World

(NEW YORK) — The daughter of Lynette Hooker, an American woman who went overboard in the Bahamas and vanished two months ago, is grateful a U.S. Coast Guard dive team is on the scene conducting new searches.

“She has to be somewhere, so all the help that we could get, it’s greatly appreciated,” Hooker’s daughter, Karli Aylesworth, told ABC News.

The Coast Guard Investigative Service, which is leading the investigation, received permission from the Bahamas to send U.S divers to areas that were previously not searched, according to multiple U.S. officials.

This search comes after forensic evidence found on electronic devices belonging to Lynette Hooker’s husband, Brian Hooker, led investigators to new areas of interest, officials said.

A U.S. official told ABC News that what Brian Hooker told investigators does not match the GPS data recovered from his devices.

Aylesworth told ABC News she doubts her stepfather Brian Hooker’s story and said she’s not spoken with him since the day after her mother went missing.

Aylesworth said she’s hopeful the new search points investigators in the right direction.

“I’m happy they were able to get Brian’s location and discover new areas to look,” she said. “… I know they’re working very hard.”

Lynette Hooker has been missing since the evening of April 4. Brian Hooker told authorities that after the couple departed Hope Town on their dinghy to head to their yacht, called the “Soulmate,” bad weather caused her to go overboard.

Brian Hooker was arrested on April 8 and questioned by police. He was released on April 13 without charges.

On April 14, Brian Hooker told ABC News that he was staying in the Bahamas with a “sole focus” of finding his wife. But hours after that interview, Brian Hooker left the Bahamas, with his attorney saying he wanted to be with his terminally ill mother.

Aylesworth said of her missing mother, “I hope she’s just in Cuba or something, just needing a break from life, living it up. But I feel like at this time, she would have at least contacted my grandma and me. So I don’t, at this point, I don’t really have much faith that she’s out there still alive.”

She added that if she could speak to her mother now, she’d tell her, “I just hope you’re still out there. I have doubts with how long it’s been, but I love you and I hope I can see you again.”

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(SEOUL, South Korea) — South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party swept nationwide local elections Wednesday, tightening President Lee Jae Myung’s grip on power one year into his term, though the conservative opposition captured Seoul’s mayor’s office.

The vote drew 61% turnout, the highest for a local election in three decades.

Lee enters his second year Thursday with approval ratings around 60%, according to South Korea’s major pollsters. That is the second-highest at the one-year mark since 1987, behind only former President Moon Jae-in.

When South Koreans elected Lee a year ago, they did so in the wreckage of a constitutional crisis after then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, vowing to “eradicate the anti-state forces.”

He sent troops toward the National Assembly to stop lawmakers from voting it down. The attempt failed within hours, and Yoon was impeached and removed by the Constitutional Court four months later, triggering the snap election that made Lee president.

Governing out loud

Lee has made the presidency unusually public. He live-streams weekly cabinet meetings, a first in Korean history, and his office briefs on camera far more than its predecessor.

Lee also uses social media to announce policy, rebut coverage he disputes, take questions and air his opinions — often without the vetting a formal statement would get. Aides call it a deliberate effort to reach citizens directly rather than through the traditional layers of staff that usually filter a president.

“Unlike politicians before him, he’s citizen-friendly — clearly distinct,” said Park Myoung-ho, a political science professor at Dongguk University.

His style has drawn criticism, however. In May, Lee used social media to attack Starbucks Korea over a promotion that critics linked to a 1980 massacre of pro-democracy protesters, branding the company “low-grade profiteers” guilty of “gutter-level behavior.”

“Given how much power a president holds, it’s too direct and too unfiltered,” said Lee Hyun-woo, who teaches political process at Sogang University and warned that the president’s posts are often misread because Koreans are used to presidents speaking in measured, formal language.

A record-breaking market

The benchmark KOSPI, which bottomed out near 2,300 in April 2025 after President Donald Trump’s tariffs, has surged to a record high above 8,700, blowing past Lee’s campaign pledge to reach 5,000. The rally has been catalyzed by a global boom in semiconductors and AI infrastructure that has lifted companies like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

But rising share prices have not reached many ordinary households across the country and home prices around Seoul are starting to climbing again and is testing one of Lee’s central promises.

Walking the line between Washington and Beijing

Lee’s central foreign-policy bet has been that South Korea no longer has to choose between its U.S. alliance and its largest trading partner, China — an approach his government calls “national-interest-centered pragmatism” — and within seven months of taking office, he had held summits with the leaders of the United States, China and Japan.

