Authorities open manslaughter probe into superyacht sinking
(PALERMO, Sicily) — Authorities investigating the sinking of a superyacht off the Sicilian coast that claimed the lives of seven people said a manslaughter probe has been launched in the case.
“We have opened a file against unknown persons with the hypothesis of negligent shipwreck manslaughter,” Ambrogio Cartosio, the chief prosecutor of the Sicilian town Termini Imerese, said Saturday at a press conference.
Cartosio added, “We are taking care to keep the investigation secret as this is the law.”
The prosecutor said the ship’s captain, who survived the sinking, is not currently detained but asked that he remain available in Sicily so the prosecutors can speak to him again.
Investigators also revealed that it’s believed the ship was hit by a downburst – a powerful wind system originating from a thunderstorm that can reach 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour — and not a waterspout, as authorities and some experts had previously thought.
The news conference came a day after the body of the last missing passenger — Hannah Lynch, the 18-year-old daughter of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch — was recovered Friday from the hull of the ship. The body of Mike Lynch, who owned the yacht, was recovered Thursday.
The other victims, according to Italian news agency Adnkronos, are Jonathan Bloomer, the president of Morgan Stanley International; his wife Anne Elizabeth; American lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Nada, all found within the sunken yacht. The body of the yacht’s cook, Recaldo Thomas, was found on Monday morning underwater near the hull but not in it, according to authorities. An official list of the survivors and victims of the tragedy has not been released.
Divers conducted a difficult and dangerous recovery operation for five days in the yacht to locate and retrieve the missing passengers.
Fifteen people who had been onboard the yacht when the downburst struck — believed to be all members of the crew and the captain of the yacht plus five passengers — were rescued alive in the immediate aftermath of the sinking early Monday which occurred around half a mile from the fishing village of Porticello, close to the city of Palermo.
(LONDON) — Thousands of people were injured across Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday by an Israeli covert operation that remotely detonated pagers, ABC News sources confirmed.
A source described the attack as a “huge operation” that took between six and 12 months to plan, involving the use of informants and collaborators. Explosives were implanted inside the beepers, the source added.
The attack killed at least 12 civilians — among them an 8-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy — according to Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad.
At least 2,800 people were injured, Abiad said. More than 460 people underwent surgery for serious injuries, the minister added. Most victims are suffering from eye and facial injuries, while others suffered injuries to hands and fingers, he said.
The Hezbollah militant group confirmed that 11 of its members were killed on Tuesday, though did not specify the manner of their deaths.
At least 14 people were also injured in targeted attacks on Hezbollah members in Syria, according to the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Hezbollah vowed a “reckoning” for Israel. Leader Hassan Nasrallah is due to speak on the situation on Thursday afternoon.
The pagers began exploding around 3:30 p.m. local time, according to Hezbollah officials. An intelligence source familiar with the situation told ABC News that Israel has long been working to perfect this type of “supply chain interdiction attack.”
Responding to media reports that the explosives were concealed inside its AR-924 pager model, Taiwan-based beeper maker Gold Apollo told ABC News it was not responsible for the design or manufacture of the item.
“According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” they said.
ABC News has contacted BAC for comment. The company is based in Budapest, Hungary.
The Lebanese Council of Ministers collectively condemned “this criminal Israeli aggression, which constitutes a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards.”
It added that “the government immediately began making all necessary contacts with the countries concerned and the United Nations to place it before its responsibilities regarding this continuing crime.”
The United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon called the operation an “extremely concerning escalation in what is an already unacceptably volatile context,” in a statement released by the U.N. Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary General.
U.S. officials said Washington, D.C., had no role in — or pre-knowledge of — the attack. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told journalists on Tuesday that the administration was “gathering information” on the incident.
The U.S. and the European Union have both designated the Hezbollah militant group a foreign terrorist organization.
(LONDON and GAZA STRIP) — When he left his home on Tuesday morning to get birth certificates for his newborn twins, Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan never imagined he would return with their death certificates instead.
In a matter of minutes, an Israeli strike on the Qastal Tower building, in Deir Al-Balah, where the Abu al-Qumsan family was living after having been displaced from the north of Gaza, killed his 3-day-old twins, Aser and Aysel, together with their mother, Dr. Jumann Arfa, and grandmother, according to family members.
The twins were born on Saturday, Aug. 10, as written on their birth certificate. On that day, Dr. Arfa shared the news in a Facebook post, with friends welcoming her babies in war-torn Gaza and praying for their health and safety.
Now the few comments to congratulate the birth below the announcement are overshadowed by hundreds of condolences to the family.
“I helped her raise funds for her to deliver the twins safely. I only spoke with her yesterday, my heart is truly broken,” a friend wrote.
The Israel Defense Forces in a statement to ABC News said, “The details of the incident as published are not currently known to the IDF.”
The military added, “The IDF is fighting against the murderous terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza following the massacre on October 7. Unlike the terrorist organization Hamas, the IDF targets only military objectives and employs various measures to minimize harm to civilians.”
Abu Al-Qumsan learned about the news from his brother-in-law, Fera Arafa, who told ABC News that he survived the explosion because he was out to buy bread.
