Australia, New Zealand step up efforts to aid tsunami-hit Tonga

A Planet SkySat image shows the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai two hours before its eruption in Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, Tonga, January 15, 2022. (REUTERS)
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Updated 17 January 2022
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Australia, New Zealand step up efforts to aid tsunami-hit Tonga

  • There are no official reports of injuries or deaths in Tonga as yet but communications are still limited and outlying costal areas remain cut off

WELLINGTON, New Zealand: New Zealand and Australia were able to send military surveillance flights to Tonga on Monday to assess the damage a huge undersea volcanic eruption left in the Pacific island nation.
A towering ash cloud since Saturday’s eruption had prevented earlier flights. New Zealand hopes to send essential supplies, including much-needed drinking water, on a military transport plane later Monday.
Communications with Tonga remained extremely limited. The company that owns the single underwater communications cable that connects the island nation to the rest of the world said it likely was severed in the eruption and repairs could take weeks.
The loss of the cable leaves most Tongans unable to use the Internet or make phone calls abroad. Those that have managed to get messages out described their country as looking like a moonscape as they began cleaning up from the tsunami waves and volcanic ash fall.
Tsunami waves of about 80 centimeters (2.7 feet) crashed into Tonga’s shoreline, and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described damage to boats and coastal shops.
No casualties have been reported on Tonga, although there were still concerns about people on some of the smaller islands near the volcano. The tsunami waves crossed the Pacific, drowning two people in Peru and causing minor damage from New Zealand to Santa Cruz, California.
Scientists said they didn’t think the eruption would have a significant impact on the Earth’s climate.
Huge volcanic eruptions can sometimes cause temporary global cooling as sulfur dioxide is pumped into the stratosphere. But in the case of the Tonga eruption, initial satellite measurements indicated the amount of sulfur dioxide released would only have a tiny effect of perhaps 0.01 Celsius (0.02 Fahrenheit) global average cooling, said Alan Robock, a professor at Rutgers University.
Satellite images showed the spectacular undersea eruption Saturday evening, with a plume of ash, steam and gas rising like a giant mushroom above the South Pacific waters.
A sonic boom could be heard as far away as Alaska and sent pressure shockwaves around the planet twice, altering atmospheric pressure that may have briefly helped clear out the fog in Seattle, according to the National Weather Service. Large waves were detected as far as the Caribbean due to pressure changes generated by the eruption.
Samiuela Fonua, who chairs the board at Tonga Cable Ltd. which owns the single cable that connects Tonga to the outside world via Fiji, said the cable appeared to have been severed about 10 to 15 minutes after the eruption. He said the cable lies atop and within coral reef, which can be sharp.
Fonua said a ship would need to pull up the cable to assess the damage and then crews would need to fix it. A single break might take a week to repair, he said, while multiple breaks could take up to three weeks. He added that it was unclear yet when it would be safe for a ship to venture near the undersea volcano to undertake the work.
A second undersea cable that connects the islands within Tonga also appeared to have been severed, Fonua said. However, a local phone network was working, allowing Tongans to call each other. But he said the lingering ash cloud was continuing to make even satellite phone calls abroad difficult.
He said Tonga had been in discussions with New Zealand about getting a second outside communications cable to ensure a more robust network but the nation’s isolated location made any solution difficult.
Ardern said the capital, Nuku’alofa, was covered in a thick film of volcanic dust, contaminating water supplies and making fresh water a vital need.
Aid agencies said thick ash and smoke had prompted authorities to ask people to wear masks and drink bottled water.
In a video posted on Facebook, Nightingale Filihia was sheltering at her family’s home from a rain of volcanic ash and tiny pieces of rock that turned the sky pitch black.
“It’s really bad. They told us to stay indoors and cover our doors and windows because it’s dangerous,” she said. “I felt sorry for the people. Everyone just froze when the explosion happened. We rushed home.” Outside the house, people were seen carrying umbrellas for protection.
Ardern said New Zealand was unable to send a surveillance flight over Tonga on Sunday because the ash cloud was 63,000 feet (19,000 meters) high.
One complicating factor to any international aid effort is that Tonga has so far managed to avoid any outbreaks of COVID-19. Ardern said New Zealand’s military staff were all fully vaccinated and willing to follow any protocols established by Tonga.
Dave Snider, the tsunami warning coordinator for the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, said it was very unusual for a volcanic eruption to affect an entire ocean basin, and the spectacle was both “humbling and scary.”
The US Geological Survey estimated the eruption caused the equivalent of a magnitude 5.8 earthquake. Scientists said tsunamis generated by volcanoes rather than earthquakes are relatively rare.
Rachel Afeaki-Taumoepeau, who chairs the New Zealand Tonga Business Council, said she hoped the relatively low level of the tsunami waves would have allowed most people to get to safety, although she worried about those living on islands closest to the volcano. She said she hadn’t yet been able to contact her friends and family in Tonga.
“We are praying that the damage is just to infrastructure and people were able to get to higher land,” she said.
Tonga gets its Internet via an undersea cable from Suva, Fiji. All Internet connectivity with Tonga was lost at about 6:40 p.m. local time Saturday, said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis for the network intelligence firm Kentik.
On Tonga, which is home to about 105,000 people, video posted to social media showed large waves washing ashore in coastal areas and swirling around homes, a church and other buildings. A Twitter user identified as Dr. Faka’iloatonga Taumoefolau posted video showing waves crashing ashore.
“Can literally hear the volcano eruption, sounds pretty violent,” he wrote, adding in a later post: “Raining ash and tiny pebbles, darkness blanketing the sky.”
The explosion of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai volcano, about 64 kilometers (40 miles) north of Nuku’alofa, was the latest in a series of dramatic eruptions. In late 2014 and early 2015, eruptions created a small new island and disrupted international air travel to the Pacific archipelago for several days.
Earth imaging company Planet Labs PBC had watched the island in recent days after a new volcanic vent began erupting in late December. Satellite images showed how drastically the volcano had shaped the area, creating a growing island off Tonga.
“The surface area of the island appears to have expanded by nearly 45 percent due to ashfall,” Planet Labs said days before the latest activity.
It’s too early to tell how much ash was produced by the eruption because the volcanic cloud included vapor resulting from sea water interacting with the hot magma, experts said.
The eruption in shallow water may be similar to a series of eruptions between 2016 and 2017 that shaped Bogoslof Island north of the Aleutian Islands, said Michelle Coombs, a scientist at the US Geological Survey’s Alaska Volcano Observatory.
“When it erupts in shallow sea water, that interaction between hot magma and sea water adds extra energy to the explosion and creates taller and bigger ash clouds,” Coombs said.
The ash cloud was drifting westward and aircrafts will be likely diverted around its periphery as a precaution, said Scott Bachmeier, a research meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
 


