标签： Europe

Just hours after a passenger ferry capsized in waters off the breakaway Turkish Cypriot coast, leaving at least eight people dead and 18 others unaccounted for, survivors shared harrowing firsthand accounts of chaos and panic as they fought to escape the sinking vessel on Monday.

The incident unfolded Sunday afternoon, when the ship carrying 267 passengers and crew departed Kyrenia – also called Girne in Turkish – the main northern Cypriot port, bound for the Turkish coastal town of Tasucu. Roughly 7.5 kilometers from the Cypriot shore, the vessel suddenly began to list and take on water after passengers reported hearing a series of loud bangs originating from lower decks. It ultimately capsized, triggering a massive cross-border rescue operation involving Turkish coast guard vessels, military assets, and local first responders from northern Cyprus.

Serkan Kunduraci, one of the passengers who survived by climbing through a cracked window to escape the sinking hull, described scenes of utter despair unfolding in the frigid water to Turkey’s DHA news agency. “I saw people who couldn’t swim drown right in front of me,” he said. “Some people were too panicked to even grab a life jacket, others jumped straight into the sea out of blind fear. We tried to pull an elderly man to safety, but we couldn’t reach him in time – he drowned too. We watched whole families, young boys and little girls, drown out in the open water.”

Kunduraci added that the crew initially downplayed the severity of the issue after inspecting the leak, telling passengers the problem was nothing more than a loose gasket. By the time the evacuation order was issued, widespread panic had already broken out. He explained that the captain attempted to steer the listing vessel back to Kyrenia port, but the tilt only grew steeper as more water flooded the hull. “There was screaming everywhere, and dozens of people were trapped in the rear of the ship, blocked by piles of other passengers who couldn’t get out,” Kunduraci said. “The people crushed underneath never made it out.”

Another survivor, Deniz Ozpolat, echoed those accounts of chaos, noting that crowds rushed the exits before anyone could issue clear directions. “We tried to get to the exit, but there was already a massive crush of people,” he told DHA. “We couldn’t find any life jackets, and at first the doors were shut on us, trapping us inside. When they finally opened, we jumped into the water. The ship tilted sharply and went down not long after. We had to break windows to pull other people out, and we saw whole families with small children stranded out in the water.”

Local rescuer Muhammed Ozcelik, who operates a nearby water sports company and was among the first responders to reach the capsized vessel, said his crew pushed their small boat far past its safe capacity to pull as many survivors from the water as possible. “We tried to do everything we could, more than we were able to,” Ozcelik said. “People were begging to be pulled aboard, shouting ‘take me too’, but our boat was already past capacity. We still took on as many as we could – everyone was fighting just to stay alive.”

Footage broadcast on Turkish media outlets showed survivors clad in bright orange life vests standing on the overturned hull of the ferry, which is owned by Turkish maritime operator Filo Denizcilik, waiting for rescue. Many survivors were later brought to shore aboard small local pleasure craft that joined the rescue effort.

Unal Ustel, prime minister of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus – a breakaway entity recognized only by Turkey – announced late Sunday that a full formal investigation into the disaster has been launched, and all eight crew members of the ferry have been taken into custody. “Every single detail of this incident will be probed thoroughly,” Ustel said. “Even the smallest act of negligence will be uncovered, and anyone found responsible for what happened will face consequences.”

Ustel added that Turkish authorities were providing full support for the ongoing search and recovery operation for the 18 missing passengers, and described the incident as the deadliest maritime disaster in the recorded history of Cyprus. This disaster comes amid the long-standing division of the island of Cyprus, which has been split along ethnic lines since a 1974 Turkish invasion. Turkish Cypriots declared independence in 1983, and Turkey maintains a deployment of more than 35,000 troops in the northern region.

A wave of coordinated Russian missile and drone attacks across Ukraine has targeted critical publishing infrastructure and iconic cultural heritage sites, leaving a trail of destruction that Ukrainian officials describe as a deliberate campaign to erase national identity.

On the outskirts of Kyiv, the charred, twisted wreckage of a major printing press offers a stark example of the damage. The facility was weeks away from delivering 1.3 million textbooks – 10% of Ukraine’s total annual schoolbook supply – when a Russian missile struck overnight amid a production ramp-up for the new academic year. Among the ash and rubble, a single scorched page from an English textbook survives as a haunting symbol: it reads, “My name is William, I’m from the UK. My grandmother lives in Nottingham. It’s a beautiful city.”

No materials have been salvaged from the site. Pages that escaped the fire were left waterlogged by firefighting efforts or damaged by exposure after the roof collapsed. Viktoria Haidai, commercial director of Ukrainian publisher Konvi, called the attacks a calculated strategy against Ukrainian statehood. “Over the past two months, some of the largest publishing houses have lost their logistics warehouses, where very large quantities of books were stored,” she explained. “The Russians are also destroying printing houses in an attempt to erase Ukraine as a nation. But frankly they will not succeed.”

