Trump threatens ‘certain death’ to Iranian guard who don’t ‘lay down’ weapons
A plume of smoke rises after an explosion on February 28, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump threatened “certain death” to elite forces in the Iranian regime and advised the country’s military to lay down their weapons as the United States and Israel launched attacks on the country early Saturday.
Announcing the “massive and ongoing operation” against Iran and its Middle East proxies, Trump promised immunity to members of “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces and all of the police if they “lay down” their weapons now.
“So, lay down your arms. You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death,” Trump said in a video address released overnight.
To the people of Iran, Trump said, “The hour of your freedom is at hand.”
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” he added. “This will probably be your only chance for generations.”
Trump explained that among the reasons for launching the military operation is that the Iranian regime has failed to negotiate in good faith a deal in which they would agree to stop pursuing nuclear weapons.
Iran has stated numerous times that it doesn’t want nuclear weapons, but believes it has the right to use nuclear power for civilian purpose. It had also been part of a nuclear deal with the U.S., which Trump withdrew from during his first term.
Trump said Iran’s “menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the U.S.-Israel strikes on Saturday were “wholly unprovoked, illegal, and illegitimate.”
Trump did not specifically say what led his administration to believe the U.S. was in imminent danger.
In a sobering message to the American people, Trump said, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties.”
“That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now, we’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission,” Trump said.
He said that after the U.S. targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities last year in limited strikes, the regime continued to rebuild its nuclear program.
“They rejected every opportunity to remove their nuclear ambitions and we can’t take it anymore,” Trump said.
He said Iran was developing long-range missiles with the capability of threatening U.S. allies in Europe and U.S. troops stationed overseas and “could soon reach the American homeland.”
Trump said the operation intends to “prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”
“We are going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally, again, obliterated,” Trump said. “We are going to annihilate their Navy. We’re going to ensure that the region’s terror proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces.”
ABC News contributor Steve Ganyard, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and former deputy assistant secretary of state, said it appears the U.S. operation in Iran will be a “dayslong” effort.
“I think the real point here in what the president is saying, this could be a long-term effort,” Ganyard said. “This isn’t just a pinprick. They are going after missile sites. They’re going after nuclear sites. The president did mention naval sites.”
Ganyard said that it appears the U.S. military has a list of widespread targets not seen in previous attacks, such as “Operation Midnight Hammer” that targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025.
“The U.S. is hitting things that Iran could do to effect the rest of the world, which include nuclear sites, missile sites, the [Iranian] Navy that may be able to close the very strategic waters that could effect the global economy,” Ganyard said.
(LONDON) — The death toll from the massive fire at a residential apartment complex in Hong Kong rose to 55 as of Thursday, as search and rescue efforts continued.
Fifty-one of the deceased victims died at the scene, fire department officials said in a press conference, while four more people died in hospital.
There are currently 76 people being treated in hospital, with 15 in a critical condition and 28 in a serious condition, the officials added.
Fires are still burning in three of the seven affected buildings in Tai Po district, officials said, with all remaining blazes now under control. Seven of the eight buildings in the complex were impacted by the fire, officials said.
Three men associated with the construction firm in charge of the renovation at the housing complex have been arrested and are under investigation in connection with the fire, Hong Kong police said during a press conference early Thursday morning.
Police suspect the mesh used during the renovation was not up to standard, and the company installed a large amount of Styrofoam in the windows and the outer walls which acted as an accelerant once the fire began, police said.
The mesh and the Styrofoam were found in the one building that wasn’t impacted by the fire, police said.
More than 140 fire engines and over 800 firefighters and paramedics were deployed on Wednesday to respond to the fire, with drones also in use, officials said.
Some 279 people have been reported missing, Hong Kong leader John Lee said during a press briefing earlier Thursday.
“The fire has resulted in many casualties, including a fireman who died in the line of duty,” Lee said in an earlier statement posted to social media. “I express my deep sadness and my deep condolences to the families of the dead and the injured.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his condolences and sympathies to the victims’ families and those affected in a statement.
He said he ordered authorities to “do everything possible to ensure search and rescue operations, medical treatment for the injured, and post-disaster relief, and to provide necessary assistance to relevant departments and local authorities to minimize casualties and losses.”
