(MOSCOW) — At least 45 people, including a dozen children, were killed after a tourist bus from North Macedonia crashed and caught fire in Bulgaria early Tuesday, officials said.
The accident occurred on the Struma highway near the village of Bosnek in western Bulgaria at around 2 a.m. local time. Emergency teams rushed to the scene, where 45 people were confirmed dead, according to a statement from the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior.
Seven people who sustained injuries from the crash were transported to a hospital for treatment, the ministry said.
The bus, carrying 53 people, was heading back to North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, after a tourist trip to Istanbul, Turkey, according to Monika Markovska, an official at the North Macedonian Embassy in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. The Bulgarian Ministry of Interior confirmed that the bus was registered in North Macedonia.
Most of those on board were Macedonian, apart from one Belgian national. Twelve children were among the dead, Markovska told ABC News.
The seven people who were hospitalized were admitted to Pirogov Hospital in Sofia.
The patients — four men and three women — suffered from burns and lacerations but were all in stable condition, Dr. Ljubo Topkov of Pirogov Hospital told ABC News.
The cause of the crash was unclear and is under investigation.
Traffic was stopped in both directions on the highway as first responders and investigators worked on scene.
The Macedonian travel agency that owns the bus, Besa Trans, did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — Two of the Christian missionaries who were kidnapped in Haiti last month have been released, according to the ministry.
Nineteen people — including 17 missionaries, five of them children — were kidnapped by a Haitian gang on Oct. 16 during an airport run, a source at the U.S. embassy told ABC News last month.
The Ohio-based ministry the missionaries are affiliated with, Christian Aid Ministries, announced in a statement Sunday that two of the hostages have been released and “are safe, in good spirits, and being cared for.”
“We welcome reports that two individuals held hostage in Haiti have been released. We do not have further comment at this time,” a White House official told ABC News.
The Haitian National Police also confirmed the release of the two hostages to ABC News.
The ministry could not provide the names of those released, the reasons for their release or their current location, according to the statement. Further details about the remaining hostages were not provided.
“We encourage you to continue to pray for the full resolution of this situation,” the statement read. “While we rejoice at this release, our hearts are with the fifteen people who are still being held. Continue to lift up the remaining hostages before the Lord.”
The Haitian government suspects the gang known as 400 Mawozo to be responsible for the abductions, the source at the U.S. embassy said last month. The FBI made contact with the 400 Mawozoa on Oct. 18 and was assisting in negotiations, the agency told ABC News.
The group, which included 16 Americans and one Canadian, was abducted while on a trip to an orphanage, according to the ministry.
The country is experiencing a rise in gang-related kidnappings, many demanding ransom, which stalled after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on July 7 and a 7.2-magnitude earthquake on Aug. 14 that killed more than 2,200 people.
The U.S. State Department issued a warning in August about the risk of kidnapping for ransom in Haiti.
ABC News’ Joshua Hoyos contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The wife of an American held hostage by Islamist militants in Africa broke years of silence on Wednesday to criticize U.S. government efforts and to make a plea to the leader of an al-Qaida-affiliated group to release her husband.
Els Woodke’s husband, Jeffery Woodke, is a Christian humanitarian aid worker who was kidnapped in October 2016 in Niger, where he had worked for decades aiding nomadic peoples in the Sahel region. She has largely avoided public comments other than several pleas to the captor networks, as her family and U.S. officials worked quietly to bring him home — but now she has decided to speak out.
“That situation has changed, and I’m now asking for help from my brothers and sisters in Christ, from the public, and from the governments of Mali and the United States,” said Woodke, a teacher’s assistant in McKinleyville, California.
Els Woodke appears in the new ABC News feature documentary “3212 UN-REDACTED” on Hulu to tell her husband’s story and reflect on an ill-fated U.S. Special Forces mission in 2017, which a former commanding general of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) claimed publicly was tied to finding Woodke.
On Wednesday she said her family has grown deeply frustrated with the U.S. government’s failure to secure her husband’s release. Woodke’s captivity has now spanned three U.S. administrations.
“I have been repeatedly threatened [by U.S. officials] that if I disclosed certain information that came from certain sources that I would no longer receive any information. I have also had so many restrictions imposed by the U.S. government that any meaningful attempt to raise a ransom is effectively prohibited,” Els Woodke said in her prepared remarks.
