rescue

Kidnapping for ransom by armed groups and bandits has become a major crisis in Nigeria.

More than 300 people who had been kidnapped across Nigeria have been freed in an intelligence and security operation, the government has announced.

“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu warmly welcomes the successful rescue of 308 Nigerian citizens who were abducted in different attacks in Niger and Kwara states,” Bayo Onanuga, a special adviser to Nigeria’s president, said in a statement.

The statement said that 163 of those rescued were abducted from the Woro Community in Kaiama Local Government Area in Kwara State, and 145 were taken from Niger State.

“The victims were rescued from the Kainji Lake National Park Forest in New Bussa Local Government Area of Niger State”, according to the statement, as a result of a “coordinated, intelligence-driven operation”. The operation was carried out by the country’s National Counter Terrorism Centre, involving members of the armed forces, the police force and the Department of State Services.

“It was the largest rescue operation ever carried out on the same day by Nigeria’s joint security team,” the statement added.

The government in Kwara State, near the border with Benin, welcomed the rescue in a social media post, local channel Arise News reported.

“Kudos to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR, security forces, and everyone who played a role in this huge feat. We are grateful!”, said the Kwara government statement, announcing the release of those abducted during the February 3 attack on local communities in Kaiama.

At least 200 people were killed in the attack, when suspected Boko Haram-linked fighters launched a coordinated assault that lasted several hours, according to the Nigeria-based Punch website.

Kidnapping for ransom by criminal groups, Boko Haram-linked fighters and gangs known as bandits has become a major crisis in Nigeria, especially in areas with little state presence.

Soft targets, including schools, churches and mosques, particularly in vulnerable rural communities with limited state security, have been particularly at risk.

On January 18, 177 people were abducted from three churches in the village of Kurmin Wali in Kaduna State.

Last month, security services freed at least 40 students and teachers kidnapped in May from the southern state of Oyo.

In June, the president announced that the military had “neutralised” more than 13,000 “terrorists” in the past year. The army also said it had rescued 360 people abducted by Boko Haram, which has spread across parts of the country from Borno State, once considered the centre of its operations.

“The successful execution of this intelligence-led operation demonstrates the growing efficiency and collaboration among our security services. I commend our gallant men and women in uniform for their bravery and unwavering commitment to safeguarding Nigerian lives,” the president said in his latest statement.

At least 10 people have died and 17 remain trapped, including rescuers, after a suspected gas explosion caused a tunnel collapse at a hydropower project in northeast India.

July 19 (UPI) — Extensive search and rescue missions were underway in Peru’s mountainous central Andean highlands Sunday following a deadly 5.1 magnitude earthquake.

The Peruvian National Police said they were actively conducting search, rescue, emergency response and security operations in the Junin region after Saturday’s temblor, which had its epicenter in the Chongos Bajo district of Chupaca province, about 200 miles east of Lima.

More than 250 personnel from the Peru’s emergency services, K-9 and medical units, as well as other specialized teams, were also in the rugged highlands as the government issued a preliminary report of five dead, 21 injured and more than 300 affected by the quake.

It struck at 9:21 p.m. Saturday local time.

“I deeply regret the consequences of the earthquake that occurred in Junín,” Peruvian President-elect Keiko Fujimori said in a statement. “I express my most heartfelt condolences to the families of those who have passed away and my solidarity with those who have been affected.”

The national volunteer firefighting corps were similarly dispatched to the region to aid the National Police in search and rescue operations, debris removal, evacuations and pre-hospital care for those in the hardest-hit areas, the interior ministry said.

The health ministry, meanwhile, sent a brigade of specialists brigade to begin providing medical care to those affected, joining local teams already present in Junin.

“The Ministry of Health maintains continuous monitoring of the emergency and will continue to mobilize the human, logistical, and medical resources necessary to safeguard the lives and health of the affected population,” officials said.

A UK airline has lost its last chance at a rescue deal – more than eight months after entering administration.

The firm had suffered financial difficulties after the loss of a contract with KLM.

A potential rescue deal for Eastern Airlines, and its affiliated company Air Kilroe, has fallen through – leaving administrators unable to save the regional airline.

As a result, administrators RSM UK, are set to break up and sell the businesses’ assets separately, as revealed in new documents filed by the company.