A rescuer stands amid rubble in the yard of house after Russian shelling on December 19, 2025 in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. As a result of the shelling, private houses were partially destroyed, a garage cooperative, cars, and residential buildings located near the hit sites were damaged. (Photo by Polina Moroz/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Russia’s offensive campaign in eastern and southern Ukraine has been grinding on throughout 2025, with much of the fighting of the last 12 months focused on devastated cities in the eastern Donetsk and northeastern Kharkiv regions.
But in September, Russian forces began a relatively rapid advance in the farmlands to the east of Zaporizhzhia, advancing up to six miles in places — according to Ukrainian military officials — as territorial defense units that had been holding the area for two years crumbled under sudden and intense offensive pressure applied by Moscow’s forces.
Russia’s unexpected breakthrough in Zaporizhzhia represented a rare instance of battlefield mobility in a war that has become characterized by labored attritional warfare, in which mechanized troop concentrations and supporting armored vehicles quickly become easy prey for the flocks of drones incessantly swarming above the front lines.
Among the Ukrainian units deployed to stem the Russian advance was the 225th Separate Assault Regiment, which had previously been fighting to repel Russian forces along the shared border in the northeastern Sumy Oblast.
“The situation there remains complicated, and we are trying to stabilize it,” Maj. Oleh Shyriaiev of the 225th regiment told ABC News by phone from close to the front. “It is a mistake to consider that it is 100% stabilized,” he added.
Representatives of the combatants are currently engaged in U.S.-sponsored shuttle diplomacy that the White House hopes will secure an end to Europe’s largest conflict since World War II and a war that U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to end within 24 hours of his return to the Oval Office.
Russian officials have repeatedly framed their slow battlefield gains as evidence of Moscow’s “inevitable” victory, in the words of Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov during a recent interview with ABC News.
That interpretation is hotly disputed by Kyiv and its European allies, but the Kremlin nonetheless seeks to use its gradual seizure of new territory as leverage in the ongoing talks. “The space for freedom of decision-making narrows as territories are lost,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in November.
In foxholes, trenches and treelines along the contact line, Shyriaiev said his unit is focused on their day-to-day survival.
“I personally am skeptical about any kind of peace negotiations,” he said. “Even if some kind of a peace agreement is signed, Russia will not stop existing, and it will not stop being our enemy.”
Any deal, he suggested, “will just give time for Russia to regroup. And what happens next? We need to expect a new attack. No guarantees that Russia can give can be considered true guarantees.”
The focus of the Russian offensive in Zaporizhzhia is now in the area of Huliaipole, a small city which before the war was home to around 20,000 people. Only around 150 civilians remain in the devastated city, the head of its military administration told Ukrainian media earlier this month.
In the fields around the city, Ukrainian officials say they have largely stalled Russia’s forward momentum. Shyriaiev said his unit needed time to adapt to the new battlefield and wear down the attackers.
“We had to go out and create a blocking line, fulfil missions and create favorable conditions for further success,” he explained. “At the moment, everything we are doing is focused on stabilizing the front line and blocking the enemy.”
Ukrainian forces in the area are facing Russian units replenished with new recruits and new equipment, Shyriaiev said.
“The enemy has strengthened its UAV component and thanks to that, they are holding under control the access areas to the line of contact — or at least they are trying to hold it under control,” he said.
“The enemy has had some success because their units have been reconstituted according to the most cutting edge experience that they have,” Shyriaiev said. “They have been trained with the latest updates, they have all the ‘lessons learned'” by their predecessors, he added.
Those newly arrived troops are trying to use the wintry weather and resulting “dense fog” to their advantage, Shyriaiev said.
“When there are normal visibility conditions, we can see everything and control everything,” he said. “However, when there is fog around, the enemy is trying to take advantage of this and to infiltrate the space between our positions.”
For the Ukrainians, too, the weather offers opportunities, Shyriaiev said. “When visibility is good, it means that badly hidden or badly masked positions are an open target and the troops that are deployed there can be wounded or destroyed.”
Moscow’s ‘glacial’ advance
Russian President Vladimir Putin has given little indication that he intends to ease the frontline pressure on Kyiv’s troops, despite the recent fresh impetus given to U.S.-brokered peace negotiations.
