Three teenagers who were killed after a car collided with a bus in Coedely, South Wales, have been named by police.
18-year-olds Morgan Smith and Jesse Owen and Callum Griffiths, 19, were declared dead at the scene.
Two others have sustained life-threatening injuries.
Daniel Chalfont said on Facebook he was “literally broken” following the death of Morgan Smith.
“Literally the most perfect son you could ever wish for,” he said.
“Miss you so much already.”
Maerdy Boxing Club said in a statement that Mr Smith was the “Nicest person you could ever wish to meet”.
“Not only was Morgan a great person he was also a very talented Boxer becoming a Welsh Champion, representing Wales in the British Championships and also traveled to Ireland with us to box.
“Our thoughts and prays are with Morgan’s family at this very sad time.”
The club confirmed it would be closed until further notice.
In a statement, South Wales Police said: “At around 7pm last night (Monday 11 December) emergency services were called to the scene of a serious road traffic collision involving a bus and an Audi A1 on Ely Valley Road, Coedely.
“Three men – two aged 18 and one aged 19 – were declared dead at the scene. Two further men, aged 18 and 19, were taken to the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff with life-threatening injuries.
“Two other people were also treated for minor injuries.”
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Superintendent Esyr Jones said: “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this tragic incident. Trained family liaison officers are supporting the families at what must be an extremely difficult time for them.”
The force previously asked for anyone with dash cam footage or who witnessed the collision to get in touch.
A Welsh Ambulance spokesperson said: “We sent seven emergency ambulances, two operational managers and our Hazardous Area Response Team to the scene.
“We were supported by pre-hospital immediate care specialists from MEDSERVE Wales, and advanced critical care support was delivered by the Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service in a Wales Air Ambulance charity car.”
Graham Drew lives on nearby Gladys Street, and told Sky News: “It is a stretch of road that is quite dangerous.
“This was an accident waiting to happen.”
He said the community was “obviously very concerned about what has just happened”.
“We did open the community centre to ask people to go in and have a cuppa and I do believe that police spoke to the people there to communicate with the families related to the incident.”
Another local resident who did not wish to be named told Sky News she could see lights when she looked out of her bedroom window on Monday evening.
“Within five minutes, there was a woman trying to get down and they [Police] wouldn’t let her and she was screaming ‘My boy, my boy’,” she said.
“Everybody’s stunned. We’re just stunned. It’s terrible. No words for it.”
Danny Grehan, councillor for Tonyrefail East told Sky News the mood was “heavy” within the local community.
“Any tragic accident is going to bring a lot of grief and a lot of pain,” he said.
“That is really evident in the community and in the community here in Coedely this morning where this tragic accident has happened.
“The local people been involved in this accident, we still don’t know the details. But obviously the loss of life in any event is a real hit for us as a community.”
He thanked the people of Coedely for their response to the incident.
“They went out of their way last night,” Cllr Grehan added.
“They opened the community centre, they opened their hearts to whoever was involved in last night and the work that was going on.”
He said there were “no words” to convey the grief the families would be feeling.
“It’s tragic, deeply sad and my deepest condolences go to those members of the family,” he added.
Wales’s first minister, Mark Drakeford, posted his condolences on X, formerly Twitter.
“My thoughts are with the families and friends of those involved in this tragic incident in Coedely, and diolch o galon (heartfelt thanks) to all first responders working at the scene,” he wrote.
Passenger Dzafran Azmir, 28, described chaos as the turbulence hit.
“Suddenly the aircraft starts tilting up and there was shaking so I started bracing for what was happening,” he said.
“And very suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing seatbelts was launched immediately into the ceiling.”
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“Some people hit their heads on the baggage cabins overhead and dented it,” he added.
“They hit the places where lights and masks are and broke straight through it.”
Briton Andrew Davies told Sky News “anyone who had a seatbelt on isn’t injured”.
He said the seatbelt sign came on, but there was no time for crew to take their seats.
Mr Davies said “every single cabin crew person I saw was injured in some way or another, maybe with a gash on their head… One had a bad back, who was in obvious pain.”
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0:49
Emergency services surround plane on tarmac
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Kittipong Kittikachorn, head of Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport, told reporters a British man, 73, had died from probable cardiac arrest.
He said about 30 people were injured, including at least one crew member, and that many passengers couldn’t walk and had to be helped from the aircraft
It’s believed the sudden turbulence hit while people were being served breakfast, the airport boss added.
Mr Kittikachorn blamed an “air pocket” for the incident.
He said the dead man’s wife was with him at hospital and that some people with minor injuries had already been discharged.
The UK Foreign Office said it was “in contact with the local authorities” over the incident.
Flight tracking data showed the plane cruising at 37,000ft (11,280m) before dropping 6,000ft (1,830m) in around three minutes.
However, a spokesperson for FlightRadar24 said this appeared to “just be a flight level change in preparation for landing”.
There were 211 passengers and 18 crew on the plane, a Boeing 777-300ER.
There are a few forms of turbulence – where there’s a sudden change in airflow and wind speed.
Turbulence can often be associated with storm clouds, which are usually well forecast and monitored, allowing planes to fly around them.
Clear-Air Turbulence (CAT) is much more dangerous as there are no visual signs, such as clouds.
This invisible vertical air movement usually occurs at and above 15,000ft and is mostly linked to the jet stream.
There are clues on where CAT may occur, but generally it can’t be detected ahead of time, which means flight crews can be caught unaware with no time to warn passengers and put seat belt signs on.
