KANO, Nigeria: Two people including a British aid worker have been shot dead and four tourists abducted in an attack by armed gunmen on a holiday resort in northwestern Nigeria, police said on Sunday.
Police and aid agency Mercy Corps named the dead woman as Faye Mooney.
“Faye was a dedicated and passionate communications and learning specialist,” Chief executive Neal Keny-Guyer said in a statement posted on social media, adding that colleagues were “utterly heartbroken.”
Mooney had “worked with Mercy Corps for almost two years, devoting her time to making a difference in Nigeria,” Keny-Guyer added.
Gunmen stormed the Kajuru Castle resort, 60 kilometers (40 miles) southeast of Kaduna City at 11.40 p.m. (2240 GMT) on Friday, Kaduna state police spokesman Yakubu Sabo told reporters.
The Briton “was gunned down from the hill by the kidnappers who tried to gain entrance into the castle but failed,” Sabo said.
“They took away about five other locals but one person escaped,” he said.
A Nigerian man believed by local residents in Kajuru to be Mooney’s partner was also killed in the attack on the resort where a group of 13 tourists had arrived from Lagos, southwest Nigeria the police spokesman said.
In Kaduna and the wider northwest region, kidnapping for ransom has become an increasingly rampant, particularly on the road to the capital, Abuja, where armed attacks have thrived.
Kidnapping in Nigeria’s oil-rich south, has long been a security challenge, where wealthy locals and expatriate workers are often abducted.
Yet the problem has escalated in northern areas too, like Kaduna where criminal gangs made up of former cattle rustlers have been pushed into kidnapping after military crackdowns on cattle theft.
Kajuru is also flash point in the deadly conflict over increasingly limited land resources in Africa’s most populous country, between herders and farmers, predominantly across central and northern Nigeria.
The conflict has increasingly taken on ethnic and religious dimensions in the region, with the Fulani Muslim herders in conflict with Christian Adara farmers in Kajuru.
Tourists are rarely affected by the herder-farmer violence and Kajuru Castle resort has attracted many foreign and local visitors.
Yet police have struggled to thwart kidnappers in the region. The latest attack comes in a resort in northern Nigeria, particularly popular among foreign and well-to-do local tourists.
In January four western tourists — two Americans and two Canadians — were also abducted in Kaduna by gunmen in an ambush in which two of their police escorts were killed.
Earlier in April, recently re-elected President Muhammadu Buhari, ordered his most senior security chiefs to curb kidnapping in the region.
British aid worker, Nigerian man shot dead at resort, 4 tourists abducted
British aid worker, Nigerian man shot dead at resort, 4 tourists abducted
- Kidnapping in Nigeria’s oil-rich south, has long been a security challenge, where wealthy locals and expatriate workers are often abducted
- The conflict has increasingly taken on ethnic and religious dimensions in the region, with the Fulani Muslim herders in conflict with Christian Adara farmers in Kajuru
NATO chief hopeful of spending deal as meets allies in Rome
He joined foreign ministers and diplomats from Italy, France, Germany, Britain, Poland, Spain, Ukraine and the EU to discuss defense spending and their support for Kyiv, as Russia escalates its bombardments.
The meeting of the so-called “Weimar+” group comes ahead of a G7 summit in Canada on June 15-17, where allies will push US President Donald Trump to be more aggressive in punishing the Kremlin.
It will be followed by a NATO meeting in The Hague on June 24-25, where the focus will be reaching a deal that satisfies Trump’s demands to spend five percent of GDP on defense.
Rutte is urging NATO members to commit to 3.5 percent of GDP on direct military spending by 2032, and an additional 1.5 percent on broader security-related expenditure.
“We are discussing the final decisions we will take in The Hague. I’m pretty confident indeed... that we will get to a joint position, all 32 (members),” he told reporters heading into the talks in Rome.
He praised Trump’s efforts to reach a peace deal in Ukraine by talking directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying “he broke the deadlock” — even if the discussions are stalled.
Russia has fired record numbers of drones and missiles at Ukraine over recent weeks, escalating three years of daily bombardments as it outlines hard-line demands — rejected by Kyiv as “ultimatums” — to halt the war.
