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First plane carrying passengers evacuated from hantavirus-hit cruise ship leaves Tenerife – Europe live | Hantavirus
First plane carrying passengers evacuated from hantavirus-hit cruise ship has left Tenerife
We have some updates from Tenerife, where a small group of Spanish passengers evacuated from the hantavirus-hit MV Hondius cruise ship has reportedly left on a plane for the Gómez Ulla Central Defense hospital in Madrid. They will be under quarantine when they reach Madrid.
Key events
Sky News is reporting that 20 British nationals who were passengers aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship will fly back to the UK today from Tenerife. Two further people – who are dual nationals – will get on separate repatriation flights to other countries, the outlet reported.
As we have previously mentioned, the MV Hondius arrived in Tenerife on Sunday morning, with Spanish authorities beginning evacuations of the ship by nationality.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said earlier that 22 British passengers and crew will be transferred to an isolation facility at Arrowe Park hospital on the Wirral, Merseyside, after being repatriated to the UK on a chartered flight.
Over in the UK, British prime minister Keir Starmer’s premiership looks like it could be on the verge of collapsing next week as pressure grows on him to step down after Labour suffered heavy losses in historic local elections. You can keep up with the latest developments in our UK politics live blog:
Robyn Vinter
Robyn Vinter is north of England correspondent at the Guardian, currently in Tenerife
A press conference has just finished at the Tenerife port of Granadilla with Javier Padilla, the Spanish secretary of state for health, in which he explained the process for those leaving the ship.
Doctors have been taking the temperature of everyone on the vessel and filling out a health survey designed to identify hantavirus symptoms.
They are given plastic ponchos, face and hair coverings, and are taken in small groups from the ship to the dock, where they board coaches that take them to the airport, about a 10-minute drive away.
They are allowed to take small bags of personal items with them and the rest of their luggage will be left on the cruise ship and taken to the Netherlands for decontamination.
He said the UK and US had asked for further testing on board the MV Hondius, which was refused, but the countries were told they could test passengers on the plane as soon as it leaves the airport.
Countries are carrying out their own health checks, which for some, like the UK and Spain, involves PCR testing. He said the European Commission and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) were “trying to achieve a certain degree of coordination, and not a high variation among the different countries”.
“But every country has its own confidences.”
When asked about countries, such as the US, choosing not to impose mandatory quarantine on its citizens coming off the ship, he said it was up to those countries to take what they think is the best action, however, “I don’t think it’s best practice from a clinical point of view.”
He said 6 May was being treated as the last contact date.
The next passengers to leave are from the UK, France, Canada, the Netherlands. This afternoon passengers from Turkey, Ireland, and the US are expected to depart.
British paratroopers lead airdrop onto Tristan da Cunha for suspected hantavirus case
British paratroopers have dropped on to Britain’s most remote overseas territory, Tristan da Cunha, along with medics and medical supplies, after a case of suspected hantavirus was confirmed there, Reuters reports.
A team of six paratroopers and two military clinicians from 16 Air Assault Brigade jumped from an RAF A400M transport aircraft that flew 6,788 km (4,218 miles) from RAF Brize Norton air base in Oxfordshire to Ascension Island then another 3,000 km due south to Tristan da Cunha.
Dropped alongside them on Saturday were oxygen supplies and other medical aid. The A400M was refuelled mid-flight by a supporting RAF Voyager.
The operation is the first time the UK military has deployed medical personnel to provide humanitarian support via a parachute jump, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.
The supplies were primarily destined for a British man who UK health authorities say was a passenger on the cruise ship that was hit by a hantavirus outbreak and which docked at the island between 13 April and 15. The WHO said the man reported symptoms compatible with hantavirus on 28 April and that he is stable and in isolation.
“With oxygen supplies on the island at a critical level, an airdrop with medical personnel was the only method of getting vital care to the patient in time,” the Ministry of Defence statement said.
Tristan da Cunha, home to only around 200 people, is halfway between South Africa and South America. It is the world’s remotest inhabited island, more than 2,400 km and a six-day boat ride from St Helena, its nearest inhabited neighbour. It usually relies on a medical team of two people for its health needs, and is normally only accessible by boat as it has no airstrip.
