Plane with 20 aboard crashes in Tennessee, no deaths: Authorities
Washington (AFP) No one was killed but several people were injured and taken to hospital on Sunday when a skydiving plane carrying 20 passengers and crew crashed in the US state of Tennessee, authorities said.A twin-engine plane used for skydiving expeditions crashed shortly after midday in Tullahoma, south of Nashville, according to local and federal officials."There were no casualties," city spokesman Lyle Russell said in a statement sent to AFP.
He said a total of 20 passengers and crew were onboard the DeHaviland DH-6 Twin Otter when it crashed at the Tullahoma Regional Airport at around 12:30 pm (1730 GMT)."Three were sent for medical treatment via helicopter and one sent by ground transport for more serious injuries to local hospitals," he said, adding that "other minor injuries were treated by first responders on scene."Russell said that "no ground facilities or airport facilities were damaged and there were no injuries reported from the ground."The Federal Aviation Administration said it was investigating the crash, while the Tennessee Highway Patrol said on X that its troopers were assisting police at the scene.
Images posted on social media by the highway patrol showed a small, white plane with blue trim with its nose buried into the grass and its tail and a wing broken off behind it, with police vehicles with flashing lights parked nearby.
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Gulf Today
13 hours ago
- Gulf Today
Dire water shortages compound hunger, displacement in Gaza
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Gaza City spokesman Assem Al-Nabih told AFP that the municipality's part of the network supplied by Mekorot had not functioned in nearly two weeks. A boy fills up containers with water from the remaining water still left in underground pipes, in Beit Lahia. AFP Wells that supplied some needs before the war have also been damaged, with some contaminated by sewage which goes untreated because of the conflict. Many wells in Gaza are simply not accessible, because they are inside active combat zones, too close to Israeli military installations or in areas subject to evacuation orders. At any rate, wells usually run on electric pumps and energy has been scarce since Israel turned off Gaza's power as part of its war effort. Generators could power the pumps, but hospitals are prioritised for the limited fuel deliveries. Lastly, Gaza's desalination plants are down, save for a single site reopened last week after Israel restored its electricity supply. Nabih, from the Gaza City municipality, told AFP the infrastructure situation was bleak. More than 75 per cent of wells are out of service, 85 per cent of public works equipment destroyed, 100,000 metres of water mains damaged and 200,000 metres of sewers unusable. Pumping stations are down and 250,000 tonnes of rubbish is clogging the streets. "Sewage floods the areas where people live due to the destruction of infrastructure," says Mohammed Abu Sukhayla from the northern city of Jabalia. In order to find water, hundreds of thousands of people are still trying to extract groundwater directly from wells. But coastal Gaza's aquifer is naturally brackish and far exceeds salinity standards for potable water. A boy fills up containers with water from the remaining water still left in underground pipes, in Beit Lahia. AFP In 2021, the UN children's agency UNICEF warned that nearly 100 percent of Gaza's groundwater was unfit for consumption. 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Mahmoud Deeb, 35, acknowledged that the water he finds in Gaza City is often undrinkable, but his family has no alternative. "We know it's polluted, but what can we do? I used to go to water distribution points carrying heavy jugs on my back, but even those places were bombed," he added. At home, everyone is thirsty -- a sensation he associated with "fear and helplessness." "You become unable to think or cope with anything." Agence France-Presse
Gulf Today
15 hours ago
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Reuters "People who are the most starved in the world and do not have the energy must run and chase after a truck and wait for hours and hours in the sun and try to muscle people and compete for a bag of flour," he said. Jean Guy Vataux, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza, added: "We're in an ultra-capitalist system, where traders and corrupt gangs send kids to risk life and limb at distribution points or during looting. It's become a new profession." This food is then resold to "those who can still afford it" in the markets of Gaza City, where the price of a 25-kilogramme bag of flour can exceed $400, he added. 'Never found proof' Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of looting aid supplied by the UN, which has been delivering the bulk of aid since the start of the war triggered by the Palestinian group Hamas's October 2023 attack. A Palestinian man carries a bag of humanitarian aid he received at the Rafah corridor in the southern Gaza Strip. 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'All kinds of criminal activities' The Israeli army is also accused of having equipped Palestinian criminal networks in its fight against Hamas and of allowing them to plunder aid. "The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza," Jonathan Whittall, Palestinian territories chief of the UN humanitarian office (OCHA), told reporters in May. A Palestinian man who was injured while seeking humanitarian aid at the Rafah corridor, is carried into a field hospital in the Mawasi area of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. AFP According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the Popular Forces, made up of members of a Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control. The ECFR describes Abu Shabab as leading a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks". The Israeli authorities themselves acknowledged in June that they had armed Palestinian gangs opposed to Hamas, without directly naming the one led by Abu Shabab. Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University, said many of the gang's members were implicated in "all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that". "None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli army," said a humanitarian worker in Gaza, asking not to be named. Agence France-Presse
Gulf Today
17 hours ago
- Gulf Today
76 African migrants dead, dozens missing after boat sinks off Yemen
At least 76 people were killed and dozens are missing after a boat carrying mostly Ethiopian migrants sank off Yemen, in the latest tragedy on the perilous sea route, officials told AFP on Monday. Yemeni security officials said 76 bodies had been recovered and 32 people rescued from the shipwreck in the Gulf of Aden. The UN migration agency said 157 people were on board. Sunday's incident was "one of the deadliest" migrant shipwrecks off Yemen this year, Abdusattor Esoev, the International Organisation for Migration's chief of mission for Yemen, told AFP. The ship was headed to Abyan governorate in southern Yemen. Some of those rescued have been transferred to Yemen's Aden, near Abyan, a security official said. The UN agency earlier gave a toll of at least 68 dead, with Esoev telling AFP that "the fate of the missing is still unknown." Despite the civil war that has ravaged Yemen since 2014, the impoverished country has remained a key transit point for irregular migration, in particular from Ethiopia which itself has been roiled by ethnic conflict. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See's secretary of state, said the Pope was "deeply saddened by the devastating loss of life". 'NO CHOICE' Each year, thousands brave the so-called "Eastern Route" from Djibouti to Yemen across the Red Sea, in the hope of eventually reaching rich countries. The IOM recorded at least 558 deaths on the Red Sea route last year, 462 of them from boat accidents. "This route is predominantly controlled by smugglers and human-trafficking networks... Refugees and migrants have no other alternative but to hire their services," Ayla Bonfiglio, of the Mixed Migration Centre research and policy organisation, told AFP. "Migrants are well aware of the risks, but with no legal pathways and families relying on remittances from Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, many feel they have no choice," she added. Last month, at least eight people died after smugglers forced 150 migrants off a boat in the Red Sea, according to the IOM. The vessel that sank off Abyan was carrying mostly Ethiopian migrants, according to the province's security directorate and an IOM source. Yemeni security forces were recovering a "significant" number of bodies, the Abyan directorate said on Sunday. Agence France-Presse
