While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Dec 27, 2024
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was waiting to board a flight at Yemen's Sana'a airport when it was hit by Israeli air strikes on Dec 26.
PHOTOS: REUTERS
Israel strikes multiple Houthi targets in Yemen, killing three
Israel struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen on Dec 26, including Sana’a International Airport, and Houthi media said three people were killed.
The head of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was about to board a plane at the airport when it came under attack. A crew member on the plane was injured, he said in a statement.
The Israeli military said that in addition to striking the airport, it also hit military infrastructure at the ports of Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib on Yemen’s west coast. It also attacked the country’s Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations.
Houthi-run Al Masirah TV said two people were killed in the strikes on the airport and one person was killed in the port hits, while 11 others were wounded in the attacks.
Three dead, four injured in Norway bus accident
A bus carrying several foreign tourists went off the road and ended up partially submerged in a lake near the Raftsundet strait that separates the Lofoten archipelago from the Norwegian mainland, killing three people and injuring four, police said on Dec 26.
“Many of the passengers on the bus were foreign nationals,” police said, adding that 58 people were impacted.
Passengers from eight countries were on board: China, France, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore and South Sudan.
Russia air defences downed Azerbaijan flight, say sources
Russian air defences downed an Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people, four sources with knowledge of the preliminary findings of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the disaster told Reuters on Dec 26.
Flight J2-8243 crashed on Dec 25 in a ball of fire near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, after diverting from an area of southern Russia where Moscow has repeatedly used air defence systems against Ukrainian drone strikes.
The Embraer passenger jet had flown from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, in Russia’s southern Chechnya region, before veering off hundreds of miles across the Caspian Sea.
Finland boards tanker suspected of causing outages
Finnish authorities on Dec 26 seized a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea on suspicion it caused the outage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia a day earlier, and that it also damaged or broke four internet lines.
The Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, was boarded by a Finnish coast guard crew that took command and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters, a coast guard official said at a press conference.
“From our side we are investigating grave sabotage,” said Mr Robin Lardot, director of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation.
Manmohan Singh, India’s reluctant prime minister, dies
Described as a “reluctant king” in his first stint as prime minister, the quietly spoken Manmohan Singh was arguably one of India’s most successful leaders.
The first Sikh in office, Dr Singh, 92, was being treated for age-related medical conditions and died after being taken to hospital following a sudden loss of consciousness on Dec 26.
He is credited with steering India to unprecedented economic growth and lifting hundreds of millions out of dire poverty. He went on to serve a rare second term.
