kills

Investigators are working to determine cause of the blaze that broke out at facility in Tuzla in northeastern Bosnia.

A fire at a retirement home in northeastern Bosnia has killed at least 11 people and injured about 30 others, officials said.

It remained unclear what caused the blaze, which engulfed the seventh floor of the building in Tuzla, about 80km (50 miles) northeast of Sarajevo, after it broke out on Tuesday evening.

The fire, which took about an hour to bring under control, sent flames and smoke pouring out of the building into the night sky.

Bosnian media reported that higher floors in the complex were occupied by elderly people who could not move on their own or were ill.

“I had gone to bed when I heard a cracking sound. I don’t know if it was the windows in my room breaking,” resident Ruza Kajic told national broadcaster BHRT on Wednesday.

“I live on the third floor,” she said. “I looked out the window and saw burning material falling from above. I ran out into the hallway. On the upper floors, there are bedridden people.”

Admir Vojnic, who lives near the retirement home, also told the Reuters news agency that he saw “huge flames and smoke, and elderly and helpless people standing outside” the building.

Investigators were still working to determine the cause of the fire and identify those killed in the blaze, prosecutor spokesperson Admir Arnautovic told reporters.

“The identification of the bodies will take place during the day,” Arnautovic said.

Meanwhile, the retirement home’s director said he had offered his resignation.

“It’s the only human thing to do, the least I can do in this tragedy. My heart goes out to the families of the victims,” Mirsad Bakalovic told the Fena news agency.

“Last night was a truly difficult event, a tragedy not only for the city of Tuzla, but for all of Bosnia.”

Officials from across government in Bosnia and Herzegovina offered their condolences and help to the Tuzla authorities.

“We feel the pain and are always ready to help,” Savo Minic, the prime minister of the country’s autonomous Serb Republic, wrote on X.

Nov. 5 (UPI) — At least 11 people were killed and 30 injured in a blaze at a high-rise retirement home in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Authorities said the fire broke out Tuesday evening at about 8.45 p.m. (2 p.m. EST) on the seventh floor of the facility in Tuzla, the country’s fourth largest city 70 miles northeast of the capital, Sarajevo.

Police said firefighters, police officers, medics, residents and staff at the home were among 20 people taken to the hospital.

Several people received treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning, with three in intensive care, said a spokesman for Tuzla University clinical center.

Images circulating online show the top floor of the building engulfed in flames.

Nermin Niksic, prime minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the country’s bipartite system of government, called the blaze “a disaster of enormous proportions.”

Tuzla is located in FBiH, one of two administrative entities portioning the country between Bosnian Muslims and Catholic Croats in the north and Bosnian-Serbs in central and southern areas born out of the 1995 U.S.-brokered Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian War.

The prime minister of the Srpska entity, Savo Minic, head of the country’s Serb region, said Tuesday night that his government stood ready to assist Tuzla in any way it could following the retirement home fire.

“The Government of the Republic of Srpska stands ready to assist the citizens of Tuzla with any kind of help following tonight’s tragedy. We feel the pain and are always ready to help. Our most sincere condolences to the families,” he said in a post on X.

Authorities said an investigation into the cause of the blaze was underway.

Nov. 2 (UPI) — The United States killed three people in its latest strike against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced.

Hegseth said in a post to social media Saturday that American forces conducted a kinetic strike against the vessel in international waters.

He said three “narco-terrorists” were on board and all three were killed.

“These narco-terrorists are bringing drugs to our shores to poison Americans at home — and they will not succeed,” he said. “The department will treat them exactly how we treated Al-Qaeda. We will continue to track them, map them, hunt them and kill them.”

At least 64 people have now been killed by the U.S. in 15 strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean since they began in September.

The strikes have been celebrated by families who have lost their children to fentanyl poisoning, some of whom recently rallied in the nation’s capital for a day of remembrance.

“One boat, two boat, three boat — boom!” a mother who lost her 15-year-old son to Percocet laced with fentanyl told Fox News is how she feels about the strikes on boats allegedly transporting drugs to the United States. “Who did it? Trump did it!”