“On foreign policy, he’s done better than expected,” said Shin Yul, a political science and diplomacy professor at Myongji University.

But the results have been mixed. Lee repaired ties with Japan, but his January state visit to Beijing largely fell flat.

His pragmatism faced a major test in February when the war between Iran and a U.S.-Israeli coalition threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the route for much of South Korea’s oil imports.

Lee’s government leaned on national reserves, increased purchases of U.S. crude and secured replacement supplies from outside the region. A senior presidential official said the effort, together with the market’s resilience, helped keep Lee’s approval ratings steady through the spring.

Two presidents, two reckonings

In February, a Seoul court sentenced former President Yoon to life in prison for the martial-law attempt; his former defense minister got 30 years. To Lee’s supporters it was accountability for an assault on democracy. To Yoon’s base, it felt like political revenge.

But Lee carries his own legal shadow. He took office facing five criminal trials, including corruption, subornation of perjury and illegal fund transfers to North Korea, which were all frozen once he became president.

His Democratic Party then went further by pushing a special counsel that could cancel the charges against him outright — a move Lee declined to endorse or oppose publicly.

To Shin, the silence was strategic. Lee’s side, he said, “will try to get the charges dropped,” likely using the special counsel “to pursue cancellation of the cases against him.”

The push drew public backlash and many analysts read the local-election result as a warning from voters wary of a governing party clearing its own leader.

“This may be President Lee’s Achilles’ heel,” said Park. “I suspect he himself feels a real burden over it.”

For Lee Hyun-woo, the principle is simple: “Serving well and being remembered as a great president, and paying for crimes committed in the past, are entirely separate matters.”

ABC News’ Hakyung Kate Lee contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — A U.S. Coast Guard dive team is in the Bahamas on Wednesday searching for Lynette Hooker, an American woman who went overboard and vanished nearly two months ago.

The Coast Guard Investigative Service is leading the investigation and received permission from the Bahamas to send U.S divers to areas that were previously not searched, according to multiple U.S. officials.

The new search comes after forensic evidence found on electronic devices belonging to Lynette Hooker’s husband, Brian Hooker, led investigators to new areas of interest, officials said.

A U.S. official told ABC News that what Brian Hooker told investigators does not match the GPS data recovered from his devices.

Lynette Hooker has been missing since the evening of April 4. Brian Hooker told authorities that after the couple departed Hope Town on their dinghy to head to their yacht, called the “Soulmate,” bad weather caused her to go overboard.

Brian Hooker was arrested on April 8 and questioned by police. He was released on April 13 without charges.

On April 14, Brian Hooker told ABC News that he was staying in the Bahamas with a “sole focus” of finding his wife. But hours after that interview, Brian Hooker left the Bahamas, with his attorney saying he wanted to be with his terminally ill mother.

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(LONDON) — Ukrainian drones hit one of Russia’s largest oil terminals in St. Petersburg overnight into Wednesday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, sending plumes of black smoke towering over the city as the landmark St. Petersburg International Economic Forum prepared to open.

Zelenskyy said Ukrainian long-range drones struck targets including the Petersburg Oil Terminal overnight — just under 700 miles from Ukrainian territory.

The latest round of “long-range sanctions,” as officials in Kyiv refer to Ukrainian drone strikes inside Russia, “yielded good results. Important facilities on Russian territory were hit last night,” Zelenskyy said in a post to Telegram.

St. Petersburg is known as Russia’s “second capital,” and is a regular target of Ukrainian drone attacks given its political and economic significance, plus its role as a key export hub for Russian oil.

Video from the city showed attendees of the International Economic Forum arriving at the venue with clouds of black smoke hanging over the city.

St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov said in a post to Telegram that “infrastructure facilities in the Kronstadt, Kirovsky and Krasnoselsky districts were attacked” by Ukrainian drones.

“Several facilities were damaged. Currently, efforts are underway to mitigate the consequences. Several people were injured. There were no fatalities. An operational headquarters is in operation. Forces and resources have been put on high alert,” Beglov wrote.

Conceived of as Russia’s version of Davos, the annual International Economic Forum gathers Russia’s political and business elite in St. Petersburg. Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the event also hosted many international leaders.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to deliver his keynote speech to the event on Friday.

Robert Mims Cook — the head of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, who is overseeing President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project and his planned triumphal arch in Washington — is set to attend the forum, which would make him the first American official to do so since 2022.

High profile radical conservative influencer Candace Owens has also been invited to speak at the forum, while the pro-Trump right-wing influencers Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are also in Russia.  

Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, said in a post to Telegram that temporary flight restrictions were introduced at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport during the overnight attacks.

Temporary restrictions were also imposed on airports in the Russian cities of Saratov, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod and Pskov, Rosaviatsiya said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a post to Telegram that its air defenses shot down at least 354 Ukrainian drones overnight into Wednesday morning.

Elsewhere, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said the capital also came under Ukrainian attack. The mayor said in posts to Telegram that air defenses intercepted at least 22 Ukrainian drones heading toward the capital on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

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(LONDON) — At least 22 people were killed and more than 130 people injured in a large-scale overnight Russian missile and drone strike on Ukraine, officials said, with the capital Kyiv the main target of Moscow’s latest long-range barrage.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said in a post to Telegram that the most significant damage was wrought in Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv regions. At least six people were killed in Kyiv and 16 people — including two children — were killed in Dnipro, local Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine’s air force said in a post to Telegram that Russia launched 73 missiles and 656 drones into the country, of which 40 missiles and 602 drones were intercepted or suppressed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack constituted “a completely transparent statement from Russia: if Ukraine is not protected from ballistic and other missile strikes, these attacks will continue.”

“Europe needs its own anti-ballistic defense so that this war can finally end. And we urgently need help from the United States in supplying missiles for the Patriot systems. We count on the support of our partners and on effective responses to today’s attack,” the president wrote in a post to social media.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that among the buildings damaged by the “large-scale attack” were four medical facilities.

Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chairman of the Ukrainian parliament, said in a post to X that the most serious damage in Kyiv was reported in the Podilskyi district, where a Russian strike collapsed a nine-story residential building. “People may still be trapped under the rubble,” Stefanchuk wrote.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post to X that Russia’s latest “horrific attack” showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is a war criminal and loser who has no cards except terror.”

“Moscow is losing on the battlefield. No number of missiles can change this,” Sybiha wrote. “What we can change is Russia’s ability to continue terror. I urge partners to act, not only condemn.”

The foreign minister called on Ukraine’s foreign backers to unlock more European funding for NATO’s PURL program through which Kyiv can obtain more American weapons and ammunition, including anti-missile defenses like the Patriot system.

Sybiha also urged partners to increase investment in Ukraine’s own long-range capabilities, “ramp up pressure on Russia through new sanctions” and advance Ukraine’s European Union membership negotiations.

“Peace efforts will only succeed when they are backed with real pressure on Moscow,” Sybiha said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a post to Telegram that its forces “launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, land and sea-based weapons, including hypersonic aeroballistic missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles.”

The strike, it said, targeted “military-industrial,” fuel and transport facilities and military bases in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions. “The targets of the strike have been achieved, all designated objects have been hit,” the ministry claimed.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said it shot down at least 148 Ukrainian drones overnight into Tuesday morning.

Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, announced temporary flight restrictions at airports in Volgograd, Kaluga, Saratov, Krasnodar and Penza during the overnight Ukrainian attacks.

ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Yulia Drozd and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump cursed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a roughly 15-minute phone call on Monday, multiple sources familiar with the call told ABC News, with the president angered by Israel’s escalation in Lebanon and its potential to imperil the administration’s ongoing negotiations with Iran.

Trump accused Netanyahu of being ungrateful and called him “crazy,” sources familiar with the call said.

At one point during the tense call, Trump asked Netanyahu, “What the f— are you doing?”

Axios first reported on the expletive-filled call.

News emerged on Monday that Iran was threatening to call off talks over Israeli conduct in Lebanon — where the Israel Defense Forces are engaged with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.

“The Iranian negotiating team will suspend ‘talks and the exchange of texts through mediators,'” the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi did not confirm the report, but posted on X saying that a “ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also said in a statement that Iran “considers crossing the red lines in Lebanon and Gaza to mean direct war.”

Trump brushed the warnings off, insisting he “couldn’t care less.”

But behind the scenes, the president told senior administration officials he wanted to speak with Netanyahu, furious that an escalation in Lebanon could derail any progress made in the talks. The president had just made edits to a proposed peace plan and had sent it to Iran for consideration.

After Monday’s call, Netanyahu released a statement. “I spoke with President Trump this evening and told him that if Hezbollah does not stop attacking our cities and citizens, Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut,” he said.

“Our position remains the same. At the same time, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon,” Netanyahu said.

Monday’s call was not the first time that Trump and Netanyahu have had a tense conversation. Trump’s frustrations with Netanyahu have boiled over in previous instances where Israel has taken action against Iran and its proxies, but Monday’s conversation further underscored the administration’s distress over the potential that its ongoing negotiations with Iran are being undermined.

