Israeli operation in Gaza expanding to seize ‘large areas,’ defense minister says

(LONDON) — There have been 104 passengers rescued from a train in Pakistan on Tuesday after it was attacked and hundreds were taken hostage by the militant Balochistan Liberation Army, according to a Pakistani military official.

At least 17 people have been injured and 16 terrorists have been killed as a military operation continues, according to the official.

Earlier, a U.S. official told ABC News that at least 450 people were taken hostage on the train and said six Pakistani military personnel were killed.

The separatist militant group claimed it had taken 182 military and security personnel hostage on the train, according to a post on Telegram, but said they had released the majority of the civilians on board. The group claimed a higher number of casualties in the attack, saying they killed 20 Pakistani military personnel and shot down a drone.

The BLA had threatened to kill all the hostages if Pakistan’s military tries to rescue them, the official said.

The BLA blew up part of the track, forcing the train to stop, before they boarded and took control, according to the official.

The attack happened in mountainous area right before a tunnel, making a rescue very difficult, they said.

Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi condemned the attack and said the government would not make any concessions to “beasts who fire on innocent passengers.”

The train was trapped in a tunnel after the tracks were blown up and militants opened fire on it, reportedly injuring the driver, local authorities and police have told media.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(SEOUL) — A former sergeant in the North Korean military says that few of Pyongyang’s soldiers have been captured fighting against Ukraine because they’re told their families will be executed if they are caught alive.

“Most soldiers will kill themselves before they’re killed by the enemy, it’s the biggest shame to be captured,” the former soldier, Ryu Seong-hyeon, told ABC News.

Ryu defected to South Korea in 2019, running across a minefield in the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas.

Pyongyang has deployed more than 12,000 soldiers to Russia to fight in the Ukraine war, according to US estimates, with experts claiming Russian forces have also used North Korean weapons.

An estimated 300 North Korean soldiers have died in the fighting, and over 2,700 have been wounded, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in a closed briefing last week.

Pyongyang has deployed more than 12,000 soldiers to Russia to fight in the Ukraine war, according to US estimates, with experts claiming Russian forces have also used North Korean weapons.

An estimated 300 North Korean soldiers have died in the fighting, and over 2,700 have been wounded, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in a closed briefing last week.

South Korea’s spy agency told journalists Thursday that an unknown number of additional North Korean soldiers have been sent to the frontlines in Russia’s western Kursk region since early February, after a near month-long lull in fighting against Ukrainian troops, who launched a surprise offensive across the border last August.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in January that his forces had captured two North Korean soldiers, marking the first time that Ukraine had captured Pyongyang’s troops alive.

In a nearly 3-minute video released by Ukraine following the capture of the two North Korean troops, one of the soldiers says he wants to remain in Ukraine when asked if he wishes to return home. The Korean translator asks, “Did you know you were fighting in a war against Ukraine?” The soldier shakes his head.

South Korean intelligence assessed that the two soldiers were with the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a key North Korean military intelligence agency.

“If the soldiers are captured and tell information to the enemy, their families will be punished, go to a political prison camp, or worse, they will be executed in front of the people,” said another North Korean defector, Pak Yusung.

‘They just die like a dog’

Pyongyang’s soldiers have struggled to adapt to the modern battlefield, the North Korean defectors suggested, as videos released by the Ukrainian military appear to show North Korean soldiers being chased down by attack drones.

Ryu and Pak defected long before the fighting that’s underway in Russia, but they said that, in their experience, most of the soldiers would not have seen a drone in their life.

“Before they go they don’t have any practice in how to defend against a drone or how to fight Ukrainians, that’s why they just die like a dog,” Ryu said. “They don’t have the skill, the language or the information.”

Pak and Ryu’s analysis lines up with information released by South Korean intelligence, which said North Korea has clearly instructed the soldiers to kill themselves to avoid being captured alive.

Seoul’s spy agency also said it attributes the “massive casualties” of North Korean soldiers to their “lack of understanding of modern warfare,” including their “useless” act of shooting at long-range drones, based on the agency’s analysis of a recent combat video.

Ryu, who was about 110 lbs. at the time of his defection, said if he were still a North Korean soldier, he would also want to go: “If I went to Ukraine, I could eat food, and I could see another country.” He said there are also big financial incentives, and the soldiers would have no idea that their chances of dying were so high.

Selling lies

Ryu and Pak said North Korean soldiers were being sold a lie. “From a young age they’re told to hate the American ‘wolves’, and now they are told they are finally killing Americans,” the defectors said.

Ryu said in his experience with the Korean air force, about 50% of the pilots were only trained in theory, and did not have experience flying a fighter jet.

Pak, who is a researcher at the North Korea Institute, said Kim would be receiving critical technology in exchange for the manpower, in what should be a deeply worrying sign for the world, Kim also gets more real combat experience in case of a war on the peninsula.

“If Russia wins the war, it will empower the dictator alliance,” Pak said.

“This is just the start. If the Ukraine war keeps going, Kim will keep sending soldiers. Inside North Korea more people will start knowing and that could be a threat to Kim.”

When asked what they could possibly do about it when living in a dictatorship controlled by fear, Pak said, “Think about it: your sons died on the battlefield and not for your own country.”

Ryu added, “You cannot send so many people to the labor camps.”

Pak and his team of four North Korean defectors, Voices of North Korean Youth, have been trying to push the international community to condemn Russia and North Korea with one voice, and also called for the International Criminal Court to hold Kim Jong Un accountable.

ABC News’ Karson Yiu contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — It may have been a frigid January for much of the U.S., but that didn’t stop the planet from breaking another temperature record.

Earth just experienced its warmest January on record, according to data analyzed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Despite a record-breaking snowfall in the south, persistent cold temperatures across the northeast and an emerging La Niña event in the Pacific Ocean, which is supposed to cool things down, January 2025 was still warmer than any previous start to the year in the organization’s dataset going back to 1940.

The average surface air temperature was 55.81 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1991-2020 average for the month of January. It also makes the global average temperature over the past 12 months 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.

For context, the Paris Agreement — which President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from last month — set 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit as a ceiling to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Similarly, global daily sea surface temperatures across most of the world’s oceans remain well above average and registered as the second-highest January value on record, just behind 2024.

Last month’s temperature was unprecedented compared to similar global climate cycles in the past, where temperatures dropped with El Niño long gone and La Niña conditions in place.

The increase’s magnitude and persistence have shocked many climate experts, leaving them somewhat puzzled about what else could be behind the remarkable rise.

In addition to human-amplified climate change and natural global climate cycles, a growing amount of research suggests that a decrease in atmospheric aerosols could be a significant contributor to the rapid warming.

Atmospheric aerosols are tiny particles that reflect sunlight into space and reduce global temperatures. However, their concentrations have greatly diminished due to international efforts to reduce air pollution in recent decades. Now, more sunlight reaches the Earth’s surface, creating a heating effect.

For decades, we’ve been removing aerosols from our air without fully realizing the potential cascading effects of these actions.

To help solve this puzzle, climate scientists are eagerly awaiting the first batch of operational data from NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite, PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem), launched nearly a year ago. This data will provide more insight into how various atmospheric aerosols behave and interact with each other.

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