“I went to register the children the day before. They said to come back tomorrow. So I went and I was waiting when someone called me, telling me that the apartment which I live in was bombed,” Abu Al-Qumsan told ABC News.
As soon as he got the call, Abu Al-Qumsan said he rushed to the nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital, where he was told the babies and mother had been taken.
Shock and pain overtook him when he saw with his own eyes that the news was true, he said. Videos show him collapsing and shaking, unable to contain his desperation. The couple married in July last year and lived in Gaza City, where she worked as a pharmacist and he worked as a sales representative until Oct. 13, 2023, when they were forced to evacuate to southern Gaza.
At Al-Aqsa Hospital, Arafa grieved as he held his brother-in-law and worried about the future of his remaining family.
Arafa told ABC News he was living in the same apartment as his mother, sister, her husband and their babies. The apartment that was “filled with joy and happiness since the twins came to this life,” he said.
Now a massive hole in the building is a reminder of the deadly attack that put an end to that happiness. It also punctuated the difficulties endured by Abu Al-Qumsan and his family in the last 10 months of war in Gaza: the displacement, the lack of resources, and the pregnancy, carried on during what international humanitarian organizations and the United Nations called a collapsed health system.
“Minutes before the explosion, I was outside the house, my mother phoned me and told me that she wanted bread,” Arafa told ABC News about the morning the Qastal tower apartment was hit. “Minutes after I ended my call with her, a friend called me and told me they had all been killed.”
Arafa said he was overcome by shock.
“What is the reason? I still can’t believe it. A few minutes ago, I was talking to my mother on the phone,” he said. “We are civilians, and we are looking for our livelihood to provide for our daily needs, we have no connection to organizations, parties, or the military, I do not know why we were bombed.”
What began as a simple task of securing birth certificates transformed into a heart-wrenching journey to bury his family and obtain their death certificates, but Mohammed’s sorrow is not unique, according to a spokesperson for the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, who told ABC News this is part of a larger tragedy affecting countless families.
“This attack wiped out the entire family from the civil registry, raising the number of newborn deaths to 115 children since the beginning of this conflict,” Dr. Khalil Al-Daqran, spokesperson for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and the Ministry of Health, told ABC News.
Al-Daqran said they are struggling to deal with the psychological pain too.
“The psychological and emotional impact on the father of the two children who were killed is profound. We have approximately 10,000 patients suffering from psychological disorders, most of whom are left untreated and are seen wandering the streets.”
As for the measures and protection for infants and newborns, Al-Daqran said the attacks are directed at every citizen in the Gaza Strip, making it impossible to protect children, and that the lack of aid and resources is affecting the youngest disproportionally.
Thousands of “children have been killed in this brutal conflict over the course of just 10 months. When the authorities closed the [border] crossings and deprived these infants and newborns of baby formula, the situation became even more dire. Tragically, a significant number of newborns have lost their lives due to malnutrition too,” he said.
Two days after the Abu al-Qumsan family lived their tragedy, the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants carried on a surprise attack that left over 1,200 killed and hundreds kidnapped, reached the grim milestone of 40,000, on top of the over 90,000 injured, the health ministry said.
According to the ministry, about 11,000 children are among the dead.
“These appalling atrocities have become tragically commonplace, as relentless, indiscriminate assaults continue to claim the lives of so, so many children and leave countless families devastated. Surely, surely, it must be stopped,” a spokesperson for the United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said in a statement to ABC News.
(LONDON and MOSCOW) — Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday it downed 144 Ukrainian drones during a major overnight attack over nine regions in the west of the country, including the Moscow area.
The ministry described the operation as “a terrorist attack using unmanned aerial vehicles.” It reported 72 drones downed over the Bryansk region, 14 over Kursk, 13 over Tula, eight over Belgorod, seven over Kaluga, five over Voronezh, four over Lipetsk and one over Oryol.
At least 20 drones flew over Moscow, according to the defense ministry.
Moscow regional Gov. Andrey Vorobyov said on Telegram that one 46-year-old woman died in Ramenskoye in the southeast of the city when a drone hit a residential building — the first time a Moscow resident has been killed in a Ukrainian drone attack.
Three others were injured in Ramenskoye and hospitalized. Another 43 people were taken to temporary accommodation centers. Three buildings in the town were hit, with 54 apartments damaged.
Operations at three of the capital’s four airports were disrupted during the attack. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said fragments of one downed drone fell on the runway at Zhukovsky International Airport southeast of the capital. Emergency crews were deployed to deal with “the consequences” of the incident, Sobyanin wrote on Telegram.
The mayor said that drone fragments also fell on a home in the town of Troitsk southwest of the capital, causing no casualties.
Ukrainian officials have not commented on the attack. Kyiv generally does not confirm or deny responsibility for strikes within Russian borders.
Russia also continued its long-range attacks on Ukraine into Tuesday morning. Ukraine’s air force reported one Iskander-M ballistic missile, one Kh-31P anti-radar missile and 48 Shahed attack drones fired into the country overnight.
Thirty-eight of the drones were shot down, three left Ukrainian airspace and three more were lost over Ukrainian territory, likely due to electronic warfare measures, the air force said.
Air raid sirens sounded over Kyiv on Tuesday morning, with the air force warning residents of a possible attack drone strike. Air raid alerts were active in 13 regions of the country.