President Donald Trump in September told reporters that he had authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela during the summer as the Pentagon was directing a slow military buildup in the waters off the South American country.

On Oct. 24, weeks into the anti-drug trafficking campaign, Hegseth directed the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to transit to the Caribbean. The group includes three destroyers, in addition to the aircraft carrier.

There already were eight naval surface vessels, a submarine and roughly 6,000 soldiers deployed to the area before the strike group was ordered there from the Mediterranean.

Trump, who notified Congress that he was engaged in conflict with drug cartels, has said in recent weeks as the naval presence has grown that he is considering whether to allow strikes inside Venezuela to combat the cartels and weaken Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro‘s administration.

But the strikes have raised concerns of escalating an conflict that could to war with Venezuela and Colombia, according to reports.

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., filed a bipartisan bill that aims to prevent the Trump administration from entering a full-throated war with Venezuela.

Critics of the Trump administration’s actions have expressed that only Congress can declare war.

On Friday, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said they violate international law and amount to extrajudicial killings.

“Under international human rights law, the intentional use of lethal force is only permissible as a last resort against individuals who pose an imminent threat to life,” High Commissioner Volker Türk said.

“Based on the very sparse information provided publicly by the US authorities, none of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others or otherwise justified the use of lethal armed force against them under international law,”

Nov. 1 (UPI) — At least nine people died and more than 25 were injured in a stampede at a private Hindu temple in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh on Saturday morning.

The stampede happened when around 25,000 worshippers crowded into Sri Venkateswara Swamy temple in the Srikakulam district on Ekadashi, a sacred holiday. On Saturday, there are usually 3,000 parishioners, the Times of India reported.

The deceased included eight women and one boy, and two of the injured were in critical condition.

“The heavy rush of devotees led to overcrowding, resulting in injuries to many devotees, who were immediately rushed to nearby hospitals,” an official said, according to Xinhua.

Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has ordered an investigation into what happened at the 12-acre temple.

Organizers failed to inform the police in advance, which prevented adequate security, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said, according to News 18, a network co-owned by CNN.

The government will pay $2,500 to the families of the deceased and $563 to those of the injured, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said while noting that he was “pained by the stampede.”

Ekadashi means 11 in English and corresponds to the 11th day of every fortnight in the Hindu Lunar Calendar. During the holiday, devotees fast and offer prayers to Lord Vishnu.

This was the third stampede this year in India.

On April 30, seven people died and six were injured when a newly constructed rain-soaked wall at Sri Varaha Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy at Simhachalam temple in Visakhapatnam collapsed.

On Jan. 6, six people were killed and others injured in a stampede in Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh at a counter to distribute tickets for a special event at Lord Venkateswara temple at Tirumala.

Emmerdale may have aired a brutal and unexpected death on Thursday night, as one teen committed a violent act in self-defence as the County Lines plot escalated

Another death could be looming on Emmerdale, months on from multiple characters facing grim demises.

Thursday’s episode hinted a character had been killed off without warning, while another villager could face a grim fate too. A character was attacked with a glass bottle, and left lifeless and bleeding in dramatic scenes.

There was also concern for missing teenager Dylan Penders who had not been seen since another run-in with villain Ray Walters. As for the possible death victim, newcomer Callum was attacked in self-defence by teenager April Windsor.

She was left shaken when she saw Callum slumped on the bed after she hit him, with blood pouring from his head. He looked dead if not seriously injured, while fans will have to tune in on Friday to find out his fate.

READ MORE: Coronation Street star reveals favourite’s return and teases mystery new characterREAD MORE: Emmerdale fans fume over ‘invisible’ character: ‘How has no one noticed?’

He had just forced himself on April, attempting to rape her after she tried to flee the room they were in. She’d been sent there by Ray and evil Celia, who are heading up a dangerous drugs scheme which April and Dylan have been drugged into.