Regime change in Tehran? Putin says Iran is consolidating around its leaders

Updated 10 sec ago
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Regime change in Tehran? Putin says Iran is consolidating around its leaders

  • “We see that today in Iran, with all the complexity of the internal political processes taking place there...that there is a consolidation of society around the country’s political leadership,” Putin said

ST PETERSBURG, Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Iranian society was consolidating around the Islamic Republic’s leadership when asked by Reuters if he agreed with Israeli statements about possible regime change in Tehran.
Putin was speaking as Trump kept the world guessing whether the US would join Israel’s bombardment of Iranian nuclear and missile sites and as residents of Iran’s capital streamed out of the city on the sixth day of the air assault.
Putin said all sides should look for ways to end hostilities in a way that ensured both Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power and Israel’s right to the unconditional security of the Jewish state.
Asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that regime change in Iran could be the result of Israel’s military attacks and US President Donald Trump’s demand for Iran’s unconditional surrender, Putin said that one should always look at whether or not the main aim was being achieved before starting something.
“We see that today in Iran, with all the complexity of the internal political processes taking place there...that there is a consolidation of society around the country’s political leadership,” Putin told senior news agency editors in the northern Russian city of St. Petersburg.
Putin said he had personally been in touch with Trump and with Netanyahu, and that he had conveyed Moscow’s ideas on resolving the conflict.
He said Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facilities were still intact.
“These underground factories, they exist, nothing has happened to them,” Putin said, adding that all sides should seek a resolution that ensured the interests of both Iran and Israel.
“It seems to me that it would be right for everyone to look for ways to end hostilities and find ways for all parties to this conflict to come to an agreement with each other,” Putin said. “In my opinion, in general, such a solution can be found.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday
that Moscow was telling the United States not to strike Iran because it would radically destabilize the Middle East.
A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry also warned that Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclar facilities risked triggering a nuclear catastrophe.


US starts evacuating some diplomats from its embassy in Israel as Iran conflict intensifies

Updated 35 min 10 sec ago
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US starts evacuating some diplomats from its embassy in Israel as Iran conflict intensifies

  • Those warnings have increased as the conflict has intensified, with the embassy in Jerusalem authorizing the departure of nonessential staff and families over the weekend

