BREAKING: Plane skids off runway in South Korea, killing at least 120

AP – A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday after it skid off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy, killing at least 120 people, officials said, in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters.

The National Fire Agency said rescuers raced to pull people from the Jeju Air passenger plane carrying 181 people at the airport in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) south of Seoul. The Transport Ministry identified the plane as a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet and said the crash happened at 9:03 a.m. local time.

At least 120 people — 57 women, 54 men and nine others whose genders weren’t immediately identifiable — died in the fire, the South Korea fire agency said. The death toll is expected to rise further as the rest of the people aboard the plane remain missing about six hours after the incident.

Emergency workers pulled out two people, both crew members, to safety, and local health officials said they remain conscious. The fire agency deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to contain the fire, it said.

Footage of the crash aired by YTN television showed the Jeju Air plane skidding across the airstrip, apparently with its landing gear still closed, and colliding head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility. Other local TV stations aired footage showing thick pillows of black smoke billowing from the plane engulfed with flames.

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Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, told a televised briefing that rescue workers are continuing to search for bodies scattered by the crash impact. The plane was completely destroyed, with only the tail assembly remaining recognizable among the wreckage, he said.

Workers were looking into various possibilities about what caused the crash, including whether the aircraft was struck by birds that caused mechanical problems, Lee said. Senior Transport Ministry official Joo Jong-wan separately told reporters that government investigators arrived at the site to investigate the cause of the crash and fire.

Emergency officials in Muan said the plane’s landing gear appeared to have malfunctioned. The Transport Ministry said the plane was returning from Bangkok and its passengers include two Thai nationals.

Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, expressed deep condolences to the families of those affected by the accident through a post on social platform X. Paetongtarn said she had ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide assistance immediately.

Kerati Kijmanawat, the director of the Airports of Thailand, confirmed in a statement that Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 departed from Suvarnabhumi Airport with no reports of abnormal conditions in the airspace or on the runway.

Jeju Air in a statement expressed its “deep apology” over the crash and said it will do its “utmost to manage the aftermath of the accident.”

In a televised news conference, Kim E-bae, Jeju Air’s president, deeply bowed with other senior company officials as he apologized to bereaved families and said he feels “full responsibility” for the incident. Kim said the company hadn’t identified any mechanical problems in the aircraft following regular checkups and that he would wait for the results of government investigations into the cause of the incident.

Boeing said in a statement on X that it was in contact with Jeju Air and is ready to support the company in dealing with the crash.

“We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew,” Boeing said.

It’s one of the deadliest disasters in South Korea’s aviation history. The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when a Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board. In 2013, an Asiana Airlines plane crash-landed in San Francisco, killing three and injuring approximately 200.

Sunday’s accident was also one of the worst landing mishaps since a July 2007 crash that killed all 187 people on board and 12 others on the ground when an Airbus A320 slid off a slick airstrip in Sao Paulo and collided with a nearby building, according to data compiled by the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group aimed at improving air safety. In 2010, 158 people died when an Air India Express aircraft overshot a runway in Mangalore, India, and plummeted into a gorge before erupting into flames, according to the safety foundation.

The incident came as South Korea is embroiled into a huge political crisis triggered by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s stunning imposition of martial law and ensuing impeachment. Last Friday, South Korean lawmakers impeached acting President Han Duck-soo and suspended his duties, leading Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok to take over.

BREAKING: Plane skids off runway in South Korea, killing at least 120

AP

Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel

The last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza was forcibly evacuated by the Israeli military on Friday after dozens of people were reportedly killed in Israeli strikes targeting the area.

Medical staff, including the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, have also been detained, Gaza health officials said on Saturday.

The hospital director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, was among the first to report that about 50 people had been killed in Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital on Friday.

The IDF had said it was carrying out an operation in the area, alleging the hospital was a “Hamas terrorist stronghold”.