Following the call Monday afternoon, Trump posted on social media that talks with Iran were continuing at “a rapid pace.”

Later on Monday, the president struck a much different tone with Netanyahu.

“I had a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu today, asking him not to go into a major raid of Beirut, Lebanon. He turned his Troops around. Thank you Bibi!,” the president posted on social media.

ABC News has contacted the White House to request comment.

ABC News’ Jordana Miller contributed to this report.

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(LONDON) — At least 17 people were killed and more than 100 people injured in a large-scale overnight Russian missile and drone strike on Ukraine, officials said, with the capital Kyiv the main target of Moscow’s latest long-range barrage.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said in a post to Telegram that the most significant damage was wrought in Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv regions. At least six people were killed in Kyiv and 11 people — including a child — were killed in Dnipro, local Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine’s air force said in a post to Telegram that Russia launched 73 missiles and 656 drones into the country, of which 40 missiles and 602 drones were intercepted or suppressed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack constituted “a completely transparent statement from Russia: if Ukraine is not protected from ballistic and other missile strikes, these attacks will continue.”

“Europe needs its own anti-ballistic defense so that this war can finally end. And we urgently need help from the United States in supplying missiles for the Patriot systems. We count on the support of our partners and on effective responses to today’s attack,” the president wrote in a post to social media.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that among the buildings damaged by the “large-scale attack” were four medical facilities.

Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chairman of the Ukrainian parliament, said in a post to X that the most serious damage in Kyiv was reported in the Podilskyi district, where a Russian strike collapsed a nine-story residential building. “People may still be trapped under the rubble,” Stefanchuk wrote.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post to X that Russia’s latest “horrific attack” showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is a war criminal and loser who has no cards except terror.”

“Moscow is losing on the battlefield. No number of missiles can change this,” Sybiha wrote. “What we can change is Russia’s ability to continue terror. I urge partners to act, not only condemn.”

The foreign minister called on Ukraine’s foreign backers to unlock more European funding for NATO’s PURL program through which Kyiv can obtain more American weapons and ammunition, including anti-missile defenses like the Patriot system.

Sybiha also urged partners to increase investment in Ukraine’s own long-range capabilities, “ramp up pressure on Russia through new sanctions” and advance Ukraine’s European Union membership negotiations.

“Peace efforts will only succeed when they are backed with real pressure on Moscow,” Sybiha said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a post to Telegram that its forces “launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, land and sea-based weapons, including hypersonic aeroballistic missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles.”

The strike, it said, targeted “military-industrial,” fuel and transport facilities and military bases in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions. “The targets of the strike have been achieved, all designated objects have been hit,” the ministry claimed.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said it shot down at least 148 Ukrainian drones overnight into Tuesday morning.

Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, announced temporary flight restrictions at airports in Volgograd, Kaluga, Saratov, Krasnodar and Penza during the overnight Ukrainian attacks.

ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Yulia Drozd and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.

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(LONDON) — Doctors and public health workers at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) told ABC News that the deadly virus is still spreading at an alarming rate.

“The outbreak is completely out of control,” said Dr. Richard Kojan in an interview from the city of Bunia in Ituri province, which is the hardest hit.

Kojan, who has been involved in fighting previous Ebola outbreaks in central and western Africa and is president of the Alliance for International Medical Action, said deep mistrust within some local communities is hampering efforts to contain the virus.

Another clinician, Dr. Richard Lokudi, who is the director of the main hospital in Mongbwalu, the hardest hit area, told ABC News that the disease was spreading “at an exponential speed.”

Dr. Lokudi said seven symptomatic patients suspected of having Ebola had recently “escaped” from Mongbwalu Hospital.

This was creating “chains and chains of contamination,” Dr. Lokudi said, adding that this was making the virus “difficult to fight.”

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1,000 suspected cases of a rare strain of Ebola, known as Bundibugyo, have been identified in the eastern DRC and more than 230 suspected deaths from the virus have been recorded.

There is currently no vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain. Seven confirmed cases have also been identified in neighboring Uganda, the WHO said.

Last week, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.

Jeremy Konyndyk, who worked as a senior official at USAID under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and is now president of Refugees International, said that the outbreak had already reached an “explosive” level of transmission.

Konyndyk, who is based in Maryland, described the situation in central Africa as “about as urgent as any Ebola response has ever been” and said the 1,000 suspected cases were “almost certainly the tip of the iceberg” and “perhaps even an undercount by a factor of two or three.”

