Modi praises FlyDubai co-pilot credited with preventing disaster as UAE investigates incident
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has praised Capt. Smit Machchhar, the FlyDubai captain credited with intervening to help save the flight from disaster on Wednesday.
“Captain Smit Machchhar has shown the world the highest form of courage. Without fearing for his own life, he fought valiantly and prevented another 9/11 like attack from happening,” Modi said Thursday morning.
The Indian consulate in Dubai said India’s ambassador and consul general in the UAE met with Machchhar’s family members.
“They briefed the family about Captain Machchhar’s health & recovery, conveyed that the Embassy & Consulate are in touch with the UAE authorities, and assured the family of continued support,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates have opened an investigation into the incident involving a FlyDubai flight that was diverted to Saudi Arabia after an altercation in the cockpit, the state news agency WAM reported Thursday.
The UAE attorney general ordered an investigation to establish the circumstances and motives behind the incident and “determine whether it was linked to any terrorist activity or prior planning,” WAM said.
UAE judicial authorities have jurisdiction over the investigation because the aircraft is registered in the UAE and operates under its flag, meaning offenses committed on board are subject to UAE law even when they occur outside the country, the statement said.
The flight took off at 7:05 a.m. local time from Dubai Wednesday, according to Flightradar24.
Tracking data showed the aircraft descended rapidly from 34,000 to 16,000 feet in three minutes.
About 10 minutes after the initial descent, the plane’s squawk code — used by aircraft to communicate with air traffic control — changed to “general emergency.” Seven minutes later, the squawk code changed again, indicating a hijacking or “unlawful interference.”
The aircraft then continued flying at an average altitude of about 15,000 feet until it landed in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, roughly an hour to an hour and a half after the rapid descent began and the emergency signals were sent.
FlyDubai confirmed that the flight “experienced an incident while en route” and landed in Tabuk.
: President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during the NATO Summit at the ATO Congresium on July 7, 2026 in Ankara, Turkey. (Photo by Serdar Ozsoy/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Ukraine launched more than 400 drones into Russia overnight in its latest wave of long-range strikes, according to authorities in Moscow, and as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to expand such attacks as a means to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to end Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces downed at least 452 Ukrainian drones overnight. The craft, the ministry said on Telegram, were intercepted over 16 Russian regions — including Moscow — plus over Russian-occupied Crimea, as well as over both the Azov and Black seas.
At least 43 drones were downed while flying toward Moscow, the city’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said in a series of posts to Telegram.
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, said in posts to Telegram that temporary flight restrictions were introduced at airports in Sochi, Krasnodar, Kaluga, Saratov, Penza, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Cheboksary.
All four of Moscow’s international airports — Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky — were also put under flight restrictions during the overnight attacks.
Zelenskyy said in posts to social media that Kyiv’s long-range strike campaign into Russia — the scale and intensity of which has been steadily increasing during the course of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor — would evolve further.
“When our deep strikes were not reaching Moscow and St. Petersburg, Putin did not think much about it. He understood that the war was far from the Kremlin. Of course, once he feels what is happening in Moscow, he will begin to understand what is happening in the Kursk, Belgorod, and Bryansk regions. He’ll begin to grasp the reality of the situation,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Russian border regions which regularly come under Ukrainian attack.
“When not one hundred drones but a thousand start reaching Moscow, and when he feels it and sees it, he will be advised to move somewhere beyond the Urals. That will be a moment that opens a new chapter on the path toward ending the war. The farther Putin is from Moscow, the closer the end of the war and peace will be,” Zelenskyy added.
The Ukrainian leader also suggested that Kyiv’s expanding drone attacks would unsettle Russian elites, further undermining Putin’s Kremlin.
“He fears for his life,” Zelenskyy said of the Russian leader. “And then there are the elites. Where do the Russian elites live? Moscow and St. Petersburg — the two major cities. Those places will be reached, because that is where they make the decisions to kill us.”
“That is why deep strikes have had, and continue to have, a major impact. We must keep working on this,” Zelenskyy wrote.
Russia continued its own long-range strike campaign into Ukraine on Monday night into Tuesday. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 123 drones into the country in its latest wave, of which 108 drones were shot down or suppressed. Twelve drones impacted across 10 locations, the air force said.
Those attacks followed a series of missile and drone strikes on Ukraine on Sunday night and early on Monday morning, in which at least 22 people were killed in the capital Kyiv and in the surrounding region, according to Ukrainian officials.
Armed police maintain road blocks and security checks around RAF Fairford on Sept. 28, 2026 in Fairford, England. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — A police cordon remained in place on Monday near a major air base hosting U.S. forces in the southwest of England, where British police arrested five men early on Sunday on suspicion of terrorism and explosives offenses.
The men were detained in possession of three vans close to RAF Fairford, which has long served as a key European hub for the U.S. Air Force and a vital staging point for long-range operations in the Middle East — including in the ongoing conflict with Iran.
Counter Terrorism Policing said on Monday that all five men arrested were from London, all were British nationals and all were aged between 23 and 25. They were detained “on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act and preparation of a terrorist act contrary to Section 5 of the Terrorism Act,” CTP said.
Police said they are still working to “establish the full circumstances of the activity of those arrested, their knowledge and any motivation behind this incident.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 4 on Monday morning, British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said he would not “comment in detail on operational security matters. Because, often, the more we might say the more insight we give to those who would wish us harm, and do us harm given the opportunity.”
Streeting said the investigation was “well under way” and thanked those involved in the arrests, the evacuation of the town and the investigation. Police said that at least 85 homes were evacuated during their response on Sunday.
