‘Send help’: The desperate pleas from Hurricane Melissa survivors
Driving through western Jamaica, it’s staggering how wide Hurricane Melissa’s field of destruction is.
Town after town, miles apart, where trees have been uprooted and roofs peeled back.
Some homes are now just a pile of rubble, and we still don’t know how deadly this storm has been, although authorities warn the death toll will likely rise.
A total of 49 people have died in Melissa’s charge across the Caribbean – 19 in Jamaica alone.
Roads are still flooded in Jamaica
The storm has blown over telephone poles, which are blocking the roads
My team and I headed from Kingston airport, towards where the hurricane made landfall, referred to as “ground zero” of this crisis.
On the way, it’s clear that so many communities here have been brought to their knees and so many people are desperate for help.
We drive under a snarl of mangled power lines and over huge piles of rocks before reaching the town of Lacovia in Saint Elizabeth Parish.
The hurricane stripped the entire roof off this church
Many children live in homes with caved-in roofs
At the side of the road, beside a battered and sodden primary school, a woman wearing a red shirt and black tracksuit bottoms holds a handwritten sign in the direction of passing cars.
“Help needed at this shelter,” it says. The woman’s name is Sheree McLeod, and she is an admin assistant at the school.
She is in charge of a makeshift shelter in the school, a temporary home for at least 16 people between the ages of 14 and 86.
I stop and ask what she needs and almost immediately she begins to cry.
The primary school that has been housing those with no other place to stay
‘No emergency teams’
“I’ve never seen this in my entire life,” she says. “It’s heartbreaking, I never thought in a million years that I would be in the situation trying to get help and with literally no communication.
“We can’t reach any officials, there are no emergency teams. I’m hoping and praying that help can reach us soon.
“The task of a shelter manager is voluntary and the most I can do is just ask for help in whatever way possible.”
Read more:
Before and after images show hurricane’s destruction
What we know from the ground following the devastation
Sheree McLeod pleads for help for those sheltering at the school
At least 16 people currently live at the school, which is being used as a temporary shelter
Sheree shows me the classroom where she and 15 other people rode out the hurricane which she says hung over the town for hours.
They had just a sheet of tarpaulin against the window shutters to try to repel gusts of more than 170mph and a deluge of rain.
They took a white board off the wall to try to get more shelter.
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Hurricane Melissa was ‘traumatising’
“It was very terrible,” Sheree says. “We were given eight blankets for the shelter and that was it, but there were 16 people.
“Now all their clothes and blankets that they were provided with got damaged. Some people are sleeping in chairs and on wooden desks.”
Her plea for help is echoed across this part of Jamaica.
Toppled-over chairs and rubbish line a classroom in the school
The water tank at the school has run out
As we’re filming a pile of wooden slats that used to be a house, a passing motorcyclist shouts: “Send help, Jamaica needs help now.”
The relief effort is intensifying. After I leave Sheree, a convoy of army vehicles speed past in the direction of Black River, the town at the epicentre of this disaster.
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Diggers work to clear debris from the road late into the night. Ambulance sirens also grow more regular as the day goes on.
Help is coming and for many here, it can’t come soon enough.
A Russian general being blown up on his own doorstep isn’t a good look for Moscow, and it seems it’s becoming increasingly common.
The latest high-profile figure to be assassinated since Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine is Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov.
He was killed by a car bomb that detonated outside a residential complex, little more than 10 miles from the Kremlin.
Ukraine war latest: Kremlin denies Putin plans to invade European countries
He was a senior figure. Head of the operational training directorate of the general staff, Sarvarov prepared forces for future deployment, having previously served in Chechnya and Syria.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Moscow believes Kyiv may have been behind it. No wonder – they’ve carried out similar attacks many times before.
This time last year, Ukraine took credit for the assassination of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who Kyiv alleged had ordered chemical weapons to be used against its troops on the battlefield.
He was killed by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment block, which Vladimir Putin referred to as a “major blunder” by the security services.
Sarvarov was the least senior commander to be killed on Russia soil. Pic: Reuters
Pics: Reuters
But the attacks didn’t stop there.