Convincing April and Dylan they are in serious debt, Ray and Celia have made it clear that they expect 16-year-old April to have sex with their clients to pay the money back, and to keep their clients returning. The grim storyline has also seen the pair getting closer to other villagers linked to April to put on the pressure.

April is terrified, and reluctantly agreed to meet with client Callum knowing he was paying Ray and Celia to sleep with her. As the episode went on, a scared April decided she didn’t want to go through with it.

Callum turned on her though, claiming he didn’t care what she did or didn’t want and he was “gonna do it anyway”. He then warned her there was no escape as he’d locked them both in.

As he began to undress the teenager, April freaked out and pushed him away only for him to grab her. As she managed to get him off, she picked up the vodka bottle and slammed it over his head.

Callum landed on the bed lifeless, with blood pouring out from his head. April gasped as she watched on terrified, but has she killed him? If she has, how will Celia and Ray react?

It comes as Mark Charnock, who plays April’s father Marlon Dingle, teased a massive twist is on the way. He said something that happens in a special episode with April and Marlon left him “thrown”.

Emmerdale airs weeknights at 7:30pm on ITV1 and ITVX, with an hour-long episode on Thursdays. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

Israel’s military has carried out another deadly attack in northern Gaza despite claiming to resume the fragile ceasefire, which was already teetering from a wave of deadly bombardment it waged the night before.

Israel’s latest aerial attack on Wednesday evening occurred in Gaza’s Beit Lahiya area, killing at least two people, according to al-Shifa Hospital. Israel claimed it had targeted a site storing weapons that posed “an immediate threat” to its troops.

The attack adds further uncertainty to Gaza’s fragile ceasefire, which was shaken by the fiercest episode of Israeli bombardment on Tuesday night since it entered into force on October 10.

Following the reported killing of an Israeli soldier in southern Gaza’s Rafah on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “powerful” retaliatory strikes on Gaza. The resulting attacks killed 104 people, mostly women and children, said Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel claimed its strikes targeted senior Hamas fighters, killing dozens, and then said it would start observing the ceasefire again mid-Wednesday.

United States President Donald Trump insisted the ceasefire “is not in jeopardy” despite the latest attacks.

Regional mediator Qatar expressed frustration over the violence, but said mediators are still looking towards the next phase of the truce, including the disarmament of Hamas.

‘Calm turned into despair’

In Gaza, the renewed attacks have retraumatised a population desperate to see an end to the two-year war, said Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza City, Hani Mahmoud.

“A brief hope for calm turned into despair,” said Mahmoud. “For a lot of people, it’s a stark reminder of the opening weeks of the genocide in terms of the intensity and the scale of destruction that was caused by the massive bombs on Gaza City.”

Khadija al-Husni, a displaced mother living with her children at a school in Gaza’s Shati refugee camp, said the latest attacks came just as people had “started to breathe again, trying to rebuild our lives”.

“It’s a crime,” she said. “Either there is a truce or a war – it can’t be both. The children couldn’t sleep; they thought the war was over.”

Don’t let peace ‘slip from our grasp’, says UN

On Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the UN chief strongly condemned “the killings due to Israeli air strikes of civilians in Gaza” the day before, “including many children”.

UN rights chief Volker Turk also said the report of so many dead was appalling and urged all sides not to let peace “slip from our grasp”, echoing calls from the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union for the parties to recommit to the ceasefire.

Hamas, for its part, denied its fighters had any “connection to the shooting incident in Rafah” that killed an Israeli soldier and reaffirmed its commitment to the ceasefire.

However, it said it would postpone transferring the remains of a deceased captive due to Israel’s latest truce violations, further fuelling Israeli claims that the group is stalling the captive handover process. Hamas warned any “escalation” from Israel would “hinder the search, excavation and recovery of the bodies”.

Israel, meanwhile, officially barred Red Cross representatives from visiting Palestinian prisoners, claiming such visits could pose a security threat.

Hamas said the ban, which was already effectively in place during the war in Gaza, violates the rights of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and “adds to a series of systematic and criminal violations they are subjected to”, including killing, torture and starvation.

