(NEW YORK) — Canada’s foreign affairs department was hit with a cyberattack last week, according to the Treasury Board of Canada.
The hack of Global Affairs Canada, the government entity responsible for diplomatic and global relations, occurred on Wednesday, according to a statement provided by the Treasury Board to ABC News.
The statement does not identify who carried out the cyberattack.
As a result of the attack, some access the internet and internet-based services are not currently available, but mitigation measures were being taken to restore them.
The Treasury Board said no other government department experienced a cyberattack.
“We are constantly reviewing measures to protect Canadians and our critical infrastructure from electronic threats, hacking, and cyber espionage. We encourage all government and non-government partners to use cyber security best practices,” the statement says.
The attack comes amid tensions over Ukraine and two days after the Canada Centre for Cyber Security warned malware was being used to target Ukrainian organizations.
New cyber vulnerability poses ‘severe risk,’ DHS says.
On Sunday, the Department of Homeland Security warned that the U.S. could be a target of Russian cyberattacks if the government responds to a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(KYIV, Ukraine) — Amid deepening anxiety over a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States announced it’s pulling out diplomats’ families and some staff from its embassy in the country. Meanwhile, NATO announced it was putting extra forces on standby.
As Russia continues to mass tens of thousands of troops close to Ukraine’s borders, NATO said the alliance was sending a small number of ships and fighter jets to Eastern Europe to strengthen its “deterrence” presence there and reassure its eastern members,
Denmark is sending a frigate to the Baltic Sea and four F-16 warplanes to Lithuania. At the same time, France is ready to send troops to Romania under NATO command, and Spain is considering deploying fighter jets to Bulgaria, NATO said in a statement. The Netherlands has agreed to send two F-35 jets to Bulgaria and has put a ship and land-based forces on standby for a NATO response force, officials said.
“NATO will continue to take all necessary measures to protect and defend all Allies, including by reinforcing the eastern part of the Alliance,” NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.
The NATO announcement coincided with a report in The New York Times that the Biden administration may be preparing to send up to 5,000 American troops to Eastern European members of the alliance.
The White House and the Pentagon have not confirmed the report, though the administration has previously said sending more U.S. troops to Eastern Europe is on the table if Russia attacks Ukraine.
NATO on Monday said the “United States has also made clear that it is considering increasing its military presence in the eastern part of the Alliance.”
The steps to boost NATO’s readiness came as the U.S. State Department announced Sunday it was ordering the families of its diplomats at its embassy in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv to leave the country over security fears.
The State Department said it has also authorized non-emergency staff at the embassy to depart voluntarily.
The United Kingdom on Monday followed suit, with its Foreign Office saying some embassy staff and their dependents would be withdrawn “in response to the growing threat from Russia.”
Ukraine’s government criticized the U.S. evacuation calling them “premature” and “excessively cautious.”
“While we respect right of foreign nations to ensure safety & security of their diplomatic missions, we believe such a step to be a premature one & an instance of excessive caution,” Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, tweeted.
Ukrainian officials are unhappy with the message the evacuations send by suggesting that a Russian invasion could be imminent. In general, they are much more skeptical that Russia is planning to launch a major attack and worry that western countries risk helping Moscow by exaggerating the risk and spreading panic.
Privately, American officials acknowledge there is a gap between the Ukrainian and U.S. assessment of the level of threat. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. official told ABC News this weekend that Ukraine was “p—– off” over the evacuations.
A senior State Department official on Sunday insisted the embassy drawdown did not undermine America’s commitment to Ukraine, saying they were just “prudent precautions” given the heightened fear of a Russian attack.
The official said the decision was “based on this military buildup, based on how we see these developments,” calling it the “right moment.”
Those leaving the embassy will do so on commercial flights, the State Department has said, indicating it is not an emergency evacuation.
The State Department were scarred by the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan, where thousands of Americans were stranded after the sudden Taliban takeover there caught the U.S. off guard. Officials are anxious to avoid a similar situation in Ukraine, should the worst happen.
Russia has repeatedly insisted it has no intention of attacking Ukraine. However, its military buildup continues near Ukraine’s eastern border and now in Belarus, where trainloads of Russian tanks and artillery have been arriving for joint exercises there.
A top commander of Russian-controlled separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine on Monday also accused Ukraine’s military of preparing to launch an offensive against the separatist areas.