Health officials believe the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola had been circulating, undetected, in the Ituri province for up to three months before it was officially identified. The unusual strain was harder to identify via testing.

However, levels of mistrust within local communities toward measures to contain the virus, as well as skepticism that the virus even exists, are now hampering efforts to stem the outbreak, health officials say.

Kojan said there is currently a lack of laboratory testing capacity in the region, which is needed for accurate diagnosis and effective contact tracing.

The lack of lab capacity means symptomatic patients suspected of having the virus can wait for days for test results, increasing the risk of them leaving isolation prematurely, Kojan said.

“People don’t trust that, you know, Ebola is a reality,” he said.

The Congolese clinician said he was on “the front line” without access to a laboratory, meaning he was struggling to build trust with patients.

New cases every day

Both Both Dr. Lokudi and Dr. Kojan said their healthcare facilities were receiving new suspected cases of Ebola every day.

Amidst the high levels of mistrust, there has also been growing anger towards strict healthcare procedures, which are necessary to safely bury the dead and stop the virus from spreading.

The two Congolese doctors confirmed reports that on two occasions, isolation tents and healthcare facilities had been set on fire by angry crowds in recent days.

In an exchange of messages with ABC News on Tuesday, Lokudi said the police and military were now protecting his hospital, but he said angry groups of youths had still been gathering nearby.

He said that in some cases, amid “resistance” from local populations, officials were unable to safely access remote areas of Ituri province to investigate suspected deaths from the virus.

Lokudi described the situation as “really concerning,” saying that if teams do not go to such areas, then family members face a high risk of catching the virus if they themselves bury their loved ones.

Ebola is transmitted via bodily fluids, so treating sick patients and handling the deceased should only be done by healthcare teams in protective suits. Ideally, a victim’s home should also be sprayed down with disinfectant.

In the remote rural communities affected, these vital protective measures can run contrary to local burial practices and reports suggest this, mixed with a level of misunderstanding, has been the source of many people’s anger.

Kojan described a lack of masks and protective clothing as another “really big problem,” and both doctors said more adequately trained healthcare professionals were needed on the ground to raise awareness and implement barriers to stop the spread of the virus.

Cuts to U.S. programs created difficulties

Konyndyk said significant cuts to U.S, humanitarian aid in the DRC had made things harder.

“We’re kind of fighting this one with several hands tied behind our back,” Konyndyk told ABC News.

“When we have fought Ebola in the past on this scale, it has been a combination of the Ministry of Health, WHO, USAID, CDC,” he said. 

“USAID is fully gone, CDC is badly weakened. WHO has been badly weakened, the U.S., of course, withdrew from WHO and cut off all funding,” Konyndyk added.

The former USAID official said in an interview that they were “almost certain” that if USAID were still in place, this outbreak would have been caught earlier.

Konyndyk said he believed earlier reports of “an unknown viral hemorrhagic fever outbreak” in the region “would have been brought to the attention of the U.S. mission” in the DRC.

“I’ve talked with some of the members who worked on that team, who were forced out of the government, who would say things like, look, I would be on the phone every week with health leaders in this part of the country,” Konyndyk told ABC News.

“I think the U.S. visibility on that diminished badly and that contributed certainly to the US being slow to wake up to this, but also to the world being slow to wake up to it,” the humanitarian leader said.

A White House official in response said the claim that cuts to U.S. aid have affected the response to the Ebola outbreak in the DRC was “ridiculous.”

“You could just as easily say people died because England didn’t give enough money or Canada didn’t give more or China didn’t. Why not blame the other countries who don’t do any foreign aid?” the official added.

The Trump administration has argued that its “America First Foreign Assistance programs” are intertwined with broader foreign policy goals and the national interest.

“The United States has saved more lives, and continues to save more lives, than any other country in the world, and we’re going to continue to do it,” the White House official said in a statement. “We’re not going to continue to pour billions of dollars out the door of American taxpayer funds for programs that don’t work and in some cases were flat-out corrupt.”

Back in the affected area of the DRC, both doctors interviewed by ABC said they had messages for the US and the world.

International support is needed urgently “on all levels,” according to Lokudi.

Kojan said he is appealing to the world to realize that this is about people’s “humanity.”

“People are really scared. It’s our humanity … so my message is, you know, we need attention.”

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(LONDON) — At least 16 students died in an overnight fire at a boarding school for girls in central Kenya, a government minister said Thursday.

