A crowd crush has injured several people at the world’s largest religious festival in India, organizers reported Wednesday.

The crush at the Maha Kumbh Mela in the city of Prayagraj occurred after a barrier broke, according to Akanksha Rana, special executive officer for the festival.

“Several people are injured and receiving treatment,” she said, adding that some of the injured had been taken to the Intensive Care Unit.

Asked whether any people had died or how many had been impacted, she said officials were still assessing the extent of the damage.

Millions of Hindu devotees are bathing in sacred waters at the gathering in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Over six weeks, a staggering 400 million people are expected to attend the Maha Kumbh Mela, or the festival of the Sacred Pitcher, on the riverbanks of Prayagraj.

Speaking to local media, devotees said the incident took place around 1:30 a.m. local time and described chaotic scenes with people running in different directions and others falling over.

One woman, who appeared to be in shock, spoke to journalists on camera outside the festival venue saying one of her relatives was taken to the hospital.

“People were being pushed around and got stuck. There was over a hundred people,” the devotee told reporters.

Video shared on social media showed ambulances rushing past crowds of people to the site of the crush and security personnel helping devotees as scattered blankets and belongings lay strewn on the ground.

Crowd crushes at religious gatherings in India are not uncommon, and deadly incidents have occurred in the past, often highlighting a lack of adequate crowd control and safety measures. In 2013, dozens of people were killed and injured in a crowd crush at a railway station in Allahabad as pilgrims gathered for that year’s Kumbh Mela.

Ahead of the festival in Prayagraj, officials said extra safety measures had been put in place to protect visitors, including a security ring with checkpoints around the city staffed by more than 1,000 police officers.

The central government said over 2,700 security cameras powered by artificial intelligence would also be positioned around the city, monitored by hundreds of experts at key locations.

Aerial drones were touted to provide surveillance from above and, for the first time, underwater drones capable of diving up to 100 meters were being activated to provide round-the-clock cover, the government added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

An Airbus plane belonging to South Korean carrier Air Busan caught fire on Tuesday at Gimhae International Airport in the country’s south while preparing for departure to Hong Kong, fire authorities said.

All 169 passengers and seven crew members were evacuated, with three having minor injuries, fire authorities in Busan said.

The fire service was alerted to the fire which began inside the plane just before 10:30 p.m., it said. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said it began in the plane’s tail.

Footage aired by local broadcaster YTN shows evacuation slides deployed on both sides of the single-aisle plane, with emergency workers tackling smoke and flames from the jet.

Later footage from Yonhap news showed burned out holes along the length of the fuselage roof.

It is a month since the deadliest air disaster on South Korean soil when a Jeju Air plane coming from Bangkok crashed on Muan Airport’s runway as it made an emergency belly landing, killing all but two of the 181 people and crew members on board.

Budget airline Air Busan is part of South Korea’s Asiana Airlines, which in December was acquired by Korean Air.

Planemaker Airbus said it was aware of reports about the incident and was liaising with Air Busan.

Air Busan and Asiana did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Korean Air directed inquiries to Air Busan.

The plane is a 17-year-old Airbus A321ceo model with tail number HL7763, according to Aviation Safety Network, a respected database run by the Flight Safety Foundation.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has inspected a facility that produces nuclear material and called for bolstering the country’s nuclear capability, state media reported Wednesday, as it ramps up pressure on the United States following the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Kim’s visit suggests a continued emphasis on an expansion of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, though Trump has said he’s willing to talk to Kim again to revive diplomacy. Many analysts view North Korean weapons moves as part of a strategy to win diplomatic talks with Washington that could result in aid and political concessions.

The official Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim visited the nuclear-material production base and the Nuclear Weapons Institute.

It didn’t say where those facilities are located, but North Korean photos of Kim’s visit indicated that he likely visited a uranium-enrichment facility that he went to last September. That visit was North Korea’s first disclosure of a uranium-enrichment facility since it showed one to visiting American scholars in 2010.

During the latest visit, Kim praised scientists and others for “producing weapons-grade nuclear materials and in strengthening the nuclear shield of the country.”

On Sunday, North Korea said it tested a cruise missile system, its third known weapons display this year, and vowed “the toughest” response to what it called the escalation of US-South Korean military drills.

North Korea views US military training with South Korea as invasion rehearsals, though Washington and Seoul have repeatedly said their drills are defensive in nature. In recent years, the United States and South Korea have expanded their military exercises in response to North Korea’s advancing nuclear program.

The start of Trump’s second term raises prospects for the revival of diplomacy between the United States and North Korea, as Trump met Kim three times during his first term. The Trump-Kim diplomacy in 2018-19 fell apart due to wrangling over US-led economic sanctions on North Korea.

During a Fox News interview broadcast Thursday, Trump called Kim “a smart guy” and “not a religious zealot.” Asked whether he will reach out to Kim again, Trump replied, “I will, yeah.”

Many experts say Kim likely thinks he has greater bargaining power than in his earlier round of diplomacy with Trump because of his country’s enlarged nuclear arsenal and deepening military ties with Russia.

US President Donald Trump’s proposal to “clean out” the Gaza Strip by moving more than a million Palestinians to neighboring countries has drawn sharp criticism, with opponents condemning it as ethnic cleansing and warning of regional chaos.

Trump said on Saturday that he would like Jordan and Egypt to take in Gazans internally displaced by Israel’s devastating war in the enclave. “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

The potential transfer, he said, “could be temporary” or “could be long-term.” Both countries swiftly rejected the idea.

But, if adopted, the proposal would mark a sharp break from the Biden administration’s stance that Gaza should not be depopulated and could signal a shift from a longstanding US position that Gaza should be part of a future Palestinian state. It would also align the Trump administration with Israel’s most radical far-right politicians, who advocate transferring Palestinians out of the territory to make way for Jewish settlement.

Trump’s proposal has been embraced by extremist Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who has sparked controversy by claiming there is “no such thing as a Palestinian people”– and former Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, who was once convicted for supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism.

Palestinian politicians decried it as a plan to ethnically cleanse Gazans from their land.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Graham said, referring to Trump.

Experts warn that beyond the moral and legal concerns, an influx of refugees into neighboring Arab countries could destabilize them and pose an existential threat. Agreeing to Trump’s proposal, they say, would provoke widespread public anger – an untenable risk for those governments.

‘A second Palestinian Nakba’

Both the Egyptian and Jordanian governments “would be met by sweeping domestic opposition if they were seen by their publics as being complacent with a second Palestinian Nakba,” said Hasan Alhasan, senior fellow for Middle East policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain, referring to 1948, when roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly expelled from their homes in historic Palestine, during the creation of Israel.

Israel has barred them and their descendants from returning, leaving millions of refugees in neighboring countries without citizenship or prospects for permanent resettlement.

“Given that the Palestinians of Gaza are highly unlikely to leave voluntarily, a forced displacement towards Egypt or Jordan would pose a variety of existential threats to these two countries,” Alhasan said.

For Jordan, which is already home to millions of Palestinians, an altered demographic “would threaten the Hashemite monarchy’s hold on power,” he said, adding that financially, “neither Egypt nor Jordan can afford to host millions of additional refugees.”

Egypt and Jordan are two of the US’ closest allies in the Middle East, and major recipients of US aid that have for decades aligned their regional policies with US interests. They were the first Arab countries to sign peace treaties with Israel and have maintained cordial relations with it, including security coordination, despite widespread public discontent.

Jane Kinninmont, an expert on conflict at the European Leadership Network, a think tank, and co-host of the Disorder podcast, said that over time, Jordan and Egypt’s influence in Washington, DC has been overshadowed by Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. What remains to be seen, she added, is how far those countries will go in “sending a clear message to Washington that mass displacement won’t make the conflict go away.”

“It is important for regional countries to emphasize that the refugee issue is one of the drivers of the current conflict and making more Palestinians into refugees won’t solve that. This goes right to the heart of the conflict,” Kinninmont said.

Security concerns

On Sunday, both Egypt and Jordan reaffirmed their rejection to the deportation or resettlement of Palestinians.

“Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians,” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in a news conference in Amman Sunday. “Our rejection for the deportation is steadfast and unchanging.”

Egypt’s foreign ministry also said it rejects “the deportation or encouragement of the transfer or removal of Palestinians from their land.”

Throughout the war, Jordan and Egypt have brushed off domestic calls to sever ties with Israel, and Egypt has played a key mediation role between Israel and Hamas.

In October 2023, protests erupted in both countries in support of Palestinians in Gaza, with many showing disgruntlement with their governments’ cooperation with Israel given the high human toll Israel’s war had taken.

Kaldas, of the Tahrir Institute, said that accepting a Palestinian population transfer would be more costly for the two countries than losing the American aid both countries rely on.

Egypt and Jordan already host a sizeable number of refugees.

As of January, there were 877,000 refugees and asylum-seekers registered in Egypt, according to the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. In May, the Palestinian ambassador in Cairo, Diab al-Louh, has said as many as 100,000 Gazans had crossed into Egypt since the war began, according to Reuters.

In Jordan, more than 2.39 million Palestine refugees are registered with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the agency said.

Both countries may also have security concerns if their territories become staging grounds for attacks on Israel, said Alhasan. That could further strain their peace treaties with Israel, he said.

“By seeking to depopulate Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants, Trump… is doing the bidding of Israel’s extreme right-wing fanatics,” Alhasan said.

“Ironically, Trump’s proposal, if it were to materialize, would in fact be self-defeating,” he said. Destabilizing Egypt and Jordan would “favor Islamist political forces, notably the Muslim Brotherhood,” and these would “prove far less friendly to the US and more sympathetic to Hamas.”