The U.S. and Ukraine are concerned that a false claim of a Ukrainian offensive against the separatists could be used as a pretext for Russia to launch an invasion.
Eduard Basurin, the head of the militia of the separatists’ self-declared ‘People’s Republic of Donetsk’ (DNR), in local media warned it “firmly recommends the enemy to give up its criminal intentions,” promising the Ukrainian army “will suffer irreparable damage, after which it will not be able to recover.”
Ukraine’s government has insisted it will not launch any offensive and there is no evidence Ukraine is preparing to.
(AMSTERDAM) — A stowaway was found alive in the nose wheel well of a cargo airplane that traveled from South Africa to the Netherlands on Sunday, according to Dutch police.
Authorities discovered the man hiding after the plane landed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Sunday morning. He was taken to a hospital in stable condition, a Dutch police spokesperson told ABC News.
The man’s name has not been released. His age and nationality were unknown.
The freight flight flew 11 hours from Johannesburg to Amsterdam, with a stop in Nairobi. It was unclear whether the stowaway climbed into the aircraft’s landing gear in South Africa or in Kenya, the Dutch police spokesperson said.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
It’s unusual for stowaways to survive long flights, due to the cold temperatures and low oxygen levels at high altitudes.
(WASHINGTON) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin might meet in an effort to resolve the standoff over Ukraine and the threat of a Russian invasion.
“If it proves useful and productive for the two presidents to meet, to talk, to engage, to try to carry things forward, I think we’re fully prepared to do that,” Blinken said in Geneva, Switzerland, after holding talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
There were no breakthroughs in their meeting, he said, but the two sides have agreed to return to their capitals and hold consultations before meeting again — keeping the door to diplomacy open after weeks of heightened tensions over Russia’s massive troop buildup near Ukraine’s border.
Later, speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America — asked whether it would take a summit to resolve the situation — Blinken confirmed the U.S. was open to that idea.
“That’s certainly something we’re prepared to do. Right now, the plan is to take stock of where we are next week after we share some ideas with Russia,” Blinken told ABC News.
Those ideas will be a written response to Russia’s two draft treaties, released publicly in December, where Moscow demanded that the U.S. and NATO bar Ukraine from joining the Western military alliance and pull troops back from Eastern European member states.
Those two demands are “nonstarters,” U.S. officials have said, but after repeated Russian requests for a written response, Blinken confirmed Friday that the U.S. will provide one before he and Lavrov meet again.
“There are certain issues and fundamental principles that the United States and our partners and allies are committed to defend. That includes those that would impede the sovereign right of the Ukrainian people to write their own future. There is no trade space there – none,” Blinken told reporters.
That disagreement has left three previous rounds of talks last week to end inconclusively — between the U.S. and Russia, NATO and Russia, and at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. But Russia has dismissed more talks with European countries, instead seeking direct engagement with the U.S. — and to create a rift between the U.S. and its NATO allies.
Blinken said after Friday’s high-stakes meeting that he would return to Washington to consult Biden, members of Congress, and allies and partners.
“Based on our discussion, I believe we can carry forward this work of developing understanding agreements together that ensure our mutual security, but that’s contingent on Russia stopping its aggression toward Ukraine,” he said.
But that’s unlikely to happen any time soon. Russia now has some 100,000 troops massed on three sides of Ukraine, including in Crimea, the peninsula it annexed in 2014, and Belarus, Ukraine’s neighbor to the north where strongman Alexander Lukashenko has increasingly relied on Russian support to prop him up.
Lavrov did not commit to pull those troops back, but said again that Russia is not going to attack Ukraine. He urged Blinken to focus on Russia’s security proposals rather than the heightened tensions over Ukraine, he said at his own press conference afterwards.
“I haven’t heard any point today that would justify the American position on what is happening on the Russian-Ukrainian border. Only concerns, concerns, concerns,” Lavrov told reporters, calling the State Department’s stated concerns about Russian actions “blatant lies.”
Despite that brusque tone, Blinken said the two sides left the meetings with a “better understanding” of each other’s positions – calling it “not a negotiation, but a candid exchange of concerns and ideas.”
Whether that means Russia is engaging in good faith, or whether Putin still continue to destabilize Ukraine and even launch an attack, remains unresolved.
“It’s ultimately going to be President Putin who decides what Russia will do,” Blinken told Good Morning America.
