Millions without power as outages hit Spain, Portugal and parts of France, Spanish officials say
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(LONDON) — Millions of people in Spain, Portugal and parts of France lost power on Monday due to an unknown grid issue, the Spanish government confirmed to ABC News.
The Spanish government said it called an emergency crisis meeting to fix the situation as soon as possible.
Authorities, meanwhile, asked people to stay at home and to avoid circulating, while emergency generators were also being put in place.
Red Eléctrica, the corporation that operates the national electricity grid in Spain, confirmed power outages across the country.
“Plans to restore the electricity supply have been activated in collaboration with companies in the sector following the zero that occurred in the peninsular system,” it wrote in a post to X. “The causes are being analyzed and all resources are being dedicated to solving it.”
A later post said power was recovered in some areas.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — The Israel Defense Forces issued evacuation warnings for three ports in Houthi-controlled Yemen after intercepting two of three ballistic missiles fired by the Iran-backed group in the past 24 hours. The IDF said one Houthi missile misfired on Tuesday.
The IDF said in a post to X that the third missile launched toward Israel on Wednesday was intercepted just before 8 a.m. local time. Air raid sirens rang out from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, sending several million Israelis rushing for cover. About two hours later, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee ordered those present at the Red Sea ports of Ras Isa, al-Hudaydah and al-Salif to evacuate the area.
“Due to the terrorist Houthi regime’s use of seaports for its terrorist activities, we urge all those present at these ports to evacuate and stay away from them for your own safety until further notice,” Adraee wrote in a post to X.
The IDF routinely issues such evacuation orders ahead of planned airstrikes. The IDF’s first such warning for Yemen was issued on May 6, before Israeli strikes on the Sanaa International Airport in the Yemeni capital.
The spate of Houthi missile attacks came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces would enter Gaza with “full force” in the coming days. Last week, Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved plans to expand the IDF’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Netanyahu said Wednesday that intensified military action is required “to accomplish all of Israel’s war goals, including the release of all our hostages, destroy Hamas’s military and governance capabilities and ensure that Gaza will never again pose a threat to Israel.”
The Houthis have been attacking U.S. military and global commercial shipping and launching drones and missiles toward Israel since Hamas’ deadly surprise attack on Israel in October 2023. The Houthis say their attacks are a protest of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Last week, the Houthis agreed to end attacks on American commercial shipping in the region in exchange for an end to the intense U.S. airstrikes against them, a campaign President Donald Trump began in March. The Houthis have clarified that this agreement struck with the U.S. does not include stopping its attacks on Israel.
Trump announced the agreement on May 6. Over the next two days, the Houthis launched an attack drone and a ballistic missile toward Israel, both of which the IDF said were intercepted.
While traveling to Saudi Arabia to begin a tour of Gulf nations on Monday, Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity of the Houthis, “You know, they’re tough fighters. They can take a lot of punishment.” Asked if the ceasefire would hold, he responded, “With respect to America, they say it’s true. We’ll see.”
The Houthis have vowed to continue attacks on Israel until it ends its operation in Gaza and the blockade of humanitarian aid into the strip. The Israeli war on Hamas began after the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.
The attack killed nearly 1,200 people in Israel with 253 others abducted as hostages, the Israeli government said. Fifty-seven hostages remain in Gaza, including 20 who are believed to be alive.
IDF soldier Edan Alexander — the last living U.S. citizen being held hostage in Gaza — was freed on Monday after direct talks between Hamas and the Trump administration. U.S. officials told ABC News that Alexander’s release was viewed as a goodwill gesture toward the Trump administration and a potential opening to jumpstart talks on a Gaza ceasefire.
After Netanyahu met top U.S. officials in Israel Monday ahead of Alexander’s release, the Israeli leader announced he would send an Israeli negotiating team to Doha, Qatar, for ceasefire talks. Indirect talks with Hamas entered their second day on Wednesday.
But Netanyahu said Tuesday that any new ceasefire deal reached — for example to facilitate the release of more living hostages — would be temporary. “There will be no way we will stop the war,” Netanyahu said. “We can make a ceasefire for a certain period of time, but we’re going to the end.” Netanyahu has repeatedly said that Hamas cannot remain in power in the Mediterranean exclave.
Also on Tuesday, a series of airstrikes targeted the European Hospital near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Mohammad Sinwar — the leader of Hamas in Gaza and the brother of former leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by the IDF in October — was the target, an Israeli source familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The IDF has not confirmed Mohammed Sinwar was the target and it is not yet clear whether he was killed in the attack. Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health said that at least six people were killed and 40 others were wounded in the strike.