Across the country, the scope of destruction to the publishing sector is staggering. Recent attacks have hit more than 35 publishing facilities, destroying 12 million finished books – accounting for one-third of all books printed in Ukraine so far this year, according to local media reports. The damage is not limited to new publications: Kyiv’s historic Pochaina second-hand book market, a beloved cultural gathering spot, was also struck, wiping out hundreds of independent vendor stalls and thousands of rare, out-of-print volumes.

Even before the embers cooled at the market, 28-year-old book blogger Liliya Velyka was sifting through the rubble, searching for anything she could rescue. Clutching a waterlogged science fiction novel, she summed up the grief of many Ukrainians: “Books are saving us and losing this is like losing our hearts.”

This campaign against cultural infrastructure extends far beyond the publishing sector. Museums, art galleries, film studios, public libraries, and opera houses across Ukraine have sustained damage in the attacks. One of the highest-profile targets is Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a sprawling medieval monastery complex and one of Ukraine’s most significant cultural landmarks, which was hit in a June drone attack. While religious artifacts were moved to safety ahead of the strike, a large portion of the Dormition Cathedral’s roof caught fire, damaging the structure’s iconic golden domes. Repair estimates put the cost at $11.2 million, with work expected to take two years to complete.

The monastery complex, which also houses Ukraine’s Museum of Books and Printing, was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1990, and marked as a World Heritage Site in Danger in September 2023. During recent celebrations marking the 975th anniversary of the monastery’s founding, UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany expressed profound sorrow over the damage and condemned the attacks. “UNESCO firmly condemns all attacks against cultural property protected under international law,” he told assembled dignitaries, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukraine’s Culture Minister Tetyana Berezhna drew a clear connection between military attacks on Ukraine and the deliberate targeting of cultural sites. “This is an existential war, so Russia wants to destroy us as a nation, to erase us as a nation, like Ukrainians do not exist and have never existed,” she said during a tour of the damaged cathedral with El-Enany. “That’s why Russia targets our cultural heritage, the symbols of our presence here for a long time. They understand that it’s very important for us because we protect our identity, we protect our culture, and Russia wants to ruin everything that it cannot appropriate.”

As of the latest reports, Berezhna confirmed that Russian forces have damaged more than 1,900 individual Ukrainian heritage sites and over 2,000 cultural institutions. To mitigate ongoing losses, the Ukrainian government has accelerated digitization efforts to preserve art, literature, and educational content, ensuring children can still access learning materials even as physical book stockpiles are destroyed. Industry leaders warn that the entire Ukrainian publishing sector is at risk of collapse without urgent international support.

For Haidai, the survival of publishing is non-negotiable for preserving Ukrainian identity. “The word is everything,” she said at the bombed-out Kyiv printing plant. “It is our development, our culture, and our historical heritage that is passed down from generation to generation.”

The targeting of cultural sites aligns with long-standing Russian rhetoric questioning the legitimacy of an independent Ukrainian state and culture. In a 2021 essay, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were “one people” and rejected the idea of a distinct Ukrainian national identity.

In response to requests for comment from the BBC, the Russian Embassy in the UK shifted blame to the Ukrainian government, claiming that Ukraine had already damaged its own cultural heritage by dismantling Soviet-era monuments and renaming streets. The embassy also repeated a common Russian claim that cultural sites have been used to conceal military equipment. The Kremlin has consistently denied deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure throughout five years of full-scale invasion, despite widespread documentation of missile and drone strikes on residential neighborhoods, public services, and cultural sites across Ukraine.

Deep in the Bavarian alpine countryside of southern Germany, under a rain-soaked, moonless sky, a team of Polish special forces slipped out of a dilapidated mock church structure on Friday. Silently advancing toward the distant tree line, with rugged hills rising behind them, the unit began the first ever Ukraine-inspired special operations exercise hosted by U.S. Army Green Berets for a NATO ally.

Developed just months ago and modeled directly on the real-world combat challenges Ukrainian forces have faced in their 4.5-year war against Russian invasion, the drill is designed to test elite troops’ ability to infiltrate enemy lines, cross hundreds of kilometers of contested territory, and execute a precision drone strike on a high-value enemy target. Originally created for U.S. special operations units, this exercise has only been run twice before in 2025, both times by separate Green Beret teams, making Poland’s participation a landmark step for NATO collective military training.

The Associated Press was granted rare, unrestricted access to the 3,000-square-kilometer training complex at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center Hohenfels, located roughly an hour southeast of Nuremberg. The multi-day scenario places Polish special forces against a U.S. Army airborne infantry unit cast in the role of enemy forces, which parachuted into the restricted training area to establish a fortified front line. If Polish troops successfully slip past the defensive line, they must traverse 100 kilometers of mixed terrain—including working German farms, populated villages, private and government surveillance cameras, and a mid-sized civilian town—to reach a second training site in Grafenwoehr, where they will destroy a simulated strategic target.