File photo – Ato Kwamena Dadzie/AFP via Getty Images
(LONDON) — More than a dozen people were killed and many more were injured by a massive explosion that rocked southwestern Ghana on Thursday, authorities said.
A vehicle transporting mining explosives between the gold mines of Tarkwa and Chirano in Ghana’s Western Region collided with a motorcycle in the small town of Apiate on Thursday afternoon. The truck caught fire from the collision and exploded about 15 minutes later, as residents were gathered around the scene of the crash, according to a spokesperson for the Ghana Police Service.
Police officers, firefighters, soldiers and medics rushed to the scene to rescue victims. At least 179 people were affected by the “huge” explosion, including at least 13 who died and 45 who were referred to specialist hospitals, the police spokesperson said while cautioning that the numbers could change.
Initial reports estimated the death toll to be higher because some of the wounded were in such bad condition that they were thought to be dead, according to Assistant Commissioner of Police Samuel Kwesi Ofori, who is the director-general of the Ghana Police Service’s Public Affairs Directorate.
As of Friday afternoon, 36 victims remain hospitalized and 96 have been discharged, Ofori said.
The powerful blast leveled surrounding buildings, set homes ablaze, knocked out power and left a vast crater in the ground. It took firefighters hours to extinguish the flames, according to a spokesperson for the Ghana National Fire and Rescue Service.
About 384 people have been displaced in the area due to the incident, which remains under investigation, according to Ofori.
Ghanaian Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia traveled on Friday to the site in Apiate, near the mining city of Bogoso, some 180 miles west of Ghana’s capital.
“This is a sad day,” Bawumia said.
After visiting some of the hospitalized victims, the vice president thanked nurses and doctors for doing “a fantastic job in saving lives.”
“The early intervention yesterday has helped a lot,” he told reporters outside a hospital. “We want to assure all of those patients and their families, the government is willing to be responsible fully for all their medical bills.”
(APPIATSE, Ghana) — A town in Ghana was rocked by a huge explosion Thursday that sent several people to the hospital, the authorities said.
The Ghana Police Service announced that the explosion took place around 3 p.m. local time in the town of Appiatse, between Bogoso and Bawdie. Buildings and structures were gutted, and debris was scattered in the streets.
A preliminary investigation has determined that the explosion appears to have been caused by a mining vehicle carrying explosives, traveling from Tarkwa to the Chirano mines, colliding with a motorcycle, police said.
“The public has been advised to move out of the area to nearby towns for their safety while recovery efforts are underway,” police said in a statement.
First responders and residents scrambled to find victims, with some using construction vehicles to clear debris. Smoke from the explosion could be seen miles away.
Police said victims had been taken to area hospitals but didn’t provide any details on the number of victims or the extent of their injuries. The number of fatalities isn’t immediately known.
“An appeal is also being made to nearby towns to open up their classrooms, churches, etc. to accommodate surviving victims,” police said.
NICOLAS MAETERLINCK/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images
(LONDON) — From flying over an active volcano to surviving in minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit, British-Belgium teen Zara Rutherford has experienced a lot in her five-month journey flying over 40 countries and five continents.
When the 19-year-old landed in Belgium on Thursday, she made history by breaking the record of the youngest woman to ever fly solo around the world. The pilot who previously held the record, Shaesta Waiz, was 30 years old when she completed the journey.
“It’s been … challenging, but so amazing at the same time,” Rutherford told ABC News. “I think there’re some experiences that I’ll just never forget and others that I would wish to forget.”
Rutherford embarked on her epic journey with her Shark Aero, a high-performance, two-seat ultralight aircraft manufactured in Europe. The small plane is especially made to withstand long journeys at the cruising speed of 186.4 mph.
Since both of her parents are certified pilots, Rutherford learned her way behind the airplane controls when she was very young.
“Zara’s first flight in a very small airplane, was when she was three or four months old. … And frequently, she’d be given the opportunity to sit in the front, to start with, of course, on about six cushions to be able to manipulate the controls and move the aircraft around,” Sam Rutherford, Zara’s father and a former army helicopter pilot, told ABC News.
But it was not until about five years ago that Rutherford truly realized her passion for flying.
“It only really crystallized into something she actually wanted to do more formally when she was 14, and at 14, she started actually taking flying lessons,” Rutherford’s father said.
