Gaza’s Catholics mourn Pope Francis, who ‘never forgot’ them during war
Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images
(GAZA) — Gaza’s small Catholic community is mourning the death of Pope Francis, who maintained daily contact with local church leaders throughout the ongoing conflict, the parish priest of the region’s only Catholic church told ABC News.
Father Gabriel Romanelli of Gaza City’s Holy Family Church said the pontiff called the parish “every day from the beginning of the war” — an effort the community greatly appreciated.
“He met the people. He remembered some people by voice,” he said.
Even as he expressed profound sadness at the pope’s passing, Romanelli found spiritual significance in its timing.
“There is a mix of feelings,” Romanelli told ABC News. “The first feeling is very sad … but at the same time, because he died on Easter, it’s a sign of the mercy of God. For us as Christians, it’s the feast of the resurrection of the Lord.”
Gaza has been devastated by the war that was sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack. Since the conflict began, the Holy Family Church has helped to feed and shelter “thousands of families,” with support from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and Pope Francis, according to Romanelli.
There were approximately 1,300 Christians among Gaza’s 2 million Palestinian residents in 2022, according to a U.S. Department of State report, which cited “media reports and religious communities.”
“We lost many Christians. Five percent of our community have died during this war,” Romanelli said.
The parish is currently housing around 500 refugees, including “the majority” of Gaza’s minority Christian community but also some Muslims, “especially children with special needs,” Romanelli said.
During their frequent calls, Romanelli noted the pope’s deep concern for the welfare of Gaza’s civilians.
“He would call us to give us force, power, support, moral support and also, through the Latin Patriarchate, material support to help the civilians here,” Romanelli said.
The pope would also consistently urge them to take care of the children as he expressed gratitude for the church’s efforts to help the Christian community and all their neighbors, according to Romanelli. He said that message will be the pope’s legacy in the region.
“It’s necessary to continue to help the people,” Romanelli said. “After this war, the post-war period will be very hard. It’s necessary that people be strong in faith, strong in humanity. … We must smile and play with the children because it’s necessary to break the violence with a real peace message.”
Romanelli, who has served as a missionary in Gaza for six years, said the parish held a memorial service for the pope on Monday. Due to the ongoing conflict and closed borders, he said he will be unable to attend the pope’s funeral on Saturday, but hopes to follow the ceremonies online if conditions permit.
David Barnes appears in court in Russia on Feb. 13, 2024. Via ABC News.
(LONDON) — American David Barnes’ appeal to be released from a Russian detention center has been denied, causing prosecutors in Moscow to celebrate while Barnes’ friends and family in Alabama fear for his future.
In a hearing that lasted roughly three hours on Thursday, a judge at Moscow City Court rejected an effort by Barnes’ attorney Gleb Glinka to free him from custody. Instead, the judge increased Barnes’ sentence by six months, ordering that he be sent to a high-security penal colony and receive psychiatric treatment.
Cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, but Glinka told ABC News after the hearing that he was astounded by the decision, arguing that the Russian judicial system should not have jurisdiction over this case.
Barnes, 67, was convicted and sentenced to 21 years in a Russian penitentiary in February 2024.
The conviction came after Moscow prosecutors accused Barnes of abusing his two sons in Texas years earlier, despite Texas law enforcement having no involvement in the Russian trial.
Texas prosecutors previously found no basis to charge Barnes with a crime after his Russian ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva, alleged during child custody proceedings that he abused their children in suburban Montgomery County.
“I do know that everyone that heard and investigated the child sexual abuse allegations raised by Mrs. Barnes during the child custody proceedings did not find them to be credible,” Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office Trial Bureau Chief Kelly Blackburn previously told ABC News.
“I didn’t do anything,” Barnes told his sister Carol on a phone call earlier this year. “This is a political situation and I need political help.”
Barnes, who was raised in Alabama and lived in Texas prior to his arrest in Moscow, is currently serving the longest prison sentence of any American currently being detained in Russia.
His case is unlike any other foreign detention case involving an American in recent memory, since Russian prosecutors have not accused him of committing crimes on Russian soil.
ABC News has been following the saga of Barnes’ detention since not long after he was taken into custody in Moscow in January 2022.
Barnes’ family members say he went to Russia a few weeks before his arrest in an effort to fight for visitation rights involving his children in Moscow’s family court system.
Although a Texas family court had designated Barnes as the primary guardian of his sons in August 2020, he could not see them since Koptyaeva, his ex-wife, allegedly committed felony interference with child custody in March 2019 by taking the children from the Houston suburbs to Russia and not returning.
A Texas warrant for Koptyaeva’s arrest remains active. Koptyaeva maintains that Barnes abused their two children, telling ABC News that she brought the children from the U.S. to Russia in order to protect them.
When Koptyaeva found out that Barnes had arrived in Moscow years later, she went to Russian law enforcement officials to report the allegations from Texas, according to Barnes’ relatives in Alabama.
Barnes was subsequently incarcerated.