On Friday, patients at the hospital were forcibly moved to the nearby Indonesian Hospital which doctors warn is damaged and unsuitable due to a lack of power generators and water.

Eid Sabbah, head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan, told the BBC the military had ordered the evacuation around 07:00 on Friday, giving the hospital about 15 minutes to move patients and staff into the courtyard.

Israeli troops then entered the hospital and removed the remaining patients, he said.

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The IDF said it had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” before beginning the operation.

Seriously ill patients were moved to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, itself evacuated earlier in the week, which medics have described as non-functional.

“You can’t call it a hospital, it’s more of a shelter. It’s not equipped for patients,” Gaza’s deputy minister of health, Dr Abu-Al Rish, told the BBC on Friday.

Dr Sabbah, from Kamal Adwan Hospital, said: “It’s dangerous because there are patients in the ICU department in a coma and in need of ventilation machines and moving them will put them in danger.”

He had said critically ill patients needed to be moved in specialised vehicles.

The World Health Organization said the raid “has put this last major health facility in north Gaza out of service”.

“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” it posted on X on Friday.

Nadav Shoshani, international spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said in a post on Friday evening on X that a “small fire broke out in an empty building inside the hospital that is under control”.

This was when IDF troops were not inside the hospital, he said, adding that “after preliminary examination, no connection was found between IDF activity to the fire”.

The director of Kamal Adwan hospital had said on Friday that approximately 50 people had been killed, including five medical staff, in a series of Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital.

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The statement from Dr Hussam Abu Safiya said a building opposite the hospital was targeted by Israeli warplanes, leading to the death of a paediatrician and a lab technician, as well as their families.

He said a third staff member who worked as a maintenance technician was targeted and killed as he rushed to the scene of the first strike.

Two of the hospital’s paramedics were 500m (1,640ft) away from the hospital when they were targeted and killed by another strike, the statement continued, with their bodies remaining in the street with no-one able to reach them.

The Israeli military said on Friday morning that it was “unaware of strikes in the area of Kamal Adwan hospital” and was looking into the reports that staff had been killed.

Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia has been under a tightening Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October, when the military said it had launched an offensive to stop Hamas from regrouping there.

The UN has said the area is under a “near-total siege” as the Israeli military heavily restricts access of aid deliveries to an area where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain.

In recent days, the hospital’s administrators have issued desperate pleas appealing to be protected, as they say the facility has become a regular target for Israeli shelling and explosives.

Oxfam said that attempts by aid agencies to deliver supplies to the area since October had been unsuccessful because of “deliberate delays and systematic obstructions” by the Israeli military.

Additional reporting by Shaimaa Khalil

Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel

BBC

Trump asks Supreme Court to suspend law for TikTok ban

US President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief Friday urging the Supreme Court to pause a law that would ban TikTok the day before his January 20 inauguration if it is not sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance.

“In light of the novelty and difficulty of this case, the court should consider staying the statutory deadline to grant more breathing space to address these issues,” Trump’s legal team wrote, to give him “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution.”

Trump was fiercely opposed to TikTok during his 2017-21 first term, and tried in vain to ban the video app on national security grounds.

The Republican voiced concerns — echoed by political rivals — that the Chinese government might tap into US TikTok users’ data or manipulate what they see on the platform.

US officials had also voiced alarm over the popularity of the video-sharing app with young people, alleging that its parent company is subservient to Beijing and that the app is used to spread propaganda, claims denied by the company and the Chinese government.

Trump called for a US company to buy TikTok, with the government sharing in the sale price, and his successor Joe Biden went one stage further — signing a law to ban the app for the same reasons.

– Reversing course –

Trump has now, however, reversed course.

At a press conference last week, Trump said he has “a warm spot” for TikTok and that his administration would take a look at the app and the potential ban.

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Earlier this month, the president-elect met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

Recently, Trump told Bloomberg he had changed his mind about the app: “Now (that) I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok, because you need competition.”

“If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram — and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.”