The Elders, a group of respected former world leaders, called on Wednesday for the release of one of those Palestinian prisoners – Marwan Barghouti. The Palestinian leader continues to be held by Israel despite Hamas including him in its list of prisoners for release as part of the ceasefire deal.

Israel has refused to release Barghouti, who is often referred to as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela.

Barghouti is serving several life sentences for what Israel says is involvement in attacks against civilians – a claim he denies.

“Marwan Barghouti has been a long-term advocate for a two-state solution by peaceful means, and is consistently the most popular Palestinian leader in opinion polls,” The Elders said in a statement, calling on US President Donald Trump to ensure the release of Barghouti.

“We condemn the ill-treatment, including torture, of Marwan Barghouti and other Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are arbitrarily detained,” The Elders added. “Israeli authorities must abide by their responsibilities under international law to protect prisoners’ human rights.”

Israeli drone attack close to the southern city of Khan Younis kills at least 2 people despite ceasefire.

Hamas has handed over the remains of another dead captive to Israel, hours after an Israeli drone attack in southern Gaza killed two Palestinians amid a fragile ceasefire.

The Israeli military said on Monday that the Red Cross had taken custody of the coffin and was in the process of transporting it to the army’s troops in Gaza.

Under the terms of a United States-brokered ceasefire that took effect on October 10, Hamas has undertaken to return the bodies of all the 28 deceased captives. The remains of 16 had been handed over as of Monday.

The 20 surviving captives were freed on October 13 as part of the truce.

The release of the latest body comes as the families of some of the captives called on the Israeli government to pause the ceasefire if Hamas fails to locate and hand over the bodies.

“Hamas knows exactly where every one of the deceased hostages is held,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.

“The families urge the government of Israel, the United States administration and the mediators not to advance to the next phase of the agreement until Hamas fulfils all of its obligations and returns every hostage to Israel,” the association added.

The statement echoed the Israeli government’s claim that Hamas knows where the remains are.

On Saturday, Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said there were “challenges” in locating the captives’ bodies because “the occupation has altered the terrain of Gaza”.

He suggested that some of those who had buried the bodies had been killed during the war, while others had forgotten the burial locations.

The day after al-Hayya’s comments, Israel permitted an Egyptian technical team to enter Gaza to help with the task of finding the bodies. The search involves the use of excavator machines and trucks.

Despite the ceasefire, an Israeli drone attack close to the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis killed at least two people on Monday, according to Nasser Hospital.

In total, eight Palestinians have been killed and another 13 injured in Israeli attacks across the enclave over the last 48 hours, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Monday. At least 68,527 people have died and 170,395 have been injured since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, it added.

Speaking on board Air Force One on Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that Israel had not violated the truce through its strike against a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group on Saturday.

“We don’t view that as a violation of the ceasefire,” he said, accusing the target of planning an attack on Israeli troops.”They have the right if there’s an imminent threat to Israel, and all the mediators agree with that.”

In the more than two weeks since the truce began, about 473,000 people have returned to northern Gaza, where they face widespread destruction of property and critical shortages of basic necessities like food and water, according to the United Nations.

Younis al-Khatib, the head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, has warned that Gaza’s population still faces the same desperate humanitarian emergency as it did before the truce.

“Rebuilding human beings is more difficult than rebuilding destroyed homes,” he said during meetings with Norway’s prime minister and foreign minister in Oslo, noting that residents would need mental health care for years to come.

The World Health Organization also warned that the number of Palestinians in Gaza who need mental health support had risen from about 485,000 to more than one million after two years of Israel’s war.

Almost all the children in the enclave need such help, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, which has said that Gaza has been “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child” over the last two years.

Tess Ingram, the group’s spokesperson in Gaza, explained that this is because of the “sheer number of children who’ve been killed and injured, displaced, separated from their families [or] who have lost a loved one”.

