Trump suggests Iran linked to flydubai attacker, after Netanyahu said it’s too soon to tell

Trump suggests Iran linked to flydubai attacker, after Netanyahu said it’s too soon