A joint sale of Eastern and Air Kilroe was initially pursued as the companies had operated under a single business – before entering into administration in November last year.

The North Lincolnshire-based airline had flown routes across the UK, Ireland and Europe, and had been operating four aircraft for KLM Cityhopper in Europe.

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However, the abrupt loss of this contract in October last year plunged the company into severe financial difficulties.

At the time of collapse, RSM said “high fixed overheads” and its staff base had “ultimately proved too high to be sustainable”.

Jamie Miller, partner at RSM UK and joint administrator, added: “The unexpected and sudden termination of Eastern’s KLM contract, along with other economic factors, unfortunately left the directors with no choice but to appoint administrators.“

Now, all nine of the company’s aircraft fleet have been sold off to private buyers, as well as associated plane parts and components.

At its peak, the airliner provided 200 flights per day and employed around 330 staff members, the majority of which have now been made redundant.

Now just 16 employees remain, and are expected to stay on until the administration process is completed.

Known as one of the UK’s last regional airlines, the firm had run a weekday service between Wick John O’Groats Airport and Aberdeen, which was seen as an essential link for those living in the most northerly point on mainland UK.

Launched in 1997, the airliner also flew from bases in East Midlands, Jersey, Manchester, Southampton and Denmark – and even held eight summer slots at London Gatwick.

RSM has declined to comment.

England’s reaction was an explosion of celebration and sheer relief, a largely dreadful performance transformed into dramatic victory by their magnificent captain.

The celebration was for that place in the last 16.

The relief will have been Tuchel’s, who would surely have been unable to survive such embarrassment had England lost, irrespective of his contract extension.

Relief, too, for the Football Association, who placed such faith in the German and handed him the sole mission of winning this World Cup.

And it was all down to Kane.

Kane attracts superlatives and respect like a magnet. Every bit of it deserved – as proved by the stats left behind by his latest feat.

He now has five goals in this World Cup, as the race for the Golden Boot becomes a sprint between Kane, Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland and Lionel Messi, with Tuchel saying: “They are all sharks. They smell blood.”

Tuchel added: “These big guys at this World Cup, do they watch each other? And then they go ‘not with me, then I score, then I do a hat-trick, then you go’. What is going on? Crazy.

“Harry is so, so good. He’s our captain. He’s our leader. He decides football matches with unbelievable finishes and did it here twice. The second one was just a brilliant goal.”

Kane now moves above Pele to go joint sixth on the all-time World Cup scorers list with 13, and now has 84 goals for England, putting him level with legendary Hungarian Ferenc Puskas in ninth on all-time international scorers list.

He is the first England player to score twice in a World Cup knockout stage match since Gary Lineker against Cameroon in 1990. Kane has now scored five knockout stage goals at a World Cup. Only Lineker, with six, has scored more for England.

Most remarkably of all, he now has scored 72 goals in 62 games for club and country this season, with 11 for England and 61 for Bayern Munich.

Four days after twin quakes left 1,450 dead and nearly 69,000 missing in Venezuela, residents and volunteers say they feel abandoned by the government as they race to save lives from the rubble.

Drone footage from Catia La Mar in Venezuela’s La Guaira shows widespread destruction after twin 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes devastated the region. Authorities say at least 1,430 people have been killed, more than 3,200 injured and over 50,000 remain unaccounted for as rescue teams continue searching collapsed buildings for survivors.

Anger is mounting in Venezuela after the military barred citizens from entering zones devastated by Wednesday’s twin earthquakes. As Teresa Bo explains, thousands of people have travelled to help rescue victims, not trusting the government to save survivors in time.

At least 920 people are confirmed dead and more than 51,000 missing after two earthquakes struck Venezuela on Wednesday.

Rescuers are racing against time in Venezuela, three days after two powerful earthquakes struck, with at least 920 people confirmed dead and more than 51,000 still missing.

The twin, magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 quakes hit on Wednesday, devastating the coastal area around La Guaira, where authorities moved on Friday night to restrict access as traffic chaos began to hamper search efforts.

With a scarcity of government rescue teams, Venezuelans have become desperate in the hardest-hit areas, digging through rubble with their hands, with aid agencies warning the critical 72-hour survival window is closing fast.

Officials said anyone who wants to enter the area around La Guaira would now have to seek official permits, but provided few details of who would be allowed in.

