A man was heard screaming in the water moments before he died after a shark attack in Sydney, witnesses have said.

Emergency services responded to reports that a man in his 50s had suffered critical injuries at Long Reef Beach shortly after 10am (1am in the UK) on Saturday.

The man, whose identity has yet to be confirmed, was brought to shore but died at the scene, authorities have said.

Two sections of a surfboard have been recovered and taken for examination, and beaches near the area are closed as drones search for the animal.

Police are liaising with wildlife experts to determine the species of shark involved.

Surfer screamed ‘don’t bite me’

Speaking to Sky News Australia, witness Mark Morgenthal said he saw the attack and that the shark was one of the biggest he had ever seen.

“There was a guy screaming, ‘I don’t want to get bitten, I don’t want to get bitten, don’t bite me,’ and I saw the dorsal fin of the shark come up, and it was huge,” Mr Morgenthal said.

“Then I saw the tail fin come up and start kicking, and the distance between the dorsal fin and the tail fin looked to be about four metres, so it actually looked like a six-metre shark.”

Victim was a father and experienced surfer

New South Wales Police Superintendent John Duncan said at a press conference that the victim was 57 years old, calling the incident a “terrible tragedy”.

“The gentleman had gone out about 9.30 this morning with some of his friends, about five or six of his mates,” he added. “He’s an experienced surfer that we understand.

“Unfortunately, it would appear that a large, what we believe to be a shark, has attacked him. And as a result of that, he lost a number of limbs.

“His colleagues managed to make it back to the beach safely, and a short time later, his body was found floating in the surf, and a couple of other people went out and recovered it.”

Mr Duncan added that officers “understand he leaves behind a wife and a young daughter… and obviously tomorrow being Father’s Day is particularly critical and particularly tragic”.

Follow The World

Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday

Tap to follow

Local surfer and eyewitness Bill Sakula also told reporters at the beach: “It’s going to send shockwaves through the community.

“Everyone is going to be a little bit nervous for a while.”

Read more:
British couple killed in Lisbon funicular crash named
How relationships can be rocked by serious illness
Mandelson calls Trump a maverick ‘risk taker’

Surf Life Saving NSW has deployed a drone to search for further shark activity.

Its chief executive Steve Pearce said: “Our deepest condolences go to the family of the man involved in this terrible tragedy.”

Shark attacks are very rare, with this incident widely thought to be the first in New South Wales this year.

The last time a person in Sydney was killed in a shark attack was in February 2022 – the city’s first fatal shark attack since 1963.

Two of the three Britons killed in the Lisbon funicular crash have been named.

Kayleigh Smith, 36, and William Nelson, 44, were a couple and died alongside 14 others in Wednesday’s incident.

Ms Smith graduated from the Arden School of Theatre in Manchester, where Mr Nelson ran the master’s degree in directing.

The identity of the third British victim has not yet been confirmed.

MADS theatre in Macclesfield, Cheshire, said Ms Smith was a “valued member of our society” who will be “greatly missed”.

It said she was an award-winning director and actress, who had also done multiple crew and front-of-house roles.

Five Portuguese citizens died when the packed carriage plummeted out of control – four of them workers at a charity on the hill – but most victims were foreigners.

Police said the other fatalities were two Canadians, two South Koreans, one American, one French citizen, one Swiss and one Ukrainian.

All but one were declared dead at the scene – and 21 others in the packed carriage were injured.

The yellow carriages of the Gloria funicular are a big draw for tourists, as well as a proud symbol of the Portuguese capital.

The journey is just 265m (870ft) up a steep hill and takes three minutes, with two carriages travelling in opposite directions on a linked cable.

Read more:
Everything we know about the Lisbon crash

Witnesses reported seeing one of the carriages hurtle down the hill before derailing and crashing 30m from the bottom.

The aftermath shows it crumpled and twisted against the side of a building.

People who were in the bottom carriage said they were a few metres into the climb when it started going backwards.

When they saw the other car speeding towards them, many jumped through the windows to escape.

Prime Minister Luis Montenegro called the crash “one of the biggest tragedies of our recent past” and authorities are under intense pressure to quickly identifying the cause.