At his annual end-of-year press conference on Friday, Putin said peace was only possible on the basis of “principles” he outlined in a speech last year, in which he made some of his most hardline demands — Ukraine’s permanent exclusion from NATO and Kyiv’s withdrawal from all of the territory Russia claims in eastern and southeastern Ukraine.
Putin again claimed that military momentum was with Moscow’s forces, saying its troops were “advancing on all fronts.”
Putin’s bombast does not align with battlefield realities, according to Ukrainian officials and independent analysts.
The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War think tank said this month that Russian forces have seized 0.77% of Ukraine’s territory — some 1,802 square miles — over the past year, while sustaining disproportionately high casualties. The area captured is roughly equivalent to that of Anchorage, Alaska.
Ukraine’s military estimates that Russia has sustained around 1.2 million casualties since February 2022. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this month that around 30,000 Russian troops are being killed each month.
Russia does not release details about its casualties, making it difficult to independently confirm that figure. Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualties have broadly chimed with estimates from U.S. and European intelligence agencies since 2022.
Ukraine likewise does not regularly disclose its casualty figures. Zelenskyy said in February 2025 that more than 46,000 Ukrainians have been killed and 380,000 wounded since 2022.
Peter Dickinson, the editor of the Atlantic Council think tank’s UkraineAlert service, wrote in December that while Moscow’s troops hold “the overall initiative,” its attacking units are “grinding forward at glacial pace while suffering catastrophic losses.”
Also this month, Zelenskyy visited the Kharkiv frontline city of Kupyansk, posting videos of himself in the center of the city as proof that Russia’s recent claim to have captured it was false. The visit, Dickinson said, “underscored the fact that Russian victory is anything but inevitable.”
But Putin appears committed to a relentless push, regardless of its slow pace and high cost. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a post to Facebook last week that Russia has amassed 710,000 troops along the front for its offensive operations.
“Despite the substantial losses, the Russian army is not giving up on continuing offensive operations, although it has not achieved significant operational success,” Syrskyi said.
Shyriaiev said that although his unit is “well-staffed” and motivated, the difference in manpower and resources is obvious at the front. The Russians, he said, “are focusing on mass in everything.”
Shyriaiev’s unit faces “massive amounts of infantry” attacking from “early morning and until late at night,” he said. “They conduct mechanized assaults on all kinds of vehicles — regular cars, motorbikes, buggies. It could also be proper military equipment, proper military armored vehicles.”
“They are leaving no stone unturned,” he continued. “The ratio of the size of our army and our resources and their resources is, of course, something unfavorable towards us. They have more resources. This is why they do achieve some successes, but that happens at a very high price.”
A dingo walks on the beach, Fraser Island, also known as K’gari, in Queensland, Australia (STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images)
(K’GARI, Australia) — A 19-year-old Canadian woman was found dead on an Australian beach surrounded by a pack of dingoes, according to police.
The cause of death remains under investigation in the “shocking” incident, according to Queensland Police.
Two passersby found the teen’s body on Monday morning local time on the island of K’gari, located off the coast of Queensland, police said. There was a small pack of dingoes around her body at the time, according to Queensland Police Inspector Paul Algie, calling it a “traumatic and horrific scene.”
“I can confirm there was marking on her body consistent with having been touched and interfered with by the dingoes,” Algie said during a press briefing on Monday, though he noted it was too early to speculate on the cause of death, pending the autopsy report.
Algie said police are investigating all possibilities in the death.
“We simply can’t confirm whether this young lady drowned or died as a result of being attacked by dingoes,” he said.
The woman had been working for the past several weeks at a backpackers’ hostel on K’gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, police said.
Police said she is believed to have gone for a swim alone on the beach, near a popular shipwreck, around 5 a.m. local time Monday and was found dead over an hour later.
An autopsy is expected to be conducted on Wednesday, police said.
K’gari, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a popular tourist destination. Dingoes are protected on the island as a native species.
The last fatal dingo attack on K’gari was 25 years ago, according to Fraser Coast Mayor George Seymour. In that incident, a 9-year-old boy died.
“This is a shocking tragedy that has really affected our community,” Seymour told the Australian network 9News amid the investigation into the 19-year-old’s death.
“Dingoes are an essential part of this wilderness on K’gari, it’s part of why people go there — to escape, be part of a World Heritage wilderness,” he said. “There are dangers there.”