Ship to make further stop in Tenerife before heading to Rotterdam, says operator
The operator of the MV Hondius, Oceanwide Expeditions, has given an update on the plan for the ship after the evacuation operation is complete.
In statement the operator said after all guests and limited crew have disembarked, MV Hondius will take on necessary supplies at Santa Cruz, Tenerife before transiting to the port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands with the remaining crew members aboard.
The expected sailing time to Rotterdam is about 5 days.
Angelique Chrisafis
Angelique Chrisafis is the Guardian’s Paris correspondent
Five French passengers on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship have boarded a special medical flight from Tenerife and are en route to Paris. The flight took off from Tenerife at around noon local time.
Nicolas Pillerel of the French embassy in Spain was present in Tenerife to oversee logistics. He told the French public broadcaster FranceInfo that the foreign office crisis centre had organised a special flight with medical staff on board to transport the five people to an airport in the Paris area.
The five cruise-ship passengers would then be hospitalised for 72 hours for tests and monitoring, in line with World Health Organisation guidelines.
After this, the five people would return to their homes in France where they would have to isolate for 45 days under strict monitoring and controls by French health authorities.
The French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has called a special meeting of ministers and health officials in Paris this afternoon to discuss the situation.
First plane carrying passengers evacuated from hantavirus-hit cruise ship has left Tenerife
We have some updates from Tenerife, where a small group of Spanish passengers evacuated from the hantavirus-hit MV Hondius cruise ship has reportedly left on a plane for the Gómez Ulla Central Defense hospital in Madrid. They will be under quarantine when they reach Madrid.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that he thought Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was coming to an end (see this story for more detail).
“I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters after a scaled-back military parade in Moscow commemorating the Soviet victory in World War Two, referring to the “special military operation” (war) in Ukraine.
Putin indicated that he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, saying his preferred negotiating partner would be Gerhard Schröder, who was German chancellor from 1998 to 2005, and has a background of being a close friend and ally of Putin, and history of business ties to Russia.
Germany has now responded to Putin’s suggestion, with an official telling the Reuters news agency on Sunday that the offer was not credible because Russia had not changed any of its conditions, adding that an initial test would be whether Moscow was willing to extend the three-day ceasefire that expires tomorrow. The official said Putin had made a series of unserious offers aimed at dividing the western alliance.
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said recently that a planned deployment of US long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Germany – announced by the former US president Joe Biden – was being called off, at least for the time being.
Merz’s criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran – and his suggestion that the US had been “humiliated” by Iranian negotiators – has angered Donald Trump, causing relations between Berlin and Washington to slump to a low point.
Pentagon officials are alarmed at the fact the US military fired over 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles in the first four weeks of war on Iran, according to the Washington Post.
The rapid rate of use prompted internal discussions about how to make more of the missiles available, sources told the US outlet.
Germany revives effort to buy US Tomahawks – report
Germany is reviving efforts to buy Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US, the Financial Times is reporting.
German defence minister Boris Pistorius is reportedly planning a trip to Washington to revive Germany’s offer to buy long-range systems, which was first submitted last July. The US is yet to respond to this offer.
The visit, however, hinges upon whether Pistorius can secure a meeting with Pete Hegseth, his US counterpart, the FT reports. “The key thing is to have the strike capabilities in Europe,” a “government insider” told the newspaper.
Tomahawk land attack missiles, first used in combat in 1991, are long-range, guided cruise missiles typically launched from sea to attack targets in deep-strike missions.
There are no European ground-launched long-range systems immediately available, according to the FT report. So the Tomahawk missiles, along with the mobile Typhon launchers Germany also reportedly wants to buy from the US, would allow the German armed forces to hit targets hundreds of kilometres deep into enemy territory if necessary.
A precise figure of how much full nationalisation of British Steel could cost has not been announced and it is understood that following legislation an independent valuation would be carried out of the business, to see what, if any, compensation might be due to Jingye.
