A search and rescue operation is under way after a passenger plane and a military helicopter crashed over a major river in Washington DC.

The American Airlines flight, with 60 passengers and four crew on board, was landing at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when the mid-air collision took place.

The US Army Black Hawk helicopter had three soldiers on board.

Washington crash latest: Follow updates as rescue continues

Both aircraft fell into the Potomac River, after colliding around 9pm local time.

The passenger plane was moments away from landing, having departed from Wichita, Kansas, while the military helicopter was on a training flight.

There are multiple fatalities, according to a source cited by the Associated Press news agency, despite officials at a news conference not announcing any deaths.

US Figure Skating, the national governing body for the sport in the US, said in a statement that several members of its skating community were on the passenger plane.

It said the athletes and coaches were returning home from the national development camp in Kansas.

“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts,” the statement said.

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Around 300 responders, inflatable boats and multiple helicopters are being used as part of the search and rescue operation.

Washington DC fire chief John Donnelly said the operation is “highly complex” due to “extremely rough conditions”.

He said hypothermia is a concern for any possible survivors and first responders as it is currently cold and windy.

In a statement late on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump thanked first responders for their “incredible work”, and said he was “monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arise”.

He added: “May God Bless their souls.”

Vice president JD Vance also encouraged followers on the social media to “say a prayer for everyone involved”.

Kansas senator Roger Marshall added that “when one person dies it’s a tragedy, but when many, many, many people die it’s an unbearable sorrow”.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport would be closed until at least 4pm UK time.

The collision occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles south of the White House and the US Capitol.

In audio from the air traffic control tower around the time of the crash, a controller is heard asking the helicopter: “PAT25 do you have the CRJ in sight”, in reference to the passenger aircraft.

“Tower, did you see that?” another pilot is heard saying seconds after the apparent collision.

The US army and the defence department has begun an investigation into the crash.

Pete Hegseth, who was sworn in as defence secretary only days ago, said it had been started “immediately”.

The last major crash involving a commercial plane in the US was in 2009, when all 49 people aboard a Colgan Air flight died when it crashed in New York state.

A ban preventing UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, from operating in Occupied East Jerusalem and Israel has come into force today.

The highly controversial move came into force after the Israeli Parliament voted in favour three months ago, and after a legal challenge to pause the ban was rejected by the Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Israel accuses UNRWA of having close links to Hamas in Gaza, which the organisation denies.

Nine UNRWA employees were sacked for taking part in the 7 October attacks.

Many donor countries initially suspended funding but most, including the UK, have since reinstated it.

“UNRWA equals Hamas,” an Israeli government spokesman said yesterday. “Israel has made public irrefutable evidence UNRWA is riddled with Hamas operatives.”

No evidence has been presented of those links existing in Jerusalem or the West Bank.

In the Shuafat refugee camp close to Jerusalem, Palestinian patients told us they were angry and concerned by the loss of vital services.

“I’m against this decision, we’re all against it, the whole camp,” said Amal. “Everyone has benefited from this clinic. Both West Bank and Jerusalem residents.

“I’ve been coming here ever since I was a little girl, we’ve gotten used to coming here. This really doesn’t work for us.”

Another patient, Mohammed, was carrying boxes of prescription medicine, paid for by UNRWA because he couldn’t afford them himself.

“I have a chronic disease and I rely on a monthly prescription,” he told us. “My children get treated here; their children get vaccinated.

“And all of this is for free. I could not afford this medicine otherwise.”

Although the ban only concerns operations in Occupied East Jerusalem, Israel has also severed communication with the Agency and revoked the visas of international staff, making it extremely hard to continue services in Gaza and the West Bank.

Almost all of the two million residents of Gaza rely on UNRWA in some form. UNRWA has contacts on the ground that no other agency has or could replicate in the current crisis.

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Following the vote to ban UNRWA, the Head of the World Food Programme Cindy McCain described the agency as “indispensable” and tweeted that “the decision will have devastating consequences on food security.”

UNRWA, which was established following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, provides medical services to at least 70,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem and runs schools for thousands of pupils as well as maintaining streets and carrying out waste disposal.

Israel says those pupils will now be transferred to municipality schools but UNRWA says there has been little to no coordination around who will replace other services.

“We have not been given any indications of plans or indeed proposals by the Israeli authorities, not in East Jerusalem, also not in the West Bank,” UNRWA’s director of West Bank operations Roland Friedrich told Sky News.

He added: “It is very concerning because it doesn’t allow us to basically coordinate, prepare and in fact, to try to see how things can be done going forward.

“The collapse of UNRWA in the West Bank and in fact also in the Gaza Strip cannot be in the interest of anybody, not of Israelis, not of Palestinians, not of neighbouring countries, and clearly also not for those who care about the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.”

On the doorstep of Goma – the site of the UN’s biggest peacekeeping mission in the world – there are signs of surrendered soldiers and fierce battles.

As we walked on the road in front of the United Nations’ main base, we stepped around fatigues, rounds and helmets once belonging to the Congolese army fighting the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels.

The rebels now control the strategic city of Goma after fighting for the border post with Rwanda. It sits south of the swathes of mineral-rich mining territory the rebels have been seizing through last year.

We see them packed on the back of trucks still marked by the FARDC logo of the Congolese army.

I ask one man watching from the side of the road what he makes of this extreme shift.

“This is bad!” he says to me discreetly on the side of the road, with our car as cover from the prying eyes of the junior M23 soldiers.

“My family is not good. I am not good – we don’t know what comes next.”

Small groups are meeting the rebels with cheers and clapping.

We cannot tell if it is relief from the Congolese state or a necessary precaution for many who do not want to leave their hometown on the cusp of a new administration.

But before they can settle in and set up a local authority, M23 have time to stop and humiliate their former enemy.

Not just the Congolese troops, but the Romanian mercenaries fighting alongside them.

MONUSCO, the United Nations’s peacekeeping group in the DRC, brokered an evacuation convoy for the paid fighters to go to Rwanda with trucks full of Uruguayan peacekeeping troops watching as M23 led the handover through their newly-captured border.

As the Romanian men pass through in a single file, they are chastised by M23 spokesperson Willy Ngoma who taps them mockingly one by one.

“Come on soldier!” he said. “You were fighting for money – we were fighting for our life!”

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I corner him as he flags the buses through – could you have come this far without Rwanda’s support?

He tries to keep busy, and after the fourth time I repeat the question, he yells into my face in French:

“We are a Congolese army, we are Congolese! We fight for a fair and noble cause – we are Congolese. We are not helped by Rwanda!”

It will take more than a feverish denial to undermine the widely known support of Rwanda for M23 – one that has been condemned at the highest levels of the United Nations and senior diplomats from around the world.

As the “Welcome to Rwanda” sign gets closer, the last Romanian mercenary limps across with a wounded leg flanked by a UN security advisor and an Indian medic.

A surreal sight of a man heading home after fighting a war in a foreign country surrounded by Congolese families fleeing the war at home.