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.
(LONDON) — President Donald Trump on Monday said that further attacks or retaliation by the Houthis would be considered an attack by Iran and it would face “dire” consequences.p
Trump’s threat comes after the U.S. launched a new series of airstrikes against the Yemeni group beginning Saturday. The Houthis on Sunday claimed to have thwarted “a hostile attack the enemy was preparing to launch against our country.” A U.S. official told ABC News that the Houthis fired 11 drones and one ballistic missile at the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier group in the Red Sea, none of which came close to hitting any U.S. vessels.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called the Houthis “sinister mobsters and thugs” said their attacks “emanate from, and are created by, IRAN.”
Trump said Iran is “dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, ‘Intelligence.'”
“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!” Trump said.
The Houthis claimed to have fired 18 ballistic missiles and a drone in two separate attacks over the previous 24 hours. All drones were downed by fighters — 10 shot down by Air Force planes and one by Navy planes — while the ballistic missile was not intercepted as it fell far short of the vessels, the U.S. official said.
Trump described the U.S. strikes as “decisive and powerful military action” against the Iranian-backed group. The Houthis have been targeting Western-linked shipping and launching munitions into Israel since the fall of 2022, in protest of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“They have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft and drones,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday. “We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.”
A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News on Sunday that U.S. air and naval assets hit dozens of Houthi targets in Yemen, including missiles, radars and drone and air defense systems. The official characterized the attacks as an opening salvo against the Houthis that sends a strong message to Iran.
The Yemeni Health Ministry said the strikes killed 53 people and injured 98 more.
Speaking with reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said he was not concerned about retaliatory strikes related to the latest American strikes.
National security adviser Mike Waltz told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the strikes represented “an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out. And the difference here is, one, going after the Houthi leadership, and two, holding Iran responsible.”
Detailing their latest attack on U.S. Navy vessels, the Houthis said in a Sunday statement that they will “continue to ban the passage of Israeli ships through the zone of operations until the blockade on the Gaza Strip is lifted.”
ABC News’ Will Gretsky, Nicholas Kerr and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed to his U.S. and European partners not to “abandon” Kyiv in any revived peace talks with Russia, aimed at ending the war between the two nations now nearly 3 years old.
The return of President Donald Trump to the White House has raised the prospect of renewed negotiations, with the president telling reporters this weekend he had been “making progress” in contacts with Kyiv and with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In an interview with Britain’s ITV News published this weekend, Zelenskyy said he “would be ready for any format for talks” if there was “an understanding that America and Europe will not abandon us and they will support us and provide security guarantees.”
Russian officials have expressed openness to renewed talks, but have not indicated any willingness to downgrade Moscow’s longstanding war goals of annexing swaths of Ukraine and blocking Kyiv’s ambitions to join NATO. Putin has said he is not willing to negotiate directly with Zelenskyy, dismissing the Ukrainian leader as “illegitimate.”
On Monday, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told RIA Novosti that Moscow has not yet received any suitable negotiating proposals.
The diplomatic maneuvering continues as White House officials prepare to travel to both Germany and Ukraine, with fresh high-level peace talk discussions expected.
Vice President JD Vance is expected to attend next weekend the Munich Security Conference in southern Germany, where Zelenskyy is expected to lead Kyiv’s delegation.
Trump’s Ukraine-Russia envoy, Keith Kellogg, is then expected to visit Ukraine on Feb. 20.
In his interview with ITV, Zelenskyy warned the White House against simply freezing the conflict along the current front line.
‘”A frozen conflict will lead to more aggression again and again,” the Ukrainian leader said. “Who then will win prizes and go down in history as the victor? No one. It will be an absolute defeat for everyone, both for us, as is important, and for Trump.”
While preparing for new talks, both Moscow and Kyiv continued their exchange of large-scale drone attacks on Sunday night.
Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram that it downed 61 of 83 Russian drones launched towards the country, with another 22 drones lost in flight.
Officials reported damage to a non-residential building in Kyiv after falling drone debris sparked a fire. One woman was injured in the city of Sumy after a drone detonated in a parking lot, officials said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said it shot down 17 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea, Crimea and several Russian regions.
Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, said on Telegram that debris from a Ukrainian drone damaged a multi-storey building but caused no casualties.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation — which operates as part of the country’s National Security and Defense Council — said on Telegram that drones targeted the Afipsky oil refinery in Krasnodar region.