U.S. officials have shared with Els Woodke details of her husband’s captivity drawn from classified intelligence under condition of strict secrecy, sources involved in hostage recovery have told ABC News in the past.
Els Woodke disclosed that her family now has reason to believe from their own sources in Africa that her husband has been transferred from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (IS-GS) to an al-Qaida affiliate in northwest Africa known as JNIM — which would offer hope because the JNIM leader in the past has negotiated the release of Western hostages in the Sahel. In August, French forces killed Adnan Abou Walid al-Sahrawi, the ISIS leader in northwest Africa, which Els Woodke said offers hope for a negotiation with JNIM.
“According to multiple sources of information, we believe that at some point prior to the death of Walid, Jeff was moved from the custody of ISIS-GS to the custody of JNIM,” she said in her remarks. “The circumstances of that movement aren’t understood yet.”
Jeffery “was alive this summer,” she said, adding that she was asking fellow Christians to help her raise funds for a ransom because foreign governments have shared that the captors want to be paid “millions.”
Addressing her husband directly, she said, “Jeff, I hope you hear that we are working hard for your release. Do not lose hope. We love you. Stay strong. Stay strong.”
Woodke also released a new video plea in French addressed to JNIM’s leader, Sheik Iyad ag Ghali.
“I believe that you have kept Jeff safe and healthy and I thank you for that. I believe that you also desire that Jeff should be returned to his home and his work on behalf of the Tuareg and other nomadic people of the region,” Els Woodke said in the video. “You are the only one with the power to make that happen. Releasing Jeff will require compassion and mercy, but these are the characteristics of a strong and courageous leader.”
U.S. counterterrorism and hostage recovery officials have disagreed over intelligence about who kidnapped and held Woodke captive, pivoting more than a year ago toward a belief that JNIM had taken custody of the aid worker, officials have told ABC News. JNIM has held most of the Western hostages kidnapped in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger for motives that range from acquiring ransom to using them as political bargaining chips.
In Woodke’s case, years went by without any communication or ransom demands by the captor network, sources involved in the case have told ABC News.
After a Green Beret team was ambushed leaving four U.S. soldiers dead in October 2017, then-AFRICOM commander Gen. Thomas Waldhauser made the startling claim that the team was attacked by ISIS near the village of Tongo Tongo after they had searched an empty ISIS campsite looking for intelligence on Woodke’s whereabouts. The claim shocked officers in the chain of command and in hostage recovery, whistleblowers say in the new documentary.
“I think it’s important to underscore why, then, was that mission undertaken? Why was it so important to send those people up there?” Waldhauser said at a Pentagon press conference in 2018. “We’ve had an American citizen by the name of Jeffery Woodke who has been captured and held hostage somewhere in that area for the last year and a half, and there was a possibility that what they might find at that target would be a piece of the puzzle of the whole-of-government approach, to try to return an American who’s been held hostage.”
“I had never heard that,” former Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acting) for Special Operations Mark Mitchell said in the ABC News film, regarding the Woodke connection to the ill-fated missions of the American team. “So I’m not sure where that characterization came from.”
Intelligence, military, FBI, and Trump White House officials have told ABC News that despite Waldhauser’s statements, the mission was never pegged to or driven by any efforts to find or recover Woodke and his name appears nowhere in AFRICOM’s 268-page investigative report, Mitchell and others have told ABC News.
Els Woodke and her two sons have wondered, however, if efforts to free her husband somehow led to the loss of the four American special operations soldiers.
“If this [mission] was indeed on my husband’s behalf, I would have to say, ‘Thank you so very much.’ Still, I am very sorry it happened,” she said in the documentary. “It’s a terrible burden to know that people [could] die in the attempt to rescue my husband … I don’t take that lightly.”
(BIALYSTOK, Poland) — Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel talked with Belarus’ authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, on Wednesday, as part of a burst of European diplomatic efforts to end the migration crisis on the Belarusian border with Poland that Lukashenko is accused of orchestrating.
Lukashenko’s office claimed that during a call Wednesday, he and Merkel had come to a “certain understanding” over the crisis and agreed to begin immediate negotiations to resolve it. In a statement, the office said the two had agreed the negotiations would also look at resolving the “refugees’ wish to get to Germany.”