Then teen ran into maintenance problems, COVID-19 complications and visa issues along her journey. She said once she reached Russia, she fully realized the risks of her mission.
“There was no humans. It’s too cold. It’s like nothing. There’s no roads, there’s no power like electricity cables. There’s nothing, there’s no animals, there’s no trees. I didn’t see a tree for over a month,” Rutherford said.
“When you’re flying alone and suddenly this challenge comes up, I can’t say, ‘I’m done. I’m out. I give up.’ You have to still land the plane. You have to make sure that you get down on the ground safely,” she said.
Still, she was often amazed by the things she saw along the way.
“That is still like the hands down the most amazing thing flying straight over Central Park … because of air space [regulations] you have to fly quite low. And it’s quite strange when… some of the buildings still are higher than you like. Wow, this is incredible,” the young solo pilot said.
Someone to look up to
Before starting her journey, Rutherford messaged Waiz — the American-Afghan pilot who previously held the flying record — on LinkedIn and asked if she would mind if she attempted to break her record.
“‘Of course, that’s OK. Records are meant to be broken,’ I told her,” Waiz, who finished her journey in 2017, told ABC News.
“‘Not only are you going to fly around the world, but I’m going to do everything I can to help you, because it is an incredible experience and I want [you] to have that,'” she said to Rutherford.
Waiz got on her first plane as an infant, when her family left Afghanistan as refugees during the Soviet–Afghan War and settled in California. She didn’t fly again until she was 17.
“I was terrified. But as soon as that plane lifted off, something ignited in me and I just thought to myself, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,'” she recalled.
Changing perspectives
Flying solo around the world, for Rutherford and Waiz, was not just about crossing geographical borders and breaking records, but also about getting to see life from a different perspective.
To Waiz, the unique thing about aviation is the way it takes away all discriminations and differences among people.
“When you’re in the airplane and you’re flying, it’s such an unbiased environment that that aircraft doesn’t care where you come from or what you look like,” she said.
Rutherford said flying has taught her that life is “fragile,” and there is “so much more to life than just getting a good career and making and having a good salary.”
She hopes her history-making journey inspires other girls and women to chase their dreams.
“Her aim is actually not to fly around the world. Her aim is to encourage young women and girls to consider and hopefully take up careers in aviation, science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” Rutherford’s father said. “There’s very little point to her flying around the world if nobody gets to hear about it. We all have our own worlds to fly around.”
(LONDON) — Two men were arrested in England on Thursday morning as part of an ongoing investigation into a hostage-taking incident at a synagogue in the United States, British authorities said.
Counterterrorism officers detained one of the men in Birmingham and the other in Manchester, about 85 miles north of Birmingham. The pair “remain in custody for questioning,” according to a statement from the Greater Manchester Police.
Assistant Chief Constable Dominic Scally of the Greater Manchester Police has said that counterterrorism officers are assisting their U.S. counterparts in the probe of Saturday’s hourslong standoff between American authorities and a hostage-taker at the Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, about 27 miles northwest of Dallas.
An armed man claiming to have planted bombs in the synagogue interrupted Shabbat services on Saturday just before 11 a.m. local time, taking a rabbi and three other people hostage, according to Colleyville Police Chief Michael Miller.
One hostage was released uninjured at around 5 p.m. CT on Saturday, Miller told a press conference later that night. An elite hostage rescue team from the Federal Bureau of Investigation then breached the synagogue at about 9 p.m. CT, after hearing the hostage-taker say he had guns and bombs and was “not afraid to pull the strings,” according to a joint intelligence bulletin issued Wednesday and obtained by ABC News.
“As a tactical team approached to make entry to the synagogue, the hostages escaped and were secured by tactical elements,” the bulletin said. “The assault team quickly breached the facility at a separate point of entry, and the subject was killed.”
No hostages were injured during the incident, according to Miller.
The slain suspect, identified by the FBI as 44-year-old British citizen Malik Faisal Akram, was from the Blackburn area of England’s Lancashire county, about 20 miles northwest of Manchester, according to Scally.
A motive for the siege is under investigation. The FBI said in a statement Sunday that the incident “is a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted, and is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.”
During the negotiations with authorities, Akram “spoke repeatedly about a convicted terrorist who is serving an 86-year prison sentence in the United States on terrorisms charges,” according to the FBI.
Multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News that the hostage-taker was demanding the release of Aafia Siddiqui, who is incarcerated at Carswell Air Force Base near Fort Worth, about 16 miles southwest of Colleyville. Siddiqui, who has alleged ties to al-Qaida, was sentenced to 86 years in prison after being convicted of assault as well as attempted murder of an American soldier in 2010.
Two teenagers were arrested in southern Manchester on Sunday evening in connection with the synagogue attack. They were questioned and later released without being charged, Greater Manchester Police said in a statement Tuesday. Multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News that the teens are Akram’s children.
Akram has ancestral ties to Jandeela, a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province, the local police chief told ABC News. He visited Pakistan in 2020 and stayed for five months, the police chief said, a duration that may have been necessitated by COVID-19 restrictions.
Akram has been separated from his wife for two years and has five children, according to the police chief.
After arriving in the U.S. last month via a flight from London to New York City, Akram stayed at homeless shelters at various points and may have portrayed himself as experiencing homelessness in order to gain access to the Texas synagogue during Shabbat services, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who called the hostage-taking incident “an act of terror,” told reporters Sunday that investigators suspect Akram purchased a gun on the street. While Akram is alleged to have claimed he had bombs, investigators have found no evidence that he was in possession of explosives, according to Biden.
ABC News’ Luke Barr, Aaron Katersky, Habibullah Khan, Josh Margolin and Joseph Simonetti contributed to this report.
NICOLAS MAETERLINCK/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images
(LONDON) — From flying over an active volcano to surviving in minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit, British-Belgium teen Zara Rutherford has experienced a lot in her five-month journey flying over 40 countries and five continents.
When the 19-year-old lands in Belgium Thursday, she will have made history by breaking the record of the youngest woman to ever fly solo around the world. The pilot who currently holds the record, Shaesta Waiz, was 30 years old when she completed the journey.
“It’s been … challenging, but so amazing at the same time,” Rutherford told ABC News. “I think there’re some experiences that I’ll just never forget and others that I would wish to forget.”
Rutherford embarked on her epic journey with her Shark Aero, a high-performance, two-seat ultralight aircraft manufactured in Europe. The small plane is especially made to withstand long journeys at the cruising speed of 186.4 mph.
Since both of her parents are certified pilots, Rutherford learned her way behind the airplane controls when she was very young.
“Zara’s first flight in a very small airplane, was when she was three or four months old. … And frequently, she’d be given the opportunity to sit in the front, to start with, of course, on about six cushions to be able to manipulate the controls and move the aircraft around,” Sam Rutherford, Zara’s father and a former army helicopter pilot, told ABC News.
But it was not until about five years ago that Rutherford truly realized her passion for flying.
“It only really crystallized into something she actually wanted to do more formally when she was 14, and at 14, she started actually taking flying lessons,” Rutherford’s father said.
Then teen ran into maintenance problems, COVID-19 complications and visa issues along her journey. She said once she reached Russia, she fully realized the risks of her mission.
“There was no humans. It’s too cold. It’s like nothing. There’s no roads, there’s no power like electricity cables. There’s nothing, there’s no animals, there’s no trees. I didn’t see a tree for over a month,” Rutherford said.
“When you’re flying alone and suddenly this challenge comes up, I can’t say, ‘I’m done. I’m out. I give up.’ You have to still land the plane. You have to make sure that you get down on the ground safely,” she said.
Still, she was often amazed by the things she saw along the way.
“That is still like the hands down the most amazing thing flying straight over Central Park … because of air space [regulations] you have to fly quite low. And it’s quite strange when… some of the buildings still are higher than you like. Wow, this is incredible,” the young solo pilot said.
Someone to look up to
Before starting her journey, Rutherford messaged Waiz — the woman who previously held the record flying record — on LinkedIn, and asked if she would mind if she attempted to break her record.
“‘Of course, that’s OK. Records are meant to be broken,’ I told her,” The American-Afghan pilot, who finished her journey in 2017, told ABC News.
“‘Not only are you going to fly around the world, but I’m going to do everything I can to help you, because it is an incredible experience and I want [you] to have that,'” Waiz said to Rutherford.
Waiz got on her first plane as an infant, when her family left Afghanistan as refugees during the Soviet–Afghan War and settled in California. She didn’t fly again until she was 17. “I was terrified. But as soon as that plane lifted off, something ignited in me and I just thought to myself, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,'” she recalled.