His family and friends are hoping that he will be brought back from Russia to the U.S. through a prisoner exchange like the ones that saw the releases of Ksenia Karelina, Marc Fogel, Evan Gershkovich and Brittney Griner.
“If they have another exchange and he is not included on it, it’s going to devastate him,” Paul Carter, a friend of Barnes, told ABC News in January.
Carter and Barnes’ sisters, along with groups like the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, are calling on the Trump administration and the State Department to declare Barnes as being wrongfully detained.
“Embassy officials continue to closely monitor developments in the case and are in contact with Mr. Barnes, his family, and legal team,” an unnamed State Department spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no further details to share.”
Glinka told ABC News that he is planning to appeal Thursday’s ruling.
Sudiksha Konanki is seen in this undated photo shared to Meta. (Sudiksha Konanki via Meta)
(PUNTA CANA, DR) — Missing University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki’s clothes were found on the Dominican Republic beach where authorities believe she was last seen going for a swim, two police sources with knowledge of the investigation told ABC News on Monday.
The 20-year-old Konanki, a legal permanent U.S. resident and an Indian citizen, vanished early Thursday while she and a group of students were on a spring break trip to a resort in Punta Cana, according to the Loudoun County, Virginia, Sheriff’s office.
Konanki and one of her traveling companions were Loudoun County residents, the sheriff’s office said.
Konanki’s clothes were discovered on a portable beach bed close to the beach where she went missing, the sources told ABC News. Police have found no evidence of violence, according to the sources.
After going to a nightclub on Wednesday night, Konanki and a group of people went to the beach about 4 a.m. local time on Thursday, the sources said. The other women traveling with Konanki went back to their hotel about 5:55 a.m. and were captured on security camera returning to their rooms, the sources noted.
A man stayed behind with Konanki on the beach, according to a Dominican Republic investigative police report. The man, whose name was not released, told police that he and Konanki went for a swim and got caught by a big wave, the police report said.
The man, according to sources, told police that when he got back to the beach he threw up and went to sleep on a beach bed. When he woke up, Konanki was nowhere to be seen, the sources said.
Security video showed the man coming back to his hotel room at 9:55 a.m., according to the sources.
The man is not considered a suspect in Konanki’s death, the chief of the Civil Defense in the Dominican Republic told ABC News on Monday.
Right now, the investigation is being treated as an accident, the chief said.
Law enforcement authorities are increasing the perimeter of the search area of beaches and water in the ongoing operation to find Konanki, according to the chief.
Three Dominican officials involved in the investigation told ABC News over the weekend that Konanki is believed to have drowned in the ocean.
The last time Konanki was seen on the beach on security camera footage was around 4:15 a.m. Thursday, the Dominican Republic Public Ministry told ABC News.
The Public Ministry was first contacted by the U.S. embassy in the Dominican Republic on Friday, the Ministry said.
Officials said Konanki’s friends who were with her around the time of her disappearance were questioned by police and have not been charged with crimes.
A joint investigation Konanki’s disappearance is being conducted by the FBI, the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic, the Dominican National Police and the Dominican Prosecutor’s office, sources close to the investigation told ABC News.
The investigators will question everyone involved in the incident again, including hotel employees and the man Konanki’s friends say she was with before she disappeared, the sources said.
All security camera footage since the day Konanki and her five friends arrived on the island is now being analyzed, sources said.
(LONDON) — Increasingly squeezed by allies and enemies alike, Ukraine’s armed forces are still setting records in their stubborn defense against Russia’s 3-year-old invasion, which — if President Donald Trump’s peace talks bear fruit — may soon see a partial ceasefire.
Month after month, Ukraine has increased the size and scope of its drone assaults within Russia. The high watermark this month came on March 10 as Kyiv launched at least 343 drones into Russia — according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow — representing Kyiv’s largest ever such attack. More than 90 drones were shot down over Moscow, the capital’s mayor describing the assault as “massive.”
The timing was pointed, coming hours before American and Ukrainian officials gathered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for ceasefire talks.
While straining to prove to the White House they were ready to discuss peace with Moscow, the Ukrainians were also exhibiting their ever-evolving capability to wage war deep inside Russia.
“We keep developing a lot of different types of long-range deep strikes,” Yehor Cherniv — a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and the chairman of his country’s delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly — told ABC News.
“Our capacity is growing to destroy the capacity of Russia to continue this war,” he added.
Ukraine’s strikes against Russian critical infrastructure, energy facilities, military-industrial targets and military bases have mirrored Moscow’s own long-range campaign against Ukraine. Cross-border barrages in both directions have grown in size and complexity throughout the full-scale war.
Ukrainian short-range drones are harrying Russian forces on the devastated battlefields while long-range strike craft hit targets closer to home. Kyiv this month even claimed the first successful use of its domestically produced Neptune cruise missile, with a range of 600 miles.