But Merkel’s spokesperson did not confirm the same, saying only that during her call she had “underlined the need to provide humanitarian care and opportunities of return” for the migrants trapped at Belarus’ border.
The call with Merkel — the second in three days — nonetheless raised hopes the crisis at the border may be easing, as at least 2,000 migrants remained trapped in a camp near it on Wednesday night and likely hundreds more in the surrounding forests.
Videos aired by Belarusian state media shows groups of migrants in the camp near the border dancing and cheering, supposedly following the call between Lukashenko and Merkel.
Over 2,000 migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have been stranded in a makeshift camp at the border with Poland in freezing temperatures for over a week, since Belarusian forces escorted them there in what European countries say was an escalation of a months-long campaign to use migrants weapons.
Lukashenko is accused of luring thousands of migrants to Belarus and funneling them to neighboring Poland and Lithuania to create a crisis on the European Union’s eastern border as retaliation for its support of the pro-democracy movement that came close to toppling him last year.
Poland and Lithuania have blocked the migrants, and Belarusian border troops have prevented them from retreating, resulting in hundreds of people finding themselves trapped in the forests along the border without food or shelter, often for weeks. Several thousand are estimated to be in Belarus currently. At least 10 people have died, though activists believe the true toll is likely higher. Hundreds of migrants have been filmed in recent days in central Minsk.
Merkel’s call with Lukashenko followed violent clashes on Tuesday, when Polish border guards fired water cannons into some migrants who were throwing stones and missiles at them at a crossing point near the town of Kuznica. Poland’s government, as well as some migrants in the camp, have accused Belarusian authorities of inciting the violence.
In recent days there has been a flurry of European diplomatic activity to try to resolve the crisis. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has called on Belarus’ foreign minister, while Merkel and France’s President Emmanuel Macron have called Lukashenko’s chief backer: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Lukashenko’s office said on Wednesday Merkel had conveyed a demand from the European Union’s president Ursula Von Der Leyen to allow international humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, to begin working with the migrants.
Von Der Leyen wrote on Twitter on Wednesday: “People trapped at the border have to be repatriated.” The European Commission also said that it had allocated 700,000 euros in assistance to the people trapped at the border.
Following the violence on Tuesday, Belarus has moved hundreds of migrants to a warehouse near the border. But the vast majority of the migrants remained in the makeshift camp, according to Polish authorities, living largely in the open air and huddled around camp fires.
Migrants and Polish refugee charities have accused Belarusian authorities recently of manipulating migrants and spreading disinformation that they would soon be resettled to Germany and Poland.
Poland’s government has said it is strongly opposed to Germany and the EU’s outreach to Lukashenko over its head. Belarus’ democratic opposition has also cautioned against it.
“Dancing with the dictator is dangerous,” said Franak Viacorka, an aide to Belarus’ main opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, after the call with Merkel was announced. “Appeasement leads to impunity. When he feels that blackmail works, and can give him what he wants, he will escalate and lead to more victims if needed. Your humanity is just a weakness for him.”
Estonia’s foreign minister, Eva-Maria Liimets, said on Tuesday that during the call with Merkel on Monday, Lukashenko had demanded Europe recognize him as Belarus’ legitimate president and lift sanctions as conditions for ending the migrant crisis.
There was no sign on Wednesday of such a concession. Lukashenko’s press office said during his call with Merkel he had not raised the issue of his legitimacy and sanctions because they were “beneath him.”
Activist groups and volunteer medics have been continuing to try to reach migrants that are ill and who find themselves trapped in the forest on the Polish side. Poland’s border guard released a video on Wednesday showing a large number of migrants packing up at the Kuznica camp and being marched somewhere, escorted by Belarusian border guards. It was not clear where they were being taken.
(LONDON) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson commented in a meeting Tuesday with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis that the decision to return the famous Parthenon marbles to Greece would be left to the British Museum, rather than the coming from Downing Street.
This is a break from his previous comments to Greek newspaper Ta Nea in March, when Johnson said the marbles shouldn’t be sent back as they’d been “legally acquired” at the beginning of the 19th century.