Changing perspectives
Flying solo around the world, for Rutherford and Waiz, was not just about crossing geographical borders and breaking records, but also about getting to see life from a different perspective.
To Waiz, the unique thing about aviation is the way it takes away all discriminations and differences among people.
“When you’re in the airplane and you’re flying, it’s such an unbiased environment that that aircraft doesn’t care where you come from or what you look like,” she said.
Rutherford said flying has taught her that life is “fragile,” and there is “so much more to life than just getting a good career and making and having a good salary.”
She hopes her history-making journey inspires other girls and women to chase their dreams.
“Her aim is actually not to fly around the world. Her aim is to encourage young women and girls to consider and hopefully take up careers in aviation, science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” Rutherford’s father said. “There’s very little point to her flying around the world if nobody gets to hear about it. We all have our own worlds to fly around.”
(LONDON) — It may take weeks to repair an undersea fiber-optic cable connecting Tonga to the rest of the world, which was severed during Saturday’s massive eruption of a submarine volcano near the South Pacific archipelago nation.
New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement Wednesday that U.S.-based company SubCom, which builds underwater cable networks across the globe and is the repair contractor for more than 31,000 miles of cable in the South Pacific Ocean, “advises it will take at least four weeks for Tonga’s cable connection to be repaired.”
The ministry added that Caribbean-based mobile network provider Digicel has set up an interim system on Tonga’s main island, Tongatapu, using the University of South Pacific’s satellite dish, which may allow a 2G connection to be established Wednesday, though the ministry said it will be “limited and patchy.”
Domestic and international communications for Tonga were cut off due to damage to the undersea cable. While limited communication within Tonga has been restored through satellite telephones and high-frequency radio, the internet is still down, the Tongan government said in a statement Tuesday.
Satellite images captured the blast of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on Saturday evening, with NASA’s Earth Observatory calling it “one of the most potent volcanic eruptions in decades.”
The explosion “obliterated” the small, uninhabited South Pacific island where the submarine volcano was located, about 40 miles north of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, and “produced an atmospheric shock wave and tsunami that traveled around the world,” the observatory said in a statement Saturday.
Nearly 50-foot tsunami waves crashed ashore on several of Tonga’s 170 islands, devastating villages, while a huge mushroom-shaped cloud of volcanic ash, steam and gas covered the entire Polynesian kingdom, according to the Tongan government. A search-and-rescue mission was launched the following morning and at least three people have been confirmed dead — a British national and two Tongan citizens. There were also a number of injuries reported, the Tongan government said.
New Zealand’s foreign ministry confirmed Wednesday that no further deaths were reported in Tonga.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement Wednesday that its humanitarian partners on the ground reported the entire population of Tonga — more than 100,00 people — had been impacted by volcanic ash and tsunami waves. There’s been no reported evidence of ongoing volcanic or tsunami activity within the region in the last 24 hours, according to OCHA.
“However, activity could resume at any time without warning,” the agency said.
Data from surveillance flights over Tonga showed up to 100 homes “severely damaged” on Tongatapu and 50 on the nearby island of ‘Eua. Mango and Niniva were also “heavily impacted” with structures destroyed and trees uprooted, but those islands are only thinly populated, according to OCHA.
The Tongan government has declared a state of emergency that will last until at least Feb. 13.
Sea and air transportation have been impacted due to continuing large waves in the waters surrounding Tonga as well as volcanic ash blanketing airport runways. Water supplies have also been “seriously affected,” the Tongan government said.
Emergency response operations, including distribution of disaster relief supplies, initial assessments of the damages and clean-up of the airports, were still underway Tuesday, according to the Tongan government. New Zealand’s foreign ministry said the work to clear airport runways in Tonga is expected to be completed Wednesday.
Australia and New Zealand have dispatched naval ships carrying relief supplies and clean drinking water to Tonga, their South Pacific neighbor. New Zealand’s vessels are expected to arrive by Friday, depending on weather conditions, according to New Zealand’s foreign ministry.
OCHA said it is understood that ships will be able to dock at Tonga’s ports. Meanwhile, relief flights from both Australia and New Zealand are on standby until the Fuaʻamotu International Airport on Tongatapul is operational, according to OCHA.