It’s been understood for some time that climate change is increasing turbulence during flights, and the trend is set to worsen according to reports.
Social media video showed ambulances surrounding the aircraft on the tarmac.
“Singapore Airlines offers its deepest condolences to the family of the deceased,” the company said in a statement.
“We deeply apologise for the traumatic experience that our passengers and crew members suffered on this flight.”
It said it was working with Thai authorities and sending a team to Bangkok to help.
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Victims of the infected blood scandal will get £210,000 as an interim compensation payment from as early as this summer, the government has announced.
Cabinet minister John Glen told parliament the initial payment will be given to people living with the effects of contaminated blood “within 90 days, starting in the summer”.
Infected people who die between now and the payments being made will get the money sent to their estates, he added.
Mr Glen said: “As the prime minister made clear yesterday, there is no restriction on the budget. Where we need to pay, we will pay.
“We will minimise delays, we will address the recommendations of Sir Brian Langstaff with respect to that – speed and efficiency, and removing as much complexity as possible.”
The minister did not confirm the cost of the compensation package, but former justice secretary Robert Buckland said it could be upwards of £10 billion.
Mr Glen’s announcement came the day after a report into the scandal was published following a seven-year inquiry.
More than 30,000 Britons were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C from contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. More than 3,000 people died.
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4:12
Blood scandal: A look at the details
Mr Glen also announced:
• The Infected Blood Compensation Authority – an “arm’s length body” – has been established to administer compensation, with Sir Robert Francis KC as the interim chair
• Anyone directly or indirectly infected by NHS blood, blood products or tissue contaminated with HIV or Hepatitis C, or developed a chronic infection from blood contaminated with Hepatitis B is eligible for compensation
• If someone would have been eligible but has died, compensation will be paid to their estate
• When a victim has been accepted onto the scheme, their affected partners, parents, siblings, children, friends and family who acted as carers of them can claim in their own right
• People who are registered with an existing infected blood support scheme will be automatically eligible for compensation to minimise the distress of proving they should be
• There will be five types of compensation: an injury impact award, social impact award (to acknowledge the stigma or social isolation from being infected), autonomy award (for disrupted family/private life), care award (for past and future care needs), and financial loss award (for past and future financial losses caused by being infected)
• Compensation will be offered in a lump sum or periodic payments
• The family of anyone who has died will get a single lump sum
• Any payments will be exempt from income, capital gains and inheritance tax
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• Payments will not count towards means tested benefit assessments
• All recipients can appeal their compensation
• Final payments will start before the end of the year
• No immediate changes to existing infected blood support scheme payments – they will continue until 31 March 2025 and will not be deducted from new compensation
• From 1 April 2025, any support scheme payments received will be counted towards final compensation
• Nobody will receive less in compensation than they would have received in support payments.
Sir Brian Langstaff, chair of the inquiry, found the scandal was “not an accident” and its failures lie with “successive governments, the NHS, and blood services”.
He said the response from governments of different stripes and the NHS “compounded” victims’ suffering.
This included the “deliberate destruction of some documents” by Department of Health workers, in what Sir Brian described as a “pervasive cover-up” and “downright deception”.
“It could largely, though not entirely, have been avoided. And I report that it should have been,” he said, adding the “scale of what happened is horrifying” for victims and their families.
Victims and their families welcomed the report following decades of not being believed.
Images have revealed damage caused to a Singapore Airlines plane after the flight from London Heathrow was caught in turbulence.
One British man, 73, died during the incident, with multiple people injured as Flight SQ321 began to shake during breakfast.
Kittipong Kittikachorn, the head of Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport, told reporters about 30 people were injured, including at least one crew member.
Images from inside the plane, which was heading to Singapore – but diverted to Bangkok, Thailand – show the damage caused during the turbulence.
Passenger Andrew Davies, who was sitting in premium economy, told Sky News he was watching a movie when the sign to fasten seatbelts lit up and the plane began plummeting.
He said it all happened so quickly that the captain didn’t even have time to inform the cabin crew to sit down.
“Every single cabin crew person I saw was injured in some way or another, maybe with a gash on their head… one had a bad back, who was in obvious pain,” he said.
“I don’t think they could give us any notice, I suspect they gave us as much notice as they possibly could.”
He also said anyone who had a seatbelt on wasn’t physically injured.
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Another passenger on board suggested people not wearing a seatbelt were “launched immediately into the ceiling” after the plane suffered a “dramatic drop”.
“The crew and people inside lavatories were hurt the most because we discovered people just on the ground not able to get up,” Dzafran Azmir said.
“There were a lot of spinal and head injuries.”
People dropped to the ground, he said, and his phone “flew out” of his hand and “went a couple aisles to the side”, while people’s shoes “flung about”.
Once the plane was on the tarmac, nurses and rescue workers came in to check on the injured, Mr Azmir said.
“I don’t think they anticipated how bad it was,” he added.
Ambulances later arrived and Mr Azmir said he saw at least eight people on stretchers being pulled out of the emergency exits. It took 90 minutes to evacuate the plane, he said.
Images showed damage to the ceiling of the cabin, and food, cutlery and other debris strewn on the floor in the aftermath of the incident.
Mr Kittikachorn said some of the injured suffered cuts to the head, and described the incident as “chaotic”.
The flight, operated by a Boeing 777-300ER jet, departed at 10.17pm on Monday and was diverted to Bangkok, landing at 3.45pm local time (9.45am BST) on Tuesday.