The marble sculptures are part of a Frieze previously wrapped around the walls of the Parthenon, which represents the procession of the Panathenaic festival, a commemoration of the birthday of the goddess Athena. Built 442 to 438 BC by the great Greek sculptor Phidias, the Frieze is composed on 115 marble panels, adorned with carved reliefs that represent humans, divine figures, mythological creatures and animals honoring Athena.
In 1801, while Greece was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, several of these blocks were taken by Thomas Bruce, the lord of Elgin, who was then the British ambassador to Constantinople. According to the museum’s website, “Elgin’s workmen cut off with saws or crowbars only the faces of the blocks that bore the relief decoration.”
Elgin claimed he had secured a permit from the then Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Selim III, a fact still disputed — some say his permit only allowed for conducting research on the site.
“He secured a permit from the Sultan to conduct research on the Acropolis which was under Ottoman-Turkish rule. However, he did not limit himself to that, but went ahead and removed numerous sculptures,” according to the Acropolis museum website, which says the sculptures were “forcibly removed” and “looted.”
Upon Elgin’s return to Britain, the pieces where moved to the British Museum, where they’ve remained.
“His actions were thoroughly investigated by a Parliamentary Select Committee in 1816 and found to be entirely legal, prior to the sculptures entering the collection of the British Museum by Act of Parliament,” says the British Museum’s website.
A large part of the Parthenon already had been destroyed in 1687, during a bombardment orchestrated by the Venetian army of Francesco Morosini against the Ottomans. The temple continued deteriorating until 2009, when the Acropolis museum was built at the foot of the monument, and all the marbles were transferred there for safekeeping.
While most of the remaining marbles are divided between the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum, some fragments can be found at the Louvres in Paris, at the Vatican and in other major western European capitals. Mitsotakis has offered to exchange the marbles for other Greek artifacts that could be shown in their place.
While the Louvres temporarily sent back some of its marbles to Greece in 2019, in exchange for other artifacts, the British museum has not relented.
Paul Cartledge, a professor emeritus of Greek culture at Cambridge University and vice-chair of the British Committee for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles, told ABC News that the responsibility lies with the British government, which would have to approve the museum’s final decision by rescinding the 1816 parliamentary act that legally recognized ownership of the marbles.
“As the recent September 2021 UNESCO conference on cultural property reaffirmed,” Cartledge wrote in an email, “the decision and prior negotiations have to be ultimately nation-to-nation, Greece-to-Britain, and it has to be the decision of the U.K. Parliament.”
(BELLINGHAM, Wash.) — Devastating flooding in western Canada forced 184 people to evacuate overnight in Abbotsford in British Columbia, Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun said.
Bill Blair, a Member of Parliament, tweeted, “In response to extreme flooding across Southern BC, we have approved the deployment of @CanadianForces air support personnel to assist with evacuation efforts, support supply chain routes, and protect residents against floods and landslides.”
At least one person has died in British Columbia from mudslides sparked by the heavy rain, The Associated Press reported.
A fire has also erupted in Abbotsford in British Columbia. Police said the blaze is blowing large plumes of smoke and they urged residents to stay inside “due to the potential of the smoke being toxic.”
Just to the south, in Washington state, over 1 foot of rain fell in five days, flooding neighborhoods, shuttering roads, forcing evacuations and bringing rivers into major flood stage.
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou, Chris Looft and Hilda Estevez contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A self-portrait by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was sold for almost $35 million, including fees, at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Tuesday.
This portrait, titled ‘Diego y yo’ (Diego and me), had been part of a private collection for almost 30 years.
Frida Kahlo was married to Mexican artist Diego Rivera, who previously held the record for the most expensive artwork from Latin America. Rivera’s ‘The Rivals,’ was sold for $9.76 million in a 2019 auction.
“People started unraveling the depth of Frida Kahlo’s art decades after her death,” Gannit Ankori, an art historian, curator and Kahlo expert, told ABC News.
During her lifetime, the Mexican artist was never able to make a living through her paintings, and only had two gallery shows while she was still alive, Ankori said.