ABC News’ Will Gretsky and Max Uzol contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Dozens were injured, including children, in a Russian strike on Ukraine, officials said Monday, as American and Russian negotiators meet again in Saudi Arabia in the White House’s continued push for a ceasefire and eventual peace deal to end Moscow’s three-year-old war on Ukraine.
A proposed pause on strikes targeting energy infrastructure is expected to be among the topics of discussion, with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy having already indicated their support — at least in principle — for the plan.
Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported that the American and Russian teams began the behind-closed-doors talks in Riyadh on Monday morning. After more than eight hours, they were still ongoing, Russian state media reported.
President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who has been central to talks with both Moscow and Kyiv — expressed hope for progress on Sunday, telling Fox News that the president’s “philosophy of peace through strength brings people to the table to clear up misconceptions and to get peace deals done.”
“I’m not sure how anyone would expect an end to a conflict when you’re not communicating,” Witkoff said.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, said this weekend that “there are difficult negotiations ahead.” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state television, “We are only at the beginning of this path.”
On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said proposals to ensure the safety of Black Sea shipping would be among the topics discussed in Saudi Arabia, suggesting the idea came from Trump and was agreed to by Putin.
The U.S.-Russia meeting on Monday comes on the heels of a meeting between the American and Ukrainian teams in Riyadh on Sunday. Zelenskyy said Sunday evening he had been briefed on the “quite useful” discussion by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who took part.
“But no matter what we’re discussing with our partners right now, Putin must be pushed to issue a real order to stop the strikes — because the one who brought this war must be the one to take it back,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Moscow’s continued missile and drone attacks across the country. Ukraine has also continued its own long-range drone strikes into Russia.
Witkoff remarks spark concern
Other remarks made by Witkoff over the weekend again piqued concerns in Ukraine and elsewhere that the Trump administration is aligning itself with false or misleading Russian narratives about its decades-long campaigns of meddling and aggression in Ukraine.
Discussing the Ukrainian regions partially occupied and claimed annexed by Russia since 2022 — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — plus Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, Witkoff told conservative media personality Tucker Carlson, “They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.”
Witkoff did not acknowledge that the supposed referenda held in those territories — whether in 2014 in the case of Crimea or 2022 in the other regions — were widely dismissed by Western powers, human rights organizations and international bodies as fraudulent and illegitimate.
In September 2022, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. “does not, and will never, recognize any of the Kremlin’s claims to sovereignty over parts of Ukraine that it’s seized by force and now purports to incorporate into Russia.”
Witkoff also touted the apparent warm relationship between Trump and Putin, telling Carlson that the Russian leader claimed to have prayed for “his friend” Trump after the assassination attempt against the president in July 2024. Putin also gave Witkoff a portrait of Trump as a gift, he said.
“This is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to reestablish through a simple word called communication, which many people would say I shouldn’t have had because Putin is a bad guy,” Witkoff said. “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy.”
Witkoff’s latest remarks have deepened concerns in Ukraine as to the Trump administration’s approach to the nascent peace process.
“What he has said is absolutely unacceptable,” Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the chair of the body’s foreign affairs committee, told ABC News. “Listening to his interview I thought to myself: ‘Who is he? The American president’s envoy or Putin’s envoy?'”
Witkoff, Merezhko added, may have fallen for “Russian propaganda” or may be trying to win Putin’s support for Trump’s ceasefire proposal.
Regardless, Merezhko urged Trump to disavow what he called Witkoff’s “dangerous statements.”
Strikes continue
Meanwhile, deadly cross-border drone attacks continued through the weekend. On Sunday night into Monday morning, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 99 drones into the country, of which 93 were either shot down or lost in flight without causing damage. Russian air defense shot down 28 drones fired into Russian territory by Ukraine, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Dozens of people, including 13 children, were injured in a Russian missile strike on Sumy, the city’s health department said Monday. A school building was partially destroyed in the strike, according to the Emergency Service of Ukraine.
“Moscow speaks of peace while carrying out brutal strikes on densely populated residential areas in major Ukrainian cities,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.
“A few hours ago, another horrific Russian bombing of Sumy’s city center injured dozens [of] civilians, including many children,” Sybiha said. “Instead of making hollow statements about peace, Russia must stop bombing our cities and end its war on civilians.”
ABC News’ Yuriy Zaliznyak, Victoria Beaule, Anna Sergeeva and Guy Davies contributed to this report.