“A classroom of children was killed every single day for two years in this conflict, and the scars of what the children have endured will last for many, many years to come,” Ingram told Al Jazeera, speaking from the al-Mawasi area in the south.

A Russian drone has killed two Ukrainian journalists and wounded another in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, according to their outlet and the regional governor of the Donetsk region.

Freedom Media, a state-funded news organisation, said on Thursday that Olena Gramova, 43, and Yevgen Karmazin, 33, had been killed by a Russian Lancet drone while in their car at a petrol station in the industrial city. Another reporter, Alexander Kolychev, was hospitalised after the attack.

The Donetsk regional governor earlier announced details of the strike and posted images showing the charred remains of the journalists’ car, according to the AFP news agency.

Freedom Media said that Gramova, a native of Yenakiieve in the Donetsk region, had originally trained as a “finance specialist”, but turned to journalism in 2014, the year when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, and started arming a separatist movement in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas.

Karmazin was born in Kramatorsk, also in Donetsk. The outlet said he “joined Ukraine’s international broadcasting channels as a cameraman in 2021”.

“From day one, they were there, covering evacuations, war crimes, soldier stories,” said the Kyiv Post in a post on X.

A Russian Lancet drone tore through Kramatorsk, killing Ukrainian journalist Olena Hubanova and cameraman Yevhen Karmazin as they documented the war from the front lines.

From day one, they were there — covering evacuations, war crimes, soldier stories.

Now they’re gone. pic.twitter.com/TNTN8H7nFd

— KyivPost (@KyivPost) October 23, 2025

Kramatorsk, which had a pre-war population of about 150,000 people, is one of the few remaining civilian hubs in the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control.

Russian forces are approximately 16 kilometres (10 miles) from the city, where officials earlier this month announced the mandatory evacuation of children from some parts of the town and outlying villages.

Record numbers of journalists killed in conflict

The proliferation of cheap but deadly drones used both by Russian and Ukrainian forces has made reporting from the front-line regions of Ukraine increasingly dangerous.

Earlier in October, French photojournalist Antoni Lallican was killed by a drone near the eastern city of Druzhkivka, located in the Donetsk region.

Lallican had been killed by a “targeted strike” from a first-person-view drone, which allows operators to see their target before striking, according to Ukrainian forces cited by the European Federation of Journalists.

Precise tolls of journalists killed since the war started in 2022 vary. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists says that 17 journalists – Ukrainian and international – have been killed so far. The deaths of Gramova and Karmazin would bring that total to 19.

UNESCO said earlier this month that at least 23 media workers have been killed on both sides of the front line, including three Russian state media journalists in March. In mid-October, Russian war correspondent Ivan Zuyev was killed by a Ukrainian drone strike in the southern Zaporizhia region, according to state news agency RIA.

Recent years have seen record numbers of journalists killed in conflicts, the toll disproportionately accelerated by deaths in Gaza, where Israeli forces have deliberately targeted media workers like Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif and Mohammad Salama, Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, and Mariam Abu Daqqa, a freelance journalist working for AP.

Again, reports on deaths since the start of the two-year Gaza war differ. The United Nations said that 242 journalists had been killed by August this year. A tally by Shireen.ps, a monitoring website named after murdered Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, said Israeli forces had killed more than 270 journalists and media workers over the same period.

​​Either way, more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in the United States Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project.

Two buses travelling in opposite directions on the Kampala-Gulu Highway collided head-on while overtaking.

At least 63 people have been killed in a major road accident involving multiple vehicles on the highway between Uganda’s capital Kampala and the northern city of Gulu, police have said.

The collision took place just after midnight [21:00 GMT on Tuesday] and was caused by two buses coming from opposite directions trying to overtake a truck and a car.

“In the process, both buses met head-on during the overtaking manoeuvres,” the Uganda Police Force said in a statement on X. “Sixty-three people lost lives, all occupants from involved vehicles.”

The police added that “as investigations continue, we strongly urge all motorists to exercise maximum caution on the roads, especially avoiding dangerous and careless overtaking, which remains one of the leading causes of crashes in the country”.