The 1949 self-portrait — described by Sotheby’s as a “masterpiece” — depicts the artist gazing at the viewer, with a small portrait of Diego Rivera seen in her forehead as a “third eye.” ‘Diego y yo’ was painted during the same year as Kahlo’s then-husband Rivera started an alleged extramarital affair with actress Maria Felix.
“This painting is very similar and dissimilar to Frida Kahlo’s work during this decade,” Ankori said. It was not the only painting with Rivera seen on her forehead, but “the expression of such raw emotion and grief — seen in the loose swirling hair that almost strangles her and is uncontained by the picture frame, the facial features and the tears — are unique,” Ankori said.
The same painting was sold for the first time in 1990 at Sotheby’s for $1.43 million by a New York collector, the art broker said. Before that,’ Diego y yo’ was owned by a friend of the Mexican couple.
“You could call tonight’s result the ultimate revenge, but in fact, it is the ultimate validation of Kahlo’s extraordinary talent and global appeal,” Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby’s director for Latin American Art, said in a press release.
The buyer is Argentinian real estate businessman and collector Eduardo Costantini.
Costantini, 75, is also the founder of the MALBA, the Latin American Art Museum in Buenos Aires.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is running headfirst into a number of fires as he makes his first trip to Africa as America’s top diplomat.
Nearly 10 months into his tenure, Blinken will bring U.S. President Joe Biden’s “America’s back” mantra to the world’s youngest continent. But for years now, the United States has been playing catch-up to China in many of Africa’s 54 countries. China has promoted deep business and diplomatic ties and invested in infrastructure, while the U.S. has said next to nothing about the region’s democratic backsliding.
Millions of donated U.S. vaccine doses have helped boost American influence, but Blinken’s visit to promote that generosity and increased U.S. engagement will also be sidetracked by growing crises that have consumed the State Department’s attention — the worsening conflict in Ethiopia and the derailed democratic transition in Sudan.
Notably, he will skip Ethiopia — once a staple of secretary of state visits because it was one of the continent’s fastest-growing economies and home to the African Union’s headquarters. But amid high concerns about the bloody war there, Ethiopia will still be a major topic, with Blinken expected to focus a fair amount of his time in Nairobi on the issue after warning on Friday the country could “implode.”
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Sunday, pushing again for a ceasefire after a year of fighting that has pitted Abiy’s federal government against the forces in the Tigray region who once dominated national politics. As Abiy’s troops, backed by the neighboring country Eritrea and the neighboring region Amhara, continue to blockade Tigray, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front has been joined by other ethnic-based groups in a march toward the capital, Addis Ababa, possibly to overthrow Abiy’s government.
“Certainly the Ethiopia matter is an important one and takes up a tremendous amount of time and attention by our leadership,” Ervin Massinga, a top U.S. diplomat for Africa, told reporters before the trip.
But while some have called for greater U.S. leadership, including sanctions against the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan leaders fighting on either side, Massinga said the U.S. is committed “to African partnerships and African solutions to African challenges.”
The African Union’s special envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, has been the leading mediator, shepherding quiet but intense diplomacy to achieve a ceasefire and start political negotiations. Obasanjo will return to Addis Ababa “in the coming days,” a senior State Department official said Tuesday, and while the administration may again deploy its special envoy for the region, Jeffrey Feltman, they will continue “supporting [Obasanjo’s] process as much as possible and looking for there to be progress,” they added.
The U.S. also remains engaged across the border in Sudan, where military leaders have derailed a historic transition to democracy that was celebrated around the world. The top U.S. diplomat for Africa, Ambassador Molly Phee, arrived in Khartoum Sunday — the highest-level American official to visit since Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and other military leaders detained their civilian counterparts in a transitional government that was meant to steer the country toward democratic elections next July.
So far, U.S. cuts to economic aid, the suspension of loans from the World Bank and others and mass demonstrations across Sudan have not convinced Burhan to reverse course. As time goes on, some analysts warn it will be more difficult to dislodge Burhan’s newly installed picks in a transitional government.
But Blinken will try to pivot attention to what the Biden administration casts as a reinvigorated U.S. relationship with countries across Africa, after four years of the Trump administration largely ignoring or insulting Africans.
In particular, Blinken will focus on addressing the coronavirus pandemic, combatting climate change, investing in infrastructure and boosting democracy and the rule of law, according to Massinga, who added he would “really talk to the entirety of the continent” through speeches and engagements in the three countries.