People reported seeing few state rescue teams in the hardest-hit areas, despite authorities projecting an image of a robust government response.

“Each person saved is a miracle,” said Jorge Rodriguez, president of the National Assembly.

“We are not going to hide absolutely anything about the magnitude of this tragedy.”

Government forces distributed food and water to survivors in La Guaira, and Acting President Delcy Rodriguez said her government was mounting a full response during these “critical hours for rescuing people alive”.

She welcomed the arrival of international rescuers and humanitarian aid.

Rodriguez said La Guaira had been “militarised” and more help was on the way, even as residents said it was just a fraction of what they needed.

Rodriguez, the former vice president, took office in January after the United States captured and removed then-President Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuela has been facing economic disarray for more than a decade, and many people reject the legitimacy of the political movement Rodriguez represents.

‘People are still terrified to re-enter what were their homes’

The number of dead was expected to climb, as people reported tens of thousands of missing on independent digital databases.

Those figures likely included people who have been incommunicado due to the lack of phone signals, and some reports may be duplicates.

The number of injured was more than 3,300 as of midday Friday, and authorities said they had rescued 243 people.

The International Organization for Migration said up to 6.76 million people could be affected, some two million of them in Caracas alone.

The destruction was amplified by the quick succession of shallow quakes, experts said.

Loyce Pace, the International Red Cross regional director for the Americas, said “people are still terrified to re-enter what were their homes.”

Venezuelan authorities said 861 volunteers from Mexico, the US, El Salvador, Switzerland, Colombia and beyond were in the country, and more were coming from elsewhere.

Rescue workers in one Caracas neighbourhood say no help has arrived, two days after twin quakes tore through the city. Al Jazeera’s Noris Soto says aftershocks are making the search for survivors harder and rescue efforts are turning to the recovery of bodies.

The Senate Armed Services Committee believes that the U.S. Air Force is currently unable to support combat search and rescue (CSAR) operations “in a major contingency.” Legislators say they are concerned about the CSAR force structure after the Air Force trimmed its buy of HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters and also elected to transfer some of these aircraft to the so-called Air Force District of Washington (AFDW) mission set, as you can read about here. This comes on top of concerns that the HH-60W fleet isn’t well suited for the realities of a war in the Pacific while no better solution is being sought.

The Senate Armed Services Committee released a full copy of the proposed legislation earlier this week. In this, it states that it is “concerned about CSAR force structure” in the Air Force.

Up close with the HH-60W Combat Rescue Helicopter at Nellis AFB for The War Zone.

The importance of the Air Force CSAR mission, and the role of the HH-60W specifically, was underscored earlier this year when the type took part in efforts to rescue the crew of an F-15E Strike Eagle shot down in Iran.

Now, the committee points to the Air Force’s decision to truncate its buy of heavily modified HH-60Ws, followed by the transfer of 26 of these from CSAR units to the AFDW to replace UH-1N Twin Huey helicopters. AFDW uses these helicopters to support continuity of government plans, contingency response, homeland operations, and ceremonial honors in the National Capital Region. Under normal circumstances, the vast majority of AFDW missions involve VIP movements.

“The committee believes that these actions have left CSAR forces unnecessarily short of the forces needed to support CSAR operations in a major contingency,” the legislators say. The committee has now called upon the Secretary of the Air Force to conduct a study of CSAR requirements and capabilities, including HH-60Ws and HC-130J Combat King IIs, and provide a report briefing to Congress before the end of March 2027.

Until that study is completed, the committee has called upon the Secretary of the Air Force to avoid making any more changes in CSAR force structure.

The Air Force had once planned to replace its AFDW UH-1Ns with new MH-139A Grey Wolf helicopters, but revealed last year it was considering using HH-60Ws for this role instead. The Air Force’s proposed budget for the 2027 Fiscal Year confirmed that it was moving ahead with these plans.

As we have discussed in the past, the HH-60W will bring a substantial increase in speed, range, and payload capacity compared with the aging UH-1Ns now flying AFDW missions, while also outperforming the smaller, lighter MH-139 in each of those key metrics.

The Air Force’s current plan calls for development of the HH-60W AFDW variant to begin in Fiscal Year 2027, starting October 1, with the first aircraft entering modification the following fiscal year. Those reconfigured Jolly Green IIs would then begin replacing the increasingly outdated UH-1Ns assigned to the AFDW mission at Andrews Air Force Base (now part of Joint Base Andrews).