Those travelling in the truck and the car were injured and taken to Kiryandongo Hospital and other nearby medical facilities, the statement said. It did not give further details on the number injured or the extent of their wounds.

The Kampala-Gulu Highway is one of Uganda’s busiest as it connects the capital with the biggest town in northern Uganda.

A tornado ripped through about 10 districts north of Paris, killing at least one person when several cranes toppled at a construction site.

Gaza Government Media Office says Israel has breached the truce agreement 80 times, including 21 violations on Sunday.

‘They are torn to pieces, I don’t know if I’m saying goodbye to my son or my daughter.’ Palestinians are grieving 11 members of a family killed by Israeli forces in Gaza City, the deadliest single violation of the shaky ceasefire, just days after it came into effect.

Strike on civilian vehicle by Israeli military in Gaza City marks deadliest violation of eight-day ceasefire with Hamas.

Israeli forces have killed 11 members of a Palestinian family in Gaza, the deadliest single violation of the fragile ceasefire since it took effect eight days ago.

The attack happened on Friday evening when a tank shell was fired by Israeli forces at a civilian vehicle carrying the Abu Shaaban family in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, according to Gaza’s civil defence.

Seven children and three women were among those killed when the Israeli military fired on the vehicle as the family attempted to reach their home to inspect it, civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said in a statement.

“They could have been warned or dealt with differently,” Basal said, adding that “what happened confirms that the occupation is still thirsty for blood, and insists on committing crimes against innocent civilians.”

Hamas condemned what it called a “massacre” and said the family was targeted without justification. The group called on United States President Donald Trump and mediators to pressure Israel to respect the ceasefire agreement.

In that attack, Israeli soldiers opened fire on people who crossed the so-called “yellow line”, the demarcation to which Israel’s military was supposed to pull back under the ceasefire terms.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Gaza, said many Palestinians lack internet access and are unaware of where Israeli forces remain positioned along the demarcation lines, putting families at risk.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has said that the yellow lines in Gaza will be soon marked out for clarity.

Israeli forces remain in control of approximately 53 percent of Gaza, Khoudary said.

As the exchange of captives for Palestinian prisoners under the provisions of the deal has continued, Israel has killed at least 28 Palestinians, and heavily restricted the flow of desperately needed aid, including food and medical supplies.

Last week, Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in the Shujayea neighbourhood, also in Gaza City.

Israel has continued to seal the Rafah crossing with Egypt and blocked other key border crossings, preventing large-scale aid deliveries into the enclave.

The United Nations warned this week that aid convoys are struggling to reach famine-hit areas, with 49 percent of people accessing less than six litres of drinking water per day – well below emergency standards.

The World Food Programme said it has brought an average of 560 tonnes of food daily into Gaza since the ceasefire began, far below what is needed to address widespread malnutrition and prevent famine.

Hamas has said it remains committed to the ceasefire terms, including returning the remains of Israeli captives still under Gaza’s rubble.

The group handed over the body of another captive on Friday evening, bringing the total to 10 since the truce began. Hamas said it needs heavy machinery and excavation equipment to retrieve more remains, but Israel has blocked their entry.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said by blocking heavy equipment and machinery from entering, Israel is creating “a challenge for the residents of Gaza who are experienced and have the expertise to search and to dig out bodies from under the rubble” with that type of equipment.

The bus, travelling from the Eastern Cape to Zimbabwe and Malawi, tumbled down a steep embankment.

A bus has crashed in a mountainous region in the north of South Africa, killing at least 42 people.

The vehicle veered off a steep mountain road on the N1 highway near the town of Makhado in Limpopo province on Sunday evening, before tumbling down an embankment and landing upside down.

The vehicle was travelling from Gqeberha in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province to Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Emergency crews worked through the night to pull victims from the wreckage and transport survivors to nearby hospitals.

More than 30 injured passengers received medical treatment. Authorities said some people may still be trapped inside the overturned bus.

According to public broadcaster SABC, the dead included 18 women, 17 men and seven children.