It’s that first issue in particular that many hope to hear more about from Blinken. Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal have each vaccinated fewer than 6% of their populations, per the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data, as Americans are increasingly being offered booster shots. In fact, wealthy countries are administering nearly six times more booster shots than low-income countries are offering first shots, according to the ONE Campaign, an advocacy group.
“As the days go without enough vaccines, Africa remains exposed to a virus that has had hard-hitting effects on our health systems, threatened our fragile economic growth and stifled the capacity to provide basic services such as sanitation and education,” said Edwin Ikhuoria, ONE’s Africa executive director, adding that without vaccines, Africa faces “a perpetual pandemic, which has set us back and is reversing the developmental gains of the last 25 years on the continent.”
In addition to vaccines, many countries have been looking to the U.S. for infrastructure investment after years of China’s One Belt, One Road projects. Last week, senior White House official Daleep Singh concluded a tour through Ghana and Senegal, after a similar swing through Latin America, beginning conversations about what developments the U.S. and other Western countries could back — part of Biden’s “Build Back Better World” initiative with G-7 countries meant to raise climate, anti-corruption and labor standards in competition with Beijing.
The U.S. is seeking a partnership “based on increasing democracy and cooperation and that builds on people-to-people connections, fosters new economic engagements and reinforces our shared values grounded in renewed commitment to democracy and human rights,” Massinga said.
But there is much work to do on those issues, especially after six coups — in Mali, Guinea and Chad — or attempted coups across the continent this year. In Nigeria, for example, Africa’s most populous country and a “partly free” democracy, according to the think tank Freedom House, Blinken will have to address a president that has banned Twitter and security forces that were just found responsible for killing protesters.
While renewed U.S. interest is welcome in many capitals, it’s also unclear whether the U.S. and its partners will sustain it, especially after hearing similar rhetoric from U.S. lawmakers of both parties and previous administrations.
As perhaps a telling sign of some critics’ doubts, Blinken was scheduled to make this trip in August, but it was canceled as Afghanistan’s collapse and the massive U.S. evacuation operations consumed he and his team’s attention.
(WASHINGTON) — The United States on Monday condemned a Russian anti-satellite test against one of its own satellites that the U.S. said created a field of more than 1,500 pieces of debris that could remain in orbit for decades and pose a threat to other satellites.
Previous Russian tests have been of missiles or “killer satellites” capable of bringing down a satellite, but the new test marks the first time Russia has brought down a satellite with a missile.
The State Department criticized the Russian test as another example of what it said was Russia’s “dangerous and irresponsible behavior” in its space military operations.
“Earlier today the Russian Federation recklessly conducted a destructive test of a direct–ascent anti satellite missile against one of its own satellites,” Ned Price, the State Department spokesman told reporters Monday.
“This test has so far generated over fifteen hundred pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris that now threatens the interests of all nations,” said Price.
“Russia’s dangerous and irresponsible behavior jeopardizes the long term sustainability of our space and clearly demonstrates that Russia’s claims of opposing the weapons and weaponization of space are disingenuous and hypocritical,” said Price in language not typically seen in diplomatic statements.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the Defense Department shared similar concerns about the new Russian test.
“We watch closely the kinds of capabilities that Russia seems to want to develop which could pose a threat not just to our national security interests, but the security instance of other spacefaring nations,” said Kirby.
The new test marked the first time Russia destroyed an orbiting satellite with a ground-based missile, but previous tests have also sparked strong U.S. criticism. Last year, Russia carried out two similar tests with ground-based missiles that either demonstrated the capability or missed their targets. A third test in July of last year involved a different anti-satellite technology when a “killer satellite” deployed a projectile in the direction of another satellite.
In 2007, China drew international condemnation after it destroyed an orbiting satellite that created a large debris field. The following year the United States brought down an American satellite for which the remaining fuel supply posed a threat to human populations upon reentry but also showed that the U.S. could target an orbiting satellite.
In 2019, India destroyed one of its satellites demonstrating that it, too, was capable of anti-satellite technology.
“Russia has demonstrated a complete disregard for the security, safety, stability, and long-term sustainability of the space domain for all nations,” Gen. James Dickinson, the commander of U.S. Space Command, said in a statement.