The IDF claimed its “precise strike” targeted “Hamas terrorists in a command and control center located in an underground terrorist infrastructure site beneath the European hospital.”
The IDF routinely alleges that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, for military activities — allegations Hamas denies.
The Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza said Wednesday that at least 70 people were killed and dozens injured in overnight Israelis strikes on various targets across the strip.
At least 50 people — including 22 children — were killed by Israeli attacks on houses in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern part of the strip, the ministry said, citing local hospital officials.
The total death toll in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, now stands at 52,928 people, according to the Ministry of Health, with another 119,846 people injured. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant dead.
Kyic Oleksandr Gusev/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
(KYIV, Ukraine) — A massive overnight Russian strike on Kyiv killed 14 people and wounded more than 100 others, local officials in the Ukrainian capital said early Tuesday, as Moscow launched hundreds of drones and missiles at targets across the country.
It was not immediately clear whether others may be trapped beneath the rubble, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in an update on the Telegram messaging app. Emergency personnel were working at several sites, including a residential building in the Solomianskyi district, where “an entire entrance collapsed,” Klitschko said.
The mayor posted a video to Telegram showing what he said were Russian cluster munitions found at one of the impact sites in the capital. Klitschko later declared Wednesday a day of mourning for the victims of the attack.
Ukraine’s air force said in a post to Telegram that the attack consisted of 440 drones and 32 missiles — of which 402 drones and 26 missiles were shot down or otherwise neutralized. The air force reported impacts in 10 locations and downed debris in 34 locations. The attack is believed to have been one of the largest on the capital in several months.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the nationwide attack killed at least 15 people were killed. Kyiv bore the brunt of the strikes, Zelenskyy wrote, with impacts also reported in Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad and Mykolaiv.
At least one person was killed in Odesa and 17 others injured, according to a Telegram post by local Governor Oleg Kiper.
“Such attacks are pure terrorism,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. “And the whole world, the U.S. and Europe must finally react the way a civilized society reacts to terrorists.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy said, “is doing this solely because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to continue. It is bad when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to this. We are contacting all partners at all possible levels so that there is an appropriate response. It is the terrorists who should feel the pain, not normal, peaceful people.”
The attacks came as G7 leaders gathered in Canada, where Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine is one of several key topics of discussion. President Donald Trump on Monday suggested that Russia — previously a member of the group when it was known as the G8 — should not have been expelled form the bloc in 2014 after its invasion and annexation of Crimea.
Putin “sends a signal of total disrespect to the United States and other partners who have called for an end to the killing,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X. “Putin’s goal is very simple: make the G7 leaders appear weak. Only strong steps and real pressure on Moscow can prove him wrong.”
ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — The Israeli Foreign Ministry said early Monday that Israeli forces had boarded and diverted a privately owned ship carrying Swedish human rights activist Greta Thunberg and several others, who said they were attempting to bring humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
The boat, the Madleen, was “safely making its way to the shores of Israel,” the ministry said in a statement, deriding the efforts by those aboard as a “media provocation.”
“The passengers are expected to return to their home countries,” the ministry said.
The ship had been approaching the coast of the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of breaking an Israeli blockade on aid via the sea and delivering humanitarian supplies to the territory. According to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the group that organized the aid trip, the 12 people on board were unarmed.
“The ship was unlawfully boarded, its unarmed civilian crew abducted, and its life-saving cargo — including baby formula, food and medical supplies — confiscated,” the coalition said in a statement on Monday.
The sea blockade of Gaza predates the current conflict that started when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and has been in place since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
Israeli officials released images of Thunberg and others wearing orange life vests and sitting closely together on the Madleen. People in Israel military uniforms are seen in the video handing bread and water to the activists.
The ministry also released a separate image of Thunberg, in which a soldier is handing her bread and water. The ministry accompanied that image with a statement saying Thunberg was “currently on her way to Israel, safe and in good spirits.”
A video posted by the coalition appeared to rebuke the characterization that Thunberg was in “good spirits.”
“If you see this video we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces or forces that support Israel,” Thunberg says in a video that was shot prior to the vessel being intercepted.
In the video, which was verified by ABC News after it was posted online, Thunberg urged her “friends, family and comrades” to apply pressure on the Swedish government to push for their release “as soon as possible.” Other activists onboard recorded similar messages.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement to social media that he had “instructed the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] to show the flotilla passengers the video of the horrors of the October 7 massacre when they arrive at the port of Ashdod.”
Katz had prior to the ship being diverted announced that he had instructed the IDF to act so that the flotilla “does not reach Gaza.” The statement from Katz said the IDF had been instructed to stop the ship from reaching Gaza “and to take any measures necessary to do so.”