TWZ had previously raised the question of how the transfer of 26 HH-60Ws for the AFDW role might affect the operational capacity of the rest of the CSAR-focused fleet.

In particular, the Air Force has no plans to procure additional Jolly Green IIs despite the upcoming transfer.

As the Senate Armed Services Committee points out, the Air Force already decided to scale back HH-60W purchases, from an original program of record for 113 of the helicopters. The total planned fleet now stands at 91. This amounts to the CSAR fleet losing roughly 30 percent of its entire Jolly Green II fleet, the first of which began entering Air Force service in 2022.

The legislators point to the ongoing demand for CSAR capabilities, not just in lower-end conflicts such as the war with Iran, but especially in potential future high-end fights, such as one between the United States and China in the Pacific, where aircrew losses would be greater by an order of magnitude.

For years, TWZ has warned that the growing reach and sophistication of modern air defenses are calling into question the viability of traditional fixed-wing and helicopter CSAR missions. In a high-end conflict, especially against China in the Pacific, even stealth aircraft are expected to face significant risks inside contested airspace. The idea that a Black Hawk helicopter, no matter what is bolted onto it, is going to survive in that same environment is highly questionable, and that’s if it can even reach the rescue point at all. The distances involved in the Pacific are far greater than those in Europe or the Middle East, which the legacy CSAR fleet was largely optimized around.

Back in 2023, one of the Air Force’s senior procurement officers asserted that the HH-60W fleet would not be “particularly helpful in the Chinese area of operations” due to these reasons. The Air Force’s cuts to planned purchases of HH-60Ws reflected this reality, while other senior officials have acknowledged that the service will need to rethink how it carries out this critical mission in future wars. The issue is that the cuts didn’t result in other capabilities taking the HH-60W’s place, like uncrewed systems and tiltrotors. So now there is an emerging gap in CSAR capabilities, both in terms of new ones more aligned with the challenges of the Pacific and just any kind of CSAR capability at all. Turning a large portion of the HH-60W fleet into VIP transports certainly doesn’t help with problem.

For the time being, at least, the Air Force is heavily reliant upon its HH-60Ws, regardless of potential vulnerabilities. With orders for the Jolly Green II slashed, and more than two dozen examples slated to switch to another mission, it is perhaps not surprising that legislators want to know how the Air Force will be able to conduct CSAR in the future.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

A small plane crashed onto a highway in Laredo, Texas. Witnesses rushed to rescue passengers trapped inside the burning aircraft. Five people survived and one was reported killed.

May 26 (UPI) — Authorities in Laos were in a race against time and the weather Tuesday as day 7 of an operation to rescue seven people trapped in a flooded cave in a mineral-rich region north of the capital, Vientiane, came to a close.

The group, all locals, became trapped by landslides triggered by heavy rains on Wednesday after entering the remote cave, which is accessible only on foot, in the central province of Xaysomboun on a hunting and gold prospecting mission.

The landslides blocked the cave entrance and caused it to flood with muddy water.

The group have not been heard from since, but one person who managed to reach safety reported at least one area of the cave was not underwater and specialist cave rescue divers from neighboring Thailand who had joined the operation said they had found pockets of air.

“I’m confident that they are still alive because there is still air in the cave,” said Metta Tham Rescue head of operations Kengkard Bongkawong.

He said that with water levels still rising after torrential rain forced rescuers to retreat Sunday night, they were pumping water out 24 hours a day and placing fixed ropes inside for rescuers to follow.

“The route is not complicated but the problem is the space. It’s so narrow that we have to crawl and tilt to pass through; also the rocks are really sharp,” said Kengkard.

Kengkard took part in the dive operation in 2018 to rescue 12 members of a youth football team and their coach after they had been trapped for more than two weeks in a flooded cave in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province.

The Metta Tham Rescue team was joined at the site Monday by Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, and Thai cave diver Norrased Palasing, also both veterans of the Tham Luang cave rescue in 2018.

The rescue turned into a huge international operation involving 10,000 specialists, from cave rescue and medical experts to Elon Musk, who had his engineers develop a mini rescue. submersible.

The mini sub was never used but two divers, both former Thai Navy SEALS, were killed in the operation.