WASHINGTON: The State Department has begun evacuating nonessential diplomats and their families from the US embassy in Israel as hostilities between Israel and Iran intensify and President Donald Trump warns of the possibility of getting directly involved in the conflict.
A government plane evacuated a number of diplomats and family members who had asked to leave the country Wednesday, two US officials said. That came shortly before US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee announced on X that the embassy was making plans for evacuation flights and ships for private American citizens.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive diplomatic movements.
“Given the ongoing situation and as part of the embassy’s authorized departure status, mission personnel have begun departing Israel through a variety of means,” the State Department said.
“Authorized departure” means that nonessential staff and the families of all personnel are eligible to leave at government expense.
There was no indication of how many diplomats and family members departed on the flight or how many may have left by land routes to Jordan or Egypt.
The evacuations, comments from the White House and shifting of American military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East have heightened the possibility of deepening US involvement in a conflict that threatens to spill into a wider regional war.
Trump has issued increasingly pointed warnings about the US joining Israel in striking at Iran’s nuclear program, saying Wednesday that he doesn’t want to carry out a US strike on the Islamic Republic but suggesting he is ready to act if it’s necessary.
The State Department also has steadily ramped up its warnings to American citizens in Israel and throughout the region, including in Iraq.
Last week, ahead of Israel’s first strikes on Iran, the department and the Pentagon put out notices announcing that the US embassy in Baghdad had ordered all nonessential personnel to leave and that the Defense Department had “authorized the voluntary departure of military dependents from locations across the Middle East.
Those warnings have increased as the conflict has intensified, with the embassy in Jerusalem authorizing the departure of nonessential staff and families over the weekend and ordering remaining personnel to shelter in place until further notice.
The embassy has been closed since Monday and will remain shut through Friday.


Iran says committed to diplomacy but acts in ‘self-defense’ against Israel

Updated 19 June 2025
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Iran says committed to diplomacy but acts in ‘self-defense’ against Israel

TEHRAN: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday his country has remained committed to “diplomacy” but will continue to act in “self-defense” following Israel’s surprise attack nearly a week ago.
“Iran solely acts in self-defense. Even in the face of the most outrageous aggression against our people, Iran has so far only retaliated against the Israeli regime and not those who are aiding and abetting it,” said Araghchi in a post on X.
“With the exception of the illegitimate, genocidal and occupying Israeli regime, we remain committed to diplomacy,” he added.


Putin says NATO rearmament not a ‘threat’ to Russia

Updated 17 min 30 sec ago
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Putin says NATO rearmament not a ‘threat’ to Russia

  • “We will counter all threats that arise. There is no doubt about that,” Putin said
  • The military alliance is pushing members to increase their defense spending to five percent of GDP

SAINT PETERSBURG: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that NATO’s push to ramp up defense spending was not a “threat” to Russia, as Moscow had all the weapons it needed to defend itself.
The military alliance is pushing members to increase their defense spending to five percent of GDP, under pressure from US President Donald Trump.
“We do not consider any rearmament by NATO to be a threat to the Russian Federation, because we are self-sufficient in terms of ensuring our own security,” Putin told reporters, including AFP, at a televised press conference in Saint Petersburg.
He added that Russia was “constantly modernizing our armed forces and defensive capabilities.”
Though he conceded higher spending by NATO would create some “specific” challenges for Russia, the Kremlin leader said it makes “no sense” for NATO members themselves.
“We will counter all threats that arise. There is no doubt about that,” he said.
Putin has cast his offensive in Ukraine as part of a wider conflict between Russia and NATO.
Kyiv is seeking security guarantees from NATO as part of any deal to end the fighting, more than three years after Russia ordered its full-scale military offensive.


Trump rebuffs Putin offer to mediate Iran-Israel truce

Updated 4 min 42 sec ago
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Trump rebuffs Putin offer to mediate Iran-Israel truce

  • “He actually offered to help mediate. I said, ‘Do me a favor, mediate your own’,” Trump said

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump appeared Wednesday to rebuff Vladimir Putin’s offer to mediate in the Israel-Iran conflict, saying the Russian president should end his own war in Ukraine first.

“I spoke to him yesterday and... he actually offered to help mediate, I said ‘do me a favor, mediate your own,’” Trump told reporters as he unveiled a giant new flag pole at the White House.

“Let’s mediate Russia first, okay? I said, Vladimir, let’s mediate Russia first, you can worry about this later.”

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov disputed the timing that Trump gave for the call.

“He (Trump) was speaking figuratively. Life is so eventful right now that looking back a few days is like looking back to yesterday,” Peskov told Russian state news agency TASS.

Trump and the Kremlin both previously said on Saturday that the two leaders had spoken that day, with the US president saying Putin had called to wish him a happy 79th birthday.

Later on Wednesday, Trump said a change in Iran’s government “could happen,” and also indicated that negotiations could be on the horizon, without giving details.

“They want to meet, they want to come to the White House — I may do that,” Trump told reporters.

Trump meanwhile insisted that the stalled peace talks to end the Ukraine war were “going to work out” despite Moscow stepping up attacks.

The US president had vowed to end the war within 24 hours of taking office and made a major pivot toward Putin, but talks have so far made little progress.

Trump described the Ukraine war, sparked by Russia’s invasion of its pro-Western neighbor in 2022, as “so stupid.”