One witness who was in the lower carriage told Sky’s Europe correspondent Alistair Bunkall that the brakes appeared to fail.

The carriage’s brakeman, Andre Marques, has also been confirmed among the dead.

Officials said the streetcar, which has been running since 1914, had a half-hour visual inspection every day and underwent full maintenance last year.

The line links the downtown area near Restauradores Square with Lisbon’s Bairro Alto neighbourhood.

A preliminary technical report due on Friday has now been delayed until Saturday. Another report with a broader scope is expected within 45 days.

Three other funicular lines in Lisbon have been suspended.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said any foreign troops operating as part of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine would be considered a “legitimate target” by Moscow.

It comes a day after French President Emmanuel Macron said 26 of Ukraine’s allies had formally committed to deploying troops “by land, sea or air” to help guarantee Kyiv’s security the day after any ceasefire or peace is achieved.

Mr Macron stressed any troops would be deployed to prevent “any new major aggression” and not at the frontline, adding the force does “not have the will or the objective of waging war against Russia”.

Mr Putin quickly poured cold water on the proposals when speaking at an economic forum in Russia’s eastern Vladivostok region on Friday.

Directly responding to Mr Macron’s comments, he said: “If any troops appear there, especially now, during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for their destruction.

“And if decisions are reached that lead to peace, to long-term peace, then I simply do not see any sense in their presence on the territory of Ukraine, full stop.”

Russia has long argued that one of its reasons for going to war in Ukraine was to prevent NATO from admitting Kyiv as a member and placing its forces in Ukraine.

Speaking today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was important that security guarantees “start working now, during the war, and not only after it ends”.

On Thursday, NATO chief Mark Rutte said Russia had no veto on Western troops being deployed to Ukraine: “Why are we interested in what Russia thinks about troops in Ukraine? It’s a sovereign country. It’s not for them to decide.”

‘Please come to Moscow’

Mr Putin also addressed the chances of a direct meeting between himself and Mr Zelesnkyy aimed at ending the war.

Such a proposal looked positive after the Russian met Donald Trump in Alaska last month, but Mr Putin said on Friday he did not see much point in such a meeting because “it will be practically impossible to reach an agreement with the Ukrainian side on key issues”.

However, he reiterated an offer he made earlier this week to host Mr Zelenskyy for talks in Moscow, which Ukraine’s defence minister previously declared as “knowingly unacceptable”.

“I said: ‘I’m ready, please, come, we will definitely provide working conditions and security, a 100% guarantee’,” Mr Putin said.

“But if they tell us: ‘we want to meet with you, but you have to go somewhere else for this meeting’, it seems to me that these are simply excessive requests on us.”

Speaking at a news conference in Paris on Thursday, Mr Zelenskyy said US mediators informed him about Mr Putin’s invitation.

“Our American partners told us that Putin invited me to Moscow, and I believe that if you want to avoid a meeting, you should invite me to Moscow,” he said.

However, he said the fact that the issue of organising a meeting arose was “not bad”.

Drone strikes continue

While talks to end the war continue at a diplomatic level, more heavy drone strikes were recorded across Ukraine.

Kyiv’s air force said Moscow attacked Ukraine overnight with 157 strike and decoy drones, as well as seven missiles of various types.

Air defences shot down or jammed 121 of the drones, it said, but 35 drones and seven missiles still struck 10 locations.

Elsewhere, Russian troops destroyed 92 Ukrainian drones overnight, according to its defence ministry.

Local social media channels in the city of Ryazan, approximately 200 kilometres (125 miles) southeast of Moscow, reported that the city’s Rosneft oil refinery had been targeted. Ryazan’s regional governor said that drone debris had fallen on an “industrial enterprise” but did not give further details.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian oil infrastructure that it says fuels Moscow’s war effort in recent months.

Military analyst Professor Michael Clarke said Ukraine’s campaign on Russia’s oil refineries has been a successful one so far, but doubts it will hurt Moscow’s war machine too much.

“Will that directly affect the war? Probably not. Because the Russian military runs on diesel,” he said.

“It filters through to the war in the sense that it inconveniences and bothers the Russians and reminds the Russian population that this war has a cost to them as well.”