Streeting thanked an anonymous farmer — who also spoke with the BBC — who said she called in the threat after coming across the “hooded and masked” men and vans in the early hours of Sunday morning in the village of Whelford, close to RAF Fairford.
Streeting thanked the tipster for calling in the threat, though said the caller only “had a partial picture” of the situation. “I won’t go beyond that, in terms of commenting on operational security matters,” Streeting added.
The farmer told the BBC she believed authorities had “dropped the ball” in allowing the suspected attackers to get so close to the base.
Public frustration at the incomplete picture, Streeting continued, is “a small price to pay” to protect operational security. Streeting also refused to comment on the identities, aims or motivations of the five detained men.
Streeting declined to give further details on what police and intelligence authorities may have known about the alleged plot, though welcomed President Donald Trump’s praise of an operation that he said had been ongoing for a “long time.”
Trump told reporters on Sunday that the suspects were “looking to do big damage” to U.S. forces present at RAF Fairford. “The arrest in the U.K. was fantastic. Working with Britain, it was an amazing job,” Trump said.
The U.S. military has used RAF Fairford intensively amid the ongoing war with Iran — though so far no connection to Iran has been confirmed or established by authorities. The base has been used by American B-52 and B-1 heavy bombers operating in the Middle East.
When asked of potential Iranian involvement in the suspected plot, Streeting said he was not “drawing a connection with Iran,” before adding, “We know that Iran and their proxies wish to do us harm.”
The Iranian embassy in London denied any involvement in the incident, posting to X to condemn what it called “recent unfounded and malicious speculations published by some British individuals and media outlets.”
“The circulation of such fabricated speculations, particularly in the aftermath of the criminal acts of aggression committed by the United States and the Israeli regime against the Iranian people, will serve no purpose other than to fuel Iranophobia propaganda in the UK,” the embassy said.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to take appropriate legal measures, as necessary, to safeguard the rights and interests of the country and its people in response to misleading and damaging media narratives,” it added.
ABC News’ Victoria Beaule contributed to this report.
An aerial photo shows houses at a town along the Trishuli River destroyed by the flash floods, amid increasing deaths and missing people, in Devighat, Nuwakot, Nepal, on August 29, 2026. (Photo by Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images)
LONDON — The death toll continues to climb days after massive flash flooding obliterated parts of the Nepal-Tibet border region on Wednesday, with at least 682 bodies recovered across the region and over 3,000 people missing, authorities said Saturday.
As search and rescue efforts continued in Nepal on Saturday, authorities said at least 7,514 people had been rescued, including 227 foreign nationals, according to the Nepal National Disaster Management Authority.
At least 219 injured people have received treatment or have been discharged as of Saturday, according to the disaster management authority.
In Nepal, 675 people have been reported dead and 2,498 others remain missing, according to the Nepal National Disaster Management Authority.
In the Chinese region of Tibet, seven people have been reported dead and 554 others have been reported missing, according to China state news agency Xinhua.
Among the missing are 90 Americans as of Friday, according to a State Department spokesperson. The department confirmed Friday that five Americans had been evacuated, up from three on Thursday.
The number of people considered missing has fluctuated significantly as recovery efforts have accelerated.
The flooding, captured in dramatic video footage, occurred in the northern Rasuwa district along the border with Tibet at around 8:40 a.m. local time Wednesday, authorities said. The flooding inundated areas along the Trishuli River, burying some buildings and damaging bridges and roadways.
The deadly wall of water that descended from the mountains on the border between Nepal and Tibet caused destruction at least 62 miles downriver from the border in Nepal, an ABC News analysis of verified video and satellite images shows.
The flood was reportedly triggered by a landslide about 12 miles northeast of the Rasuwagadhi border post along the Nepal-China frontier, according to Nepal Disaster Management.
A 5.2-magnitude landslide was registered in Nepal on Wednesday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The seismic activity from the landslide was initially erroneously reported as a 4.4-magnitude earthquake, the agency said. It is unclear what triggered the landslide.
A geophysicist at Columbia University in New York told ABC News it appeared a landslide in the Himalayas took away a large glacier, or parts of one, in the mountain pass.
The initial location of the glacier was a cliff about 16,000 feet high. The debris avalanche, or landslide, slid down 6,000 feet on the slope, the USGS said.
While it will take time to determine how severe the landslide was, the USGS estimated that more than 100 million cubic meters of ice, rock and debris were displaced in the event, Ben Mirus, a research geologist with the agency, said Thursday.
Siddarth Venkatachalam, 30, told ABC News he had spoken to his mother just two or three hours before she went missing in the floods, as it was her birthday. Venkatachalam’s mother was on a trip with his father and aunt, who are also among the Americans missing in Nepal.
“They were like excited for this trip,” Venkatachalam said, visibly in shock. “It was like a spiritual, religious like trek they’d been looking forward to and preparing for.”
The family said the three were located with Life360 on a bridge on the Tibetan border just before the flood.
In a statement, Nepal’s Office of the Prime Minister expressed “deep sorrow” over the loss of life.
“Offering heartfelt tribute to all those who lost their lives in this natural disaster, it extends its sincere condolences to the bereaved families and relatives,” the statement shared on social media said.
Meanwhile, the Nepali government on Thursday established an “Emergency Control Room … to facilitate search, rescue, information verification and consular assistance in respect of foreign nationals affected by, missing in, or otherwise connected to the flood incident,” according to Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
U.S. President Donald Trump was asked about the Americans currently impacted by the deadly Nepal floods in the Oval Office Thursday. He called the disaster a “terrible thing” and said the U.S. is in active communication with Nepal’s leadership and has offered to provide as much aid as necessary.
“That’s a terrible thing. No, we are sending aid, and we’ve spoken to the leadership, and we let them know anything they want will happen,” Trump said.