UK News
Middle East crisis live: Trump rejects Iran response to US peace proposal as Tehran warns of new attacks | US-Israel war on Iran
Key events
Hezbollah started firing at Israel shortly after the US and Israel launched its war on Iran by killing the country’s former supreme leader on 28 February. Israel responded with airstrikes and launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military now occupies a strip of Lebanese land along the border. Officials claim they want to create a ‘security zone’ to protect Israel’s northern communities from Hezbollah attacks. But this has stoked fears of a long-term occupation.
Sweeping evacuation orders have forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people to flee and many fear they won’t be able to return as homes are demolished and Israeli attacks across southern Lebanon continue without any rebuke from the US, which brokered the ceasefire agreement between the Lebanese government and Israel last month.
Israel is pushing for the disarmament of Hezbollah, something the militant group has rejected. Hezbollah, which is not part of the Lebanese government’s security apparatus, has been targeting Israeli troops in Lebanon.
It said it will not cease its attacks on Israeli troops inside Lebanon and on towns in northern Israel as long as Israel continued its ceasefire violations. Under the agreement’s terms, Israel retains a “right to take all necessary measures in self-defence, at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks”.
Reports of more deadly Israeli attacks on Lebanon despite ceasefire
Two people were killed and five others injured in an Israeli airstrike on the southern Lebanese town of Abba this morning, according to Lebanon’s state-run national news agency (NNA), which has reported muttiple Israeli attacks across the country today.
The NNA also reported that Israeli warplanes launched a series of airstrikes this morning on the towns of Yahmar al-Shaqif and Kfar Tebnit, and shellilng on the towns of Yahmar Arnoun, Nabatieh al-Fawqa and Mayfadoun.
Despite a US brokered ceasefire agreement, Israel and Hezbollah have continued with their attacks, accusing each other of violations.
Israel has been accused of violating the ceasefire agreement many times, with strikes killing civilians and homes continuing to be demolished despite the military claiming it is only targeting Hezbollah sites.
Hezbollah, the Iranian backed Lebanese militant group, reportedly said earlier that its fighters had targeted an Israeli military position in the village of Taybeh along the Israel-Lebanon border, forcing its troops to retreat.
Iranian authorities on Monday hanged a postgraduate student from a university in Tehran on charges of espionage. Erfan Shakourzadeh, 29, was hanged after being convicted for collaborating with the CIA and the Mossad, the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website said.
Norway-based rights groups Iran Human Rights and Hengaw said that Shakourzadeh was a student at Tehran’s prestigious Iran University of Science and Technology and had written a message before his execution rejecting the charges as fabricated.
Describing him as an “elite student”, IHR said he was held “in solitary confinement and subjected to torture and forced to give false confessions”. He is the fifth person to be executed on espionage charges since the beginning of the US-Israeli war on Iran in late February.
The UK and France will host a multinational meeting of defence ministers involving 40 countries tomorrow to discuss military plans to restore trade flows through the strait of Hormuz, the British defence ministry said.
The UK’s defence secretary John Healey and his French counterpart Catherine Vautrin will co-chair the meeting. Healey said:
When I co-chair this meeting of nations from around the world, our job will be to make sure we are not just talking, we are ready to act.
That is why I have directed HMS Dragon to the Middle East, so Britain is in position to support this mission the moment it is needed.
This government will not stand by when instability drives up costs for British families and businesses.
The UK has already announced the deployment of HMS Dragon to the region so the destroyer can play a role in a multinational mission should the conditions allow after the US-Israel war on Iran is over.
Iran on Sunday threatened to strike British and French warships in the strait if they try to help reopen the strategic waterway.
French President Emmanuel Macron subsequently clarified that France had “never envisaged” a naval deployment but rather a security mission that would be done in coordination with Tehran.
South Korea condemns attack on cargo ship in strait of Hormuz
South Korea has condemned an attack against a cargo ship operated by a Korean shipper on 4 May in the strait of Hormuz and said it plans to respond once the source of the attack is identified.
Namu, the vessel operated by the shipper HMM Co., was not in violation of any rules in effect at the time in the waters off the UAE and it was a case of an attack against a commercial vessel that cannot be justified, the official said.
“We condemn this in the strongest terms,” Wi Sung-lac, the South Korean presidential national security adviser, told reporters.