Rutte noted that Russia had sent a historian to talks in Istanbul, “explaining more or less that Ukraine is at fault here. I think that’s not helpful, but at least, step by step, we try to make progress.”
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, the meeting host whose country spends 1.5 percent of GDP on defense, said he was “very happy” with Rutte’s spending plan.
“For Italy it’s important to spend more but we need more time, 10 years, I think it is more or less possible to achieve this goal,” he said.
Air India plane with 242 on board crashes at India’s Ahmedabad airport
- The plane was reportedly a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, one of the most modern passenger aircraft
- It was headed to Gatwick airport in the United Kingdom when it crashed in a civilian area near the airport
NEW DELHI: An Air India plane headed to London with 242 people on board crashed minutes after taking off from India’s western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, the airline and police said, without specifying whether there were any fatalities.
The plane was headed to Gatwick airport in the UK, Air India said, while police officers said it crashed in a civilian area near the airport.
Aviation tracking site Flightradar24 said the plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, one of the most modern passenger aircraft in service.
“At this moment, we are ascertaining the details and will share further updates,” Air India said on X.
The crash occurred when the aircraft was taking off, television channels reported. One channel showed the plane taking off over a residential area and then disappearing from the screen before a huge cloud of fire rising into the sky from beyond the houses.
Visuals also showed debris on fire, with thick black smoke rising up into the sky near the airport.
They also showed visuals of people being moved in stretchers and being taken away in ambulances.
According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad airport, the aircraft departed at 1.39 p.m. (0809 GMT) from runway 23. It gave a “Mayday” call, signalling an emergency, but thereafter there was no response from the aircraft.
Flightradar24 also said that it received the last signal from the aircraft seconds after it took off.
“The aircraft involved is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with registration VT-ANB,” it said.
Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The last fatal plane crash in India involved Air India Express, the airline’s low-cost arm.
The airline’s Boeing-737 overshot a “table-top” runway at Kozhikode International Airport in southern India in 2020. The plane skidded off the runway, plunging into a valley and crashing nose-first into the ground.
Twenty-one people were killed in that crash.
London-bound Air India flight with more than 240 aboard crashes after takeoff from Ahmedabad, India
AHMEDABAD, India: An Air India passenger plane bound for London with more than 240 people on board crashed Thursday in India’s northwestern city of Ahmedabad, the airline said.
Visuals on local television channels showed smoke billowing from the crash site in what appeared to be a populated area near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city with a population of more than 5 million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.
Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multi-story buildings with water. Charred bodies lay on the ground.
“The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement.
Modi called the crash “heartbreaking beyond words.”
“In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected,” he said in a social media post.
The airline said the Gatwick Airport-bound flight was carrying 242 passengers and crew. Of those, Air India said there were 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.
Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation, told The Associated Press that Air India flight AI 171, a Boeing 787-8, crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes aftertaking off at 1:38 p.m. local time. He said 244 people were on board and it was not immediately possible to reconcile the discrepancy with Air India’s numbers.
All efforts were being made to ensure medical aid and relief support at the site, India’s Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu posted on X.
The 787 Dreamliner is a widebody, twin-engine plane. This is the first crash ever of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.
Boeing said it was aware of the reports of the crash and was “working to gather more information.”
The aircraft was introduced in 2009 and more than 1,000 have been delivered to dozens of airlines, according to the flightradar24 website.
Air India’s chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said at the moment “our primary focus is on supporting all the affected people and their families.”
He said on X that the airline had set up an emergency center and support team for families seeking information about those who were on the flight.
“Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with the families and loved ones of all those affected by this devastating event,” he said.
British Cabinet minister Lucy Powell said the government will provide “all the support that it can” to those affected by the crash.
“This is an unfolding story, and it will undoubtedly be causing a huge amount of worry and concern to the many, many families and communities here and those waiting for the arrival of their loved ones,” she told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
“We send our deepest sympathy and thoughts to all those families, and the government will provide all the support that it can with those in India and those in this country as well,” she added.