Education Minister Julius Ogamba said in a statement posted to X that a “regrettable fire tragedy befell Utumishi Girls Academy in Nakuru County. Most unfortunately, 16 learners lost their lives while several others suffered injuries in the incident.”

The Kenya Police Service said in a statement posted to Facebook that “several other students were injured and are receiving treatment.”

The blaze broke out in a dormitory at the Utumishi Girls Senior School in the town of Gilgil in Kenya’s Nakuru County, police said, around 74 miles from the capital Nairobi.

Search and rescue operations are ongoing, police said. “We are working to account for all students and support affected families during this difficult time,” the service said in its statement.

The fire was reported early Thursday at around 3:30 a.m. local time, according to the Kenya Red Cross, which said its team were supporting the ongoing multi-agency response. “Several students have been evacuated and are receiving treatment in various hospitals,” Kenya Red Cross said.

Ogamba expressed “our heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and relatives of the learners who lost their lives in this sorrowful incident. We wish a quick recovery to those who were injured. We pray that God grants everyone strength and fortitude during this difficult and painful period.”

“Investigations into the cause of the fire are ongoing and updates will be provided in due course,” the minister added.

ABC News’ Charlotte Gardiner contributed to this report.

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(LONDON) — The New York-based International Rescue Committee (IRC) aid organization warned on Tuesday that the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and neighboring Uganda is now spreading faster than responders can contain it and risks becoming “the deadliest on record” without urgent international action.

What is especially alarming, the IRC said, is that the outbreak is no longer limited to remote areas of the DRC’s northeastern province of Ituri, the epicenter of the current epidemic. 

Cases and contacts are now spreading into larger regional hubs, the IRC warned, including the major city of Goma in the DRC’s eastern province of North Kivu and also Uganda’s capital, Kampala, with fears of much wider transmission.

“The outbreak is spreading faster than the response, with over 900 suspected cases and at least 223 deaths already reported across DRC and Uganda, including in major transport hubs like Goma and Kampala,” the IRC wrote.

The IRC said conflict, mass displacement and deep international aid cuts have left health systems far weaker than during the massive 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in the eastern DRC, which the World Health Organization said killed at least 2,299 people.

The last time the IRC issued a warning of this scale about Ebola was during the 2018-2020 outbreak, when the organization repeatedly warned that violence, mistrust and weak health systems could allow the virus to spiral into a regional catastrophe.

The IRC is calling for an emergency international funding surge, the appointment of a United Nations emergency coordinator, faster import approvals for medical supplies and equipment, stronger community outreach to rebuild trust, special protection for women and girls – who reportedly make up around two-thirds of suspected cases – and long-term investment in fragile health systems already damaged by war and insecurity.

The current Ebola outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of Ebola for which there are no approved vaccines or therapeutics and which requires different diagnostics than other variants. Case fatality rates for previous Bundibugyo outbreaks have ranged from 30% to 50%, according to the WHO.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record occurred between 2014 and 2016 in West Africa, with more than 28,600 cases reported. The WHO said that outbreak killed at least 11,325 people by June 2016.

WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a Monday briefing that the current Ebola outbreak “will get worse before it gets better.”

“We are facing an extremely serious and difficult outbreak. It will get worse before it gets better,” Tedros said on Monday. “But we know this virus, and we know how to stop it. We have stopped every previous Ebola outbreak, and we will stop this one, too.”

Ghebreyesus said he wanted to echo comments made by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa about overcoming the outbreak with unity.

“The question is just how quickly we can do it, and how many more lives will be lost before we do,” Ghebreyesus added.

Last week, Tedros classified the Ebola outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern – one level below a pandemic in the United Nations agency’s alert system.

The WHO continues to consider the national risk assessment as “very high” while the regional level risk remains “high” and the global risk level remains “low,” Ghebreyesus said on Monday.

The outbreak has led to multiple countries, including the U.S., India, the U.K. and Australia, putting travel restrictions in place.

Entry to the U.S. is restricted for foreign travelers who have recently been in the DRC, Uganda and South Sudan. 

Meanwhile, U.S. passport holders and U.S. nationals returning to the U.S. from the three countries will be funneled to Dulles Airport in Virginia to be screened for symptoms and interviewed about possible exposure.

Enhanced screening efforts also began at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as of Saturday morning. Efforts at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston will begin late Tuesday.

Lawful permanent residents – green card holders – who have been in any of the three countries in question over the last 21 days are temporarily barred from entering the U.S.

ABC News’ Eric M. Strauss and Mary Kekatos contributed to this report.

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