“We’ll seek through further investigation to identify the party responsible for the attack, the exact type of projectile and its physical size.”
South Korea’s defence minister Ahn Gyu-back is due in Washington for talks with the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday.
They could possibly discuss cooperation to restore freedom of navigation through the strait of Hormuz with its effective closure raising concerns about a looming energy crisis in South Korea’s trade-dependent economy. Washington has urged its allies to help unblock the strait but has so far been met with a wall of resistance.
In response to US-Israeli attacks, Iran has effectively closed the strait to most traffic, inflicting severe economic damage around the world as the waterway usually carries about 20% of global oil shipments and significant amounts of gas and products including fertiliser.
Al Jazeera is carrying some comments from the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei, who is speaking about the Iranian proposal to end the war that the US has emphatically rejected.
“Demanding an end to the war, lifting the (US) blockade and piracy, and releasing Iranian assets that have been unjustly frozen in banks due to US pressure,” Baghaei was quoted as having said.
“Safe passage through the strait of Hormuz and establishing security in the region and Lebanon were other demands of Iran, which are considered a generous and responsible offer for regional security,” he added.
“Whenever we are forced to fight, we will fight, and whenever there is room for diplomacy, we will seize that opportunity,” Baghaei was also quoted as having told a news briefing earlier.
He said the US’s demands were “unreasonable” and suggested that stability in the region had been undermined by Trump’s rejection of Iran’s response to Washington’s peace proposal.
Julian Borger
The US parameters for nuclear talks reportedly included a moratorium on Iranian nuclear enrichment for up to 20 years; the transfer overseas, possibly to the US, of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which could be used to make nuclear warheads; and the dismantling of Iranian nuclear facilities.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Iranian counter-proposal suggested a shorter moratorium, the export of part of the HEU stockpile and the dilution of the rest, and refusal to accept the dismantling of facilities.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had earlier warned the war would continue as long as Iran had a stockpile of HEU.
“It’s not over, because there’s still nuclear material – enriched uranium – that has to be taken out of Iran. There’s still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled,” he told the CBS programme 60 Minutes, according an excerpt published before its broadcast.
Asked how the HEU should be removed, Netanyahu said: “You go in and you take it out,” adding that the best way would be to enter Iran to secure the fissile material as part of an agreement. He said Donald Trump had told him he wants “to go in there”.
In a separate interview, Trump appeared to take a more relaxed view of the HEU stockpile, which the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, says is buried deep under mountains in central Iran. The US president suggested that for the time being, satellite surveillance was sufficient to guarantee no one had access to it.
Trump rejects Iran response to US peace proposal as Tehran warns it is prepared to retaliate against US strikes
We are restarting our live coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran after Donald Trump described Tehran’s response to Washington’s peace proposal as “totally unacceptable”, raising the possibility of fresh conflict.
Iran warned it would not hold back from retaliating against any new US strikes or permit more foreign warships in the strait of Hormuz.
A ceasefire meant to facilitate peace talks came into effect in Apri. It has been largely observed, despite exchanges of fire and reports of strikes in the strategic strait of Hormuz, which Iran has continued to effectively block in response to being attacked by the US and Israel in February.
The US military in turn has blockaded Iranian ports since 13 April, claiming it has turned back 61 commercial vessels and disabled four.
According to Iranian state media, Tehran’s proposal included demands that the US lift its sanctions, end its naval blockade and called for an immediate end to the war with guarantees against any renewed attack on the country.
Posting on Truth Social, Trump said: “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘representatives’. I don’t like it – totally unacceptable.”
The US had presented a peace proposal a week ago, which, as my colleague Julian Borger notes here, was reported to consist of a one-page, 14-point memorandum of understanding that would reopen the strait while setting a framework for further talks on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Trump told US outlet Axios he’d discussed the Iranian response in a phone call with his close ally, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It was a very nice call. We have a good relationship,” he said, before stressing that the Iran negotiations are “my situation, not everybody else’s.”
Netanyahu warned the war would continue as long as Iran had a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which could be used to make nuclear warheads.
The embattled PM will seek to persuade his MPs not to ditch him as Labour leader in a speech on Monday.
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