The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us. It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it. Have been in touch with Ministers and authorities who are working to assist those affected.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 12, 2025
Britain has very close ties with India. There were nearly 1.9 million people in the country of Indian descent, according to the 2021 UK census.
The last major passenger plane crash in India was in 2020 when an Air India Express Boeing-737 skidded off a hilltop runway in southern India, killing 21 people.
The worst air disaster in India was on Nov. 12, 1996, when a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight collided midair with a Kazakhastan Airlines Flight near Charki Dadri in Haryana state, killing all 349 on board the two planes.
The crash comes days before the opening of the Paris Air Show, a major aviation expo where Boeing and European rival Airbus will showcase their aircraft and battle for jet orders from airline customers.
Boeing has been in recovery mode for more than six years after Lion Air Flight 610, a Boeing 737 Max 8, plunged into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. Five months later, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing 157 passengers and crew members.
Shares of Boeing Co. tumbled nearly 9 percent before trading opened in the US.
Beijing hails improving Vatican ties after Pope Leo names first Chinese bishop
- China recognizes appointment of Joseph Lin Yuntuan as auxiliary bishop of Fuzhou, capital of eastern Fujian province
- The Vatican and China do not have formal diplomatic relations because the Holy See recognizes Taiwan
BEIJING: Beijing hailed on Thursday improving ties with the Vatican after the first appointment of a Chinese bishop under Pope Leo XIV, signaling the new pontiff’s support for a controversial accord on nominations struck by his predecessor.
The Holy See expressed “satisfaction” on Wednesday at the recognition by China of the appointment of Joseph Lin Yuntuan as auxiliary bishop of Fuzhou, capital of eastern Fujian province. The pope made the nomination on June 5.
Beijing’s foreign ministry said the naming of the first Chinese bishop under the new pope had “enhanced understanding and mutual trust through constructive dialogue” with the Vatican.
“China is willing to work together with the Vatican to promote the continuous improvement of China-Vatican relations,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a regular news briefing.
The Vatican and China do not have formal diplomatic relations because the Holy See recognizes Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own territory.
However, they agreed in a historic deal in 2018 to let both sides have a say in the naming of bishops in China, home to about 12 million Catholics.
The deal – the text of which has never been made public – has drawn criticism within the Church, with some seeing it as allowing the Communist Party government a stranglehold over China’s Catholics.
The deal was renewed several times as Pope Francis sought to make inroads for the Church in China, most recently in October 2024 for four years.
“With the joint efforts of both sides, the provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops has been smoothly implemented,” Lin Jian said.
Rescuers in South Africa search for the missing after floods leave at least 49 dead
- The missing included four high school students who were swept away when their bus was caught up in the floods near a river on Tuesday
- The floods hit early Tuesday after an extreme cold front brought heavy rain, strong winds and snow to parts of eastern and southern South Africa
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: Rescue teams began a third day searching for missing people Thursday after floods devastated parts of South Africa’s rural Eastern Cape province and left at least 49 dead.
Authorities said they expected the death toll to rise.
The missing included four high school students who were swept away when their bus was caught up in the floods near a river on Tuesday. Six students on the bus were confirmed dead, while three were rescued after clinging onto trees and calling out for help, according to the provincial government.
The floods hit the province early Tuesday after an extreme cold front brought heavy rain, strong winds and snow to parts of eastern and southern South Africa. Forecasters had warned about the damaging weather last week.
Eastern Cape provincial government officials said they believed people were still missing but did not give an exact number. They were working with families to find out who was still unaccounted for, they said.
On Wednesday, rescue teams brought bodies out of the water in blue body bags, while witnesses said many people had taken refuge on the top of buildings or in trees.
The floods centered on the town of Mthatha and its surrounding district, which is around 430 kilometers (267 miles) south of the east coast city of Durban.
Officials said at least 58 schools and 20 hospitals were damaged, while hundreds of families were left homeless after their houses were submerged under water or washed away by the floods. Critical infrastructure including roads and bridges has been badly damaged, Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane said.
He said it was one of the worst weather-related disasters his province had experienced.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced he had activated the National Disaster Management Center to help local authorities in the Eastern Cape, while national officials were expected to visit the province on Thursday.