A 10-month-old baby was among the victims, Violet Mathy, a transport official for the Limpopo province, told Newzroom Afrika.

The road, a major highway connecting South Africa to Zimbabwe, remained closed in both directions on Monday as rescue operations continued.

Limpopo Premier Phophi Ramathuba visited the crash site before meeting survivors in hospital.

“Losing so many lives in one incident is painful beyond words,” she said, offering condolences to families in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Authorities are investigating what caused the driver to lose control, with initial assessments pointing to possible fatigue or mechanical failure as potential factors.

The provincial government is providing counselling support to survivors while working with diplomatic missions from Zimbabwe and Malawi to assist bereaved families.

South Africa’s roads are among the most dangerous in the world, with thousands of people dying in crashes each year.

Long-distance buses carrying migrant workers between countries in Southern Africa are frequently involved in serious accidents on the region’s highways.

Oct. 12 (UPI) — Dozens of soldiers are dead following clashes along the Pakistani-Afghan border Saturday night into Sunday morning.

An attack by the Afghan Taliban on Pakistani military installations prompted the heavy exchange of military fire after Afghan troops opened fire along the northwest border and took control of several of the military posts, officials said.

The attacks followed alleged Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan territory, which included targets in Kabul, the capital earlier in the week.

Pakistan responded Sunday with gunfire and ground raids on Taliban posts at the border.

The Pakistani military said 23 soldiers were killed and at least 29 more wounded in the fighting. Officials said 200 Taliban-backed Afghan terrorists were killed in retaliatory strikes, and that Pakistani forces had dismantled Afghan terrorist training camps.

A spokesperson for Afghanistan‘s Taliban government said Sunday that a “significant amount” of Pakistani weapons had been recovered by Taliban forces in the clash.

The latest spasm of deadly violence marks the sharpest uptick in tensions between the Taliban and Pakistan in months, and surface amid Islamabad’s allegations that Afghanistan is harboring armed militants in Pakistan.

Oct. 12 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached America, making his first landing in the New World on one of the Bahamas Islands. Columbus thought he had reached India.

In 1810, the citizens of Munich were invited to join in celebrating the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen in what would become the first Oktoberfest.

In 1915, British nurse Edith Cavell, 49, was executed by a German firing squad in Brussels for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium in World War I.

In 1933, the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island, otherwise known as The Rock, was acquired by the United States Department of Justice. Less than a year later, the prison would become home to some of the country’s most notorious criminals.

Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI

In 1945, President Harry Truman awarded the Medal of Honor to Desmond T. Doss, the first conscientious objector to receive the honor. Doss was the subject of Hacksaw Ridge, a 2016 movie starring Andrew Garfield.

In 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev removed one of his shoes and pounded it on his desk during a speech before the United Nations.

In 1964, the Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 into orbit around Earth, with three cosmonauts aboard. It was the first spacecraft to carry a multi-person crew and the two-day mission was also the first orbital flight performed without spacesuits.

In 1973, U.S. President Richard Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald Ford of Michigan for the vice presidency to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned two days earlier.

In 1984, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped injury in the bombing of a hotel in Brighton, England. Four people were killed in the attack, blamed on the Irish Republican Army.

In 1992, an earthquake near Cairo killed more than 500 people and injured thousands.

In 1998, University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay man, died six days after he was beaten, robbed and left tied to a fence. The U.S. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is often called the “Matthew Shepard Act.”

In 2000, 17 sailors were killed and 39 injured in an explosion on the USS Cole as it refueled in Yemen. U.S. President Bill Clinton blamed the attack on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

UPI File Photo

In 2001, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to bring peace to the world and his work against AIDS and poverty.

In 2002, terrorist bombings near two crowded nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali killed more than 200 people.

In 2010, the U.S. government lifted a ban on deep-water oil and natural gas drilling for companies that obey stricter rules aimed at avoiding a repeat of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2016, CoverGirl announces its first male model, James Charles. The 17-year-old high school senior caught the attention of the makeup brand through his popular Instagram account.

In 2019, California became the first state in the United States to ban the sale of new fur products.

In 2022, a Connecticut jury ordered Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay nearly $1 billion to the families of eight Sandy Hook shooting victims and an FBI agent who responded to the 2012 massacre for spreading lies and calling the attack a hoax.

File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI

Footage shows rescue dogs and workers combing through debris after a building collapse in central Madrid killed four people, including three construction workers and an architect. The six-story building was being converted into a hotel. Several people were also injured.

The attack by the paramilitary on the hospital wounded 17 others, and is the second such attack in 24 hours.

At least 12 people have been killed and 17 were wounded when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) shelled a hospital in Sudan’s North Darfur state, medical sources said.

A female doctor and a nursing staff member were among the injured in the attack on the el-Fasher Hospital, the Sudan Doctors Network said in a statement on Wednesday.

The medical group said the RSF “directly bombed” the facility. It alleged the attack was a “full-fledged war crime” and showed “a complete disregard for the lives of civilians and international laws that protect health facilities and their workers”.

The group held the RSF “fully responsible” for the attack and appealed to the international community and the United Nations Security Council to take immediate action to stop attacks on health facilities and civilian homes and to protect the devastated health system in the besieged city.

The hospital is one of the last functioning health facilities in the city, with most repeatedly bombed and forced to shut.

Two medical sources confirmed Wednesday’s attack, which was the second on the hospital within 24 hours, after eight people were killed in an attack on a maternity ward on Tuesday.

The RSF is pressing a fierce assault on el-Fasher in an attempt to wrest control of the city away from its rivals, the regular Sudanese army.

Since April 2023, the war between the two forces has killed tens of thousands, displaced some 15 million and pushed nearly 25 million people into acute hunger, according to UN figures, triggering what has widely been described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Some activists say el-Fasher, the last state capital in the vast western Darfur region to elude the paramilitary’s grasp, has become “an open-air morgue” for starved civilians.

The RSF has imposed a blockade on el-Fasher since May 10, 2024, despite international warnings about the dangers to the city, a hub for humanitarian operations in the five Darfur states.

Nearly 80 percent of households in need of medical care in el-Fasher are unable to access it, according to the UN.

Exhausted medical teams are already scrambling to treat the injured amid daily attacks on the city.

Nearly 18 months into the RSF’s siege, the city – home to 400,000 trapped civilians – has run out of nearly everything. The animal feed families have survived on for months has grown scarce and now costs hundreds of dollars a sack.

The majority of the city’s soup kitchens have also been forced shut for lack of food, according to local resistance committees, volunteer groups that coordinate aid.

More than one million people have fled el-Fasher since the start of Sudan’s civil war, with the exodus dramatically escalating as the RSF has increased attacks following its loss of control of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, earlier this year.

Oct. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. military has killed a senior member of an Al-Qaida-affiliated terrroist group in Syria, U.S. Central Command said Tuesday.

Muhammad Abd-al-Wahhab al-Ahmad was killed Thursday in a U.S. CENTCOM airstrike, the exact location in Syria was not made public.

“U.S. forces in the Middle East remain postured to disrupt and defeat efforts by terrorists to plan, organize and conduct attacks,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in a statement.

“We will continue to defend our homeland, warfighters, allies and partners throughout the region.”

CENTCOM identified al-Ahmad as an “attack planner” with Ansar al-Islam, a military group designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States in March 2004.

According to the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations think tank, Ansar al-Islam, meaning Supporters of Islam, is a militant Islamic Kurdish separatist movement that seeks to reshape Iraq as an Islamic state and was reportedly formed in 2001 with support from al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

The air strike comes a little under two months since CENTCOM forces killed a senior ISIS member and key financier in a northern Syria raid on Aug. 19.

In late February, CENTCOM forces killed a senior military leader of the Al-Qaida-affiliated Hurras al-Din terrorist group in an airstrike in northwest Syria.