On the first day Sara was in Egypt, she wasn’t sleeping … so it was on my mind when I first arrived here to America that Sara isn’t going to sleep,” Seham told ABC News. “[But] while I was talking to her, I looked at her and saw she had fallen asleep.”
At the burn center, Sara underwent several skin grafting procedures, which is when healthy skin from one part of the body is transplanted to another part of the body.
When severe open wounds go without skin grafts for long periods of time, the wounds can take longer to heal and are more susceptible to infection. Seham said this is what happened to Sara’s fingers, which required some of them to be partially or fully amputated.
Seham said she originally told Sara the amputations needed to occur because her fingers had melted, afraid to tell her the real reason.
“I didn’t tell her because it was really [upsetting] her so, when it happened, I was afraid to tell her that ‘This had happened to your fingers,’ so I told her it was because they had melted,” she said. “But they had …. necrosis. So, they couldn’t be left in her body, so they were amputated.”
At the burn center, Sara underwent rehabilitation, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, nutritional therapy, pain management care and palliative care, Sosebee said.
Sara was in the hospital until late May, a little over three months, when she was discharged. On the day she left, a video was recorded and shared to social media of her dancing down the hallway. She said that her physical therapist often encouraged her to dance while she was undergoing treatment.
“This was the last day, and she would tell me, ‘Don’t be shy. We are gonna dance no matter what,'” Sara said. ‘I looked at her like, ‘What do you mean? I am gonna dance in front of all these people?’ She’s like, ‘No, don’t be shy. We’ve danced on the street before.'”
“Basically, we left the burn unit with us all dancing,” she continued. “I was excited, scared and anxious. All the emotions were running through me that day. I had been waiting for this moment since I entered [the hospital].”
Waiting in ‘limbo’ and hoping for the war to end
HEAL Palestine set up Sara, Seham and their mother — who was able to join them in the U.S. after the organization helped secure a visa — with a home in New Jersey.
Sara, now 18, is currently undergoing occupational therapy, which she will need for at least another three months to help her recover. She practices exercises that help her regain her strength and improve the use of her fingers.
Although Sara has undergone at least 20 surgeries so far, she said she will still need several more, including skin grafting procedures. Last month, she was able to take bandages off her fingers for the first time.
Sometimes she looks at old photos or videos “and compare to see if my hair got longer or my skin is better and compare myself from then to now,” she said. “When I look at [them], I feel better.”
Sara said when she can, she talks to her family in Gaza, including her father and two brothers, who remain in northern Gaza and are unable to join the family in the U.S.
“The connection is not secure so it’s hard to reach them and it cuts off a lot, [but] when my dad opens the camera and sees me, he says, ‘Wow,'” Sara said. “He can see the changes and the differences. He would ask me to show my fingers. He wants to see how much progress I have made.”
“As for my brothers, I would tell them I bought something new that we can play with and we will play with them together,” she added. “I just hope this all ends so they can come and be here with me.”
As Sara continues her recovery, Seham and their mother attend all her doctors’ appointments together and help encourage Sara as she practices her occupational therapy exercises.
Prior to the war, Seham, 20, was in her third year of college, studying dentistry. The university has resumed with online classes, but she said it is difficult to start classes again because the third year is “pre-clinic,” which requires practicing dental training, including on dummy heads and plastic teeth.
She said she has paused her studies for now, focusing on helping Sara recover.
“My life from before [the war] will not return. That’s for sure. Because everything is gone. Nothing remains,” Seham said. “We have memories, but even that they took. Thank God, we are still alive. And still, as long as we are here, there is hope inside us that we can return, someday, under better circumstances. Under circumstances that are not like what they are now.”
Both Sara and Seham said they hope the war — which is closing in on the one-year mark — will end and are hoping for “stability” in Gaza so they can return home one day.
“As long as we are in this limbo, I can’t think about what I will study and when I will finish school,” Sara said. “The one thing that we need is for the war to stop. … The most important thing is that this war ends and that voices are heard.”
“Don’t get tired of watching and listening … There are people’s lives destroyed, dreams being buried,” she continued. “People who had hopes and trying to live just like you do, but all of a sudden they found themselves under the ground. God willing, the war ends and people can go back to their lives. That is the most important thing.”
Since Oct. 7, at least 41,000 people in Gaza have been killed and at least 95,000 have been injured, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. In Israel, at least 1,500 people have been killed including more than 800 civilians and 700 IDF soldiers.