“The debris created by Russia’s DA-ASAT will continue to pose a threat to activities in outer space for years to come, putting satellites and space missions at risk, as well as forcing more collision avoidance maneuvers,” said Dickinson. “Space activities underpin our way of life and this kind of behavior is simply irresponsible.”
Price said the test would “significantly increase the risk to astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station, as well as to other human spaceflight activities.” That threat seems to have been borne out on Monday when the seven American and Russian crewmembers aboard the space station were ordered for a time to take refuge in their Dragon and Soyuz lifeboats as the space station repeatedly passed through an unspecified debris field.
Earlier on Monday, U.S. Space Command confirmed that it was “aware of a debris-generating event in outer space” and that it was “actively working to characterize the debris field and will continue to ensure all space-faring nations have the information necessary to maneuver satellites if impacted.”
(NEW YORK) — Hundreds of migrants moved to a crossing point on the border between Belarus and Poland on Monday, encouraged by Belarusian security forces in what Poland’s government said was another attempt by Belarus’ authorities to exacerbate the migration crisis there.
Over 2,000 migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have been trapped in a makeshift camp at the border since last week, caught up in what European Union countries say is an effort by Belarus’ authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko to orchestrate a humanitarian crisis on its borders.
On Monday, hundreds of migrants packed up their belongings and moved toward the border crossing point itself at the Polish town of Kuznica in another attempt to cross. Polish guards in riot gear again blocked their path and the crowds halted.
Videos released by Poland’s authorities showed hundreds of people sitting on the road at the crossing in front of a razor-wire barrier and Polish police.
“An attempt is being made to force the border through, all under the supervision of Belarusian services,” Poland’s border service wrote on Twitter.
Belarus’ Lukashenko is accused of luring thousands of migrants to Belarus over recent months and funneling them to the border with Poland and neighboring Lithuania, in a form of retaliation against those countries for supporting Belarus’ pro-democracy movement that came close to toppling him last year.
Poland and Lithuania have blocked the migrants, and hundreds of people have become trapped in the forests along the border, often for weeks in freezing temperatures and without food.
The campaign blew up into a major European crisis last week after Belarus marched the 2,000 migrants up to the border close to Kuznica. For seven days, the migrants have been living in the open air in a make-shift camp pressed up against the border’s razor-wire fence and blockaded by dozens of Polish police and border troops.
Polish authorities over the weekend had accused Belarus of preparing to stage a fresh attempt to escalate the standoff at the border.
Activists from Polish refugee rights groups that have been providing humanitarian aid to migrants in the woods also accused Belarusian authorities of spreading misinformation to encourage the migrants to try to cross in the hope of inciting clashes.
“For several days now we have witnessed the migrants being subjected to a professionally prepared disinformation action,” Grupa Granica, an umbrella group for the activists said in a statement Sunday. It accused Belarus’ authorities of telling the migrants false information that Germany and Poland were preparing to settle them.
“This suggests attempts at raising the migrants’ hopes for a safe passage to western European countries, to then keep them in the camp at the Polish border, all in order to exert further pressure on the EU,’ the group said.
A Syrian man in the camp on Sunday told ABC News people there believed the EU on Monday would consider a plan for evacuating them, something that is not true.
The man, who asked to be identified as Yousef, said Belarusian guards had stopped handing out food and firewood on Sunday, in what he believed was an attempt to make people desperate.
“They are trying to make people crazy,” he said by phone. Yousef said he and nine Syrians with him had not eaten for four days and that they had been trapped in the forest for nearly a month.
“They treat us like animals,” he said.
Belarus has blamed the crisis on Poland and European countries, accusing them of failing to observe human rights.
EU foreign ministers were meeting on Monday for a planned summit where it was expected they will announce expanded sanctions against Belarusian individuals and entities involved in the migration crisis.
The EU has been seeking to cut off the flow of migrants to Belarus by threatening sanctions against airlines flying them there. Those efforts appear to have borne some fruit in recent days.
Turkish Airlines has announced it will no longer fly Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni citizens from Istanbul to Belarus’ capital Minsk, and the Syrian carrier Cham Wings Airlines has also said it is halting its flights.