Since the opening of U.S.-Russian talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 18, Russia’s Defense Ministry claims to have shot down a total of 1,879 long-range Ukrainian drones — an average of more than 53 each day. On four occasions, the ministry reported intercepting more than 100 drones over a 24-hour period.
“Ukraine is pulling every single lever that it can, as hard as it can, to get it the kind of lethal strike capability that it needs for both of those campaigns,” Nick Reynolds, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, told ABC News.
Three years of Russia’s full-scale war have supercharged drone innovation in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s armed forces and intelligence services have lauded what they call their “drone sanctions” — a tongue-in-cheek reference to drone attacks on Russian fossil fuel, military industrial and other infrastructure targets far beyond the front.
“Our Ukrainian production of drones and their continuous modernization are a key part of our system of deterrence against Russia, which is crucial for ensuring Ukraine’s security in the long term,” Zelenskyy said in a recent Telegram post.
Ukrainian drones have hit targets more than 700 miles inside Russia, have regularly forced the temporary closures of major Russian airports and have bombarded the power centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. At sea, Ukraine’s naval drones have confined Russia’s fleet to the eastern portion of the Black Sea and made its bases in Crimea untenable.
It is no longer unusual for more than 100 attack drones to cross into Russian territory in the course of one night. Meanwhile, Kyiv is pushing to replace its relatively low-tech propeller-driven unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, with more jet-powered craft — potentially extending range, payload and survivability. “The number of rocket drones production will grow just like our long-range strike drones production did,” Zelenskyy said last summer.
Kyiv’s strikes have particularly disrupted Russia’s lucrative oil refining and export industry, prompting concerns abroad — including in the U.S. — that the Ukrainian campaign is driving up oil prices globally.
Federico Borsari of the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank told ABC News that Ukraine’s evolving long-range strike industry represents a “strategic advantage,” especially if Kyiv is able to protect its industrial sites from Russian strikes and stockpile weapons for future use.
“Ukraine has damaged Russian oil refining facilities hard since 2024 and destroyed several key storage bases of the artillery shells,” Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, told ABC News. “So, the Russians are highly concerned about this.”
“The amount of financial loss and material damage is huge,” Borsari added.
Drones of all ranges are expected to serve a key role in Ukraine’s future deterrence of repeat Russian aggression. Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, for example, said Kyiv is planning a 6- to 9-mile drone “kill zone” to buffer any future post-war frontier with Russia, “making enemy advances impossible.”
Ivan Stupak, a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine, told ABC News that Ukraine’s drone threat could also prove an important lever in ongoing negotiations with both Moscow and Washington, neither of which want continued — or expanded — drone strikes on Russian oil infrastructure and other sensitive targets.
The weapons could also be vital to future deterrence of repeat Russian aggression, Stupak said, as Ukraine pursues a “hedgehog” strategy by which the country would make itself too “prickly” for Moscow to attempt to swallow again.
Ukraine’s success has not gone unnoticed by its foreign partners. Kyiv appears to be carving out a potentially lucrative niche in providing long-range, low-cost strike platforms.
“There is immense interest from our friends around the world in Ukraine’s developments, our capabilities and our technological production,” Zelenskyy said recently.
Last fall, reports emerged indicating that Ukraine was considering lifting a wartime ban on drone exports, seeking to take advantage of growing demand worth as much as $20 billion annually, per an estimate by Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Marikovskyi.
Ukraine’s military and intelligence services collaborate with domestic and international private companies to expand their drone capabilities. Kyiv has estimated there are more than 200 domestic companies working in the sector. This year, Zelenskyy wants Ukraine to produce 30,000 long-range drones and 3,000 ballistic missiles.
This month’s brief U.S. aid and intelligence freeze has raised concerns within Ukraine’s domestic drone industry, arguably one of the most insulated and resilient areas of the country’s defense sector.
“The reality is that Western-provided intelligence — and the Americans are a big part of that — does feed into a better targeting picture,” Reynolds said. “The efficiency and effectiveness is, in part, tied to that.”
“Ukraine became partly blinded as to how and where Russian anti-aircraft and electronic warfare systems are being deployed,” Stupak said.
If such a freeze is repeated, “I suppose it will be more difficult for Ukraine to avoid anti-aircraft and electronic warfare systems and maybe we will see decreased levels of successful strikes,” he said.
Ukraine’s largest drone attack of the war thus far came days after the U.S. announced its intelligence sharing freeze. It is not clear whether Ukraine used previously shared intelligence to carry out the strike, in which scores of craft reached Moscow.
Some targets are easier to find than others. Airfields — like Engels strategic bomber air base — oil refineries, ports and the like are static and their locations known to Ukrainian military planners.
Still, a lack of intelligence would make it harder for Kyiv to locate and avoid Russian defensive systems. The pause in American intelligence sharing was brief, but for Ukrainians highlighted their level of reliance on U.S. assistance.
A long-lasting paucity of intelligence would represent “an important vulnerability,” Borsari said. “For very long-range targets, they require satellite information, satellite imagery — and most of the time this information comes from Western allies.”