Every element of the drill is designed to replicate the risks of operating behind enemy lines, just as Ukrainian forces do in Russian-occupied territory. Unaware local German civilians act as an unscripted test of the special forces’ ability to blend into civilian populations: if troops are spotted and residents report suspicious activity to police, that intelligence is passed to opposing forces to track down the infiltrating team. “This is supposed to be Russia, and you’re going to stand out in Russia,” a senior enlisted special operations instructor told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity per U.S. military policy that prohibits public identification of special forces personnel. In prior iterations of the exercise, Green Beret trainees removed their military uniforms specifically to practice blending into civilian areas without being spotted.

Opposing forces also deploy a fleet of more than 100 surveillance drones to hunt for the infiltrating team. If the Polish unit is detected, the scenario assumes that the full “Russian arsenal” would target their position, and opposing forces can dispatch canine-trained military police patrols or redirect additional drones to intercept the team, with troops marked as captured or killed if caught, just as in live combat.

U.S. instructors emphasize that every aspect of the exercise draws directly on combat lessons emerging from the war in Ukraine. “We’re using lessons learned from Ukraine,” a Green Beret officer assigned to the training complex explained. “All of those effects that we’re seeing either Russia or Ukraine having to overcome — we’re doing our best to replicate.”

The drill shines a spotlight on a growing push across U.S. and NATO military circles to adapt to modern drone warfare tactics, which have been pioneered and refined by Ukrainian forces throughout their defense against Russia. It also underscores the deepening military collaboration between the U.S., NATO allies, and Ukraine to prepare for potential future Russian aggression, even as the Trump administration’s ongoing force review for European deployments has created uncertainty around future U.S. troop levels, with repeated signals of potential drawdowns. Just this week, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow to issue a formal warning to Russian leadership against any direct military attack on NATO territory, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Three Western officials, speaking anonymously Friday to discuss sensitive intelligence, confirmed that while Russian leadership seeks to avoid open direct confrontation with NATO, Moscow maintains the capability and intent to carry out large-scale sabotage and cyberattacks against NATO member states. This heightened tension has spurred growing interest across the alliance in Ukraine’s battlefield expertise. Training organizers told the AP they expect to run the exercise several times annually, and anticipate that most, if not all, of NATO’s 32 member states will request to send special forces units to train.

Interest in Ukraine’s drone warfare knowledge extends far beyond NATO: In March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that his country was already assisting five nations in the Middle East and Gulf region countering Iranian drone attacks, while multiple U.S. and European countries have also requested Ukrainian support for modernizing their own military tactics. The need for this updated training has been underscored by a recent rise in mysterious drone incursions across Europe: earlier this month, two unidentified drones were spotted over a German military base, and an explosive-laden drone was recovered at a major German cargo airport.

Despite broad consensus on the value of modern drone warfare training, the message around alliance collaboration has been muddled in recent weeks. President Trump’s repeated shifts on plans for drawing down U.S. troops in Europe have sown confusion among NATO allies, and last week the U.S. Army’s top leadership disbanded a specialized elite drone warfare unit, a move that has sparked debate among military planners.

A major maritime emergency is unfolding off the coast of northern Cyprus, after a passenger boat carrying approximately 270 people overturned in open water, triggering an urgent search and rescue operation, local media has confirmed.

According to Murat Senkul, mayor of the coastal Kyrenia town, rescuers have so far made contact with 159 of the passengers onboard the capsized vessel. Senkul described the ongoing incident as extremely serious, in remarks to Turkish broadcaster CNN Turk.

The boat started taking on water roughly four nautical miles from the northern Cypriot shore, local reports indicate. Footage broadcast by regional television outlets shows the ferry completely overturned in the water, with dozens of passengers clinging to the upturned hull while wearing life vests to stay afloat.

Emergency response teams have deployed multiple assets to the accident site: both military and civilian helicopters are conducting air searches, while coastguard vessels are maneuvering around the capsized hull to pull survivors from the water. On the nearby shore, ambulance teams have set up staging points to receive rescued passengers and deliver emergency medical care.

Erhan Arikli, transport minister for the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), told reporters that 100 passengers have successfully been brought to land as of the latest update.

Contextually, the TRNC controls the northern third of the island of Cyprus, which has been divided into two administrative regions since a 1974 Turkish military intervention. The entity is only recognized as a sovereign state by Turkey, with no broader international endorsement.

This is an active breaking news story, and new details are expected to be released as rescue operations continue. Readers can access real-time updates via the BBC News mobile application, or by following the BBC Breaking account on X for the latest alerts.