In April, Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik was killed after a car exploded in a town just outside Moscow. And two months ago another car bomb in Siberia killed a Russian commander accused of committing war crimes.
It’s unclear why Sarvarov was targeted – perhaps simply because his rank and apparent vulnerability.
The timing appears significant. It follows the latest peace talks between US and Russian officials in Miami over the weekend, where Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev met with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
In the past, Ukraine has used these kinds of attacks to embarrass Moscow and to bring the war closer to home for Russians.
This time could be Kyiv’s way of undermining Moscow’s narrative in the negotiations.
Read more from Sky News:
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Trump’s Greenland envoy intends to make territory ‘a part of US’
The Kremlin has been trying to persuade the White House that a Russian victory is inevitable, and that it’s futile to support Ukraine, in the hope of securing a more preferential settlement.
Ukraine has been trying to convince the Trump administration of the opposite – that it’s still full of fight – and taking out Russian generals in their own backyard is one way of doing that.
It shows Washington that the Kremlin is clearly not in total control.
A new row over the future of Greenland has erupted between Denmark and the US after Donald Trump appointed a special envoy to the territory.
The US President announced that he had appointed Louisiana’s governor Jeff Landry to the position on Sunday, saying “Jeff understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security”.
Mr Landry then wrote on X: “It’s an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US.”
But Greenland is currently a semi-autonomous part of Denmark, which is unhappy about Trump’s latest move. The country has summoned the US ambassador in protest, with its foreign minister saying the move shows the US is still interested in the vast Danish territory.
Trump has repeatedly called for the US to take over over the mineral rich and strategically located Arctic island, since winning his second term, and has not ruled out using military force to achieve it.
Denmark’s foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said Landry’s comments were “completely unacceptable” and that everyone – including the US – must show respect for Denmark’s territorial integrity.
NATO allies Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and France took part in military drills in Greenland, where the US has a military base, in September. Pic: Reuters
Greenland back in the headlines
In March, US Vice President JD Vance visited a remote American military base in Greenland and accused Denmark – a NATO ally of the US – of underinvesting there.
The issue then gradually drifted out of the headlines but, in August, Danish officials again summoned the US ambassador – following a report that at least three people with connections to Trump had carried out covert influence operations in Greenland.
On Sunday, Trump said: “Jeff [Louisiana’s governor] understands how essential Greenland is to our national security and will strongly advance our country’s interests for the safety, security, and survival of our allies, and indeed, the world.”
Earlier this month, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service said in an annual report that the US was using its economic power to “assert its will” and threaten military force against friend and foe alike.
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (left) greets Greenland’s Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen.
Read more:
Head of US Greenland base sacked after criticising JD Vance
Denmark’s PM says “you can’t spy against an ally”
The report also highlighted the rising strategic importance of the Arctic to great power countries as “conflict between Russia and the West intensifies.
It went on to say that the growing security and strategic focus on the Arctic by the US would “further accelerate these developments”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia is worried about NATO’s activities in the Arctic and will respond by strengthening its military capability in the polar region.
The remaining 130 schoolchildren and staff abducted by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria last month have been freed.
They are among more than 300 pupils and 12 staff taken from St Mary’s Catholic boarding school in Niger State on 21 November.
Fifty children managed to escape at the time, the Christian Association of Nigeria previously said, while the government said on 8 December that it had rescued 100 of those abducted.
Belongings and clothes left behind at St Mary’s School after the kidnapping. Pic: Reuters
Now the last of the pupils have been released, a spokesman for President Bola Tinubu said, bringing a close to one of the country’s biggest mass kidnappings in recent years.
“The remaining 130 schoolchildren abducted by terrorists… have now been released,” wrote presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga in a post on X.
“They are expected to arrive in Minna on Monday and rejoin their parents for the Christmas celebration.
“The freedom of the schoolchildren followed a military-intelligence driven operation.”
The abduction has fuelled outrage over worsening insecurity in northern Nigeria, where armed gangs frequently target schools for ransom.
School kidnappings surged after Boko Haram militants abducted 276 girls from Chibok in 2014.
Over a decade later, dozens of the girls taken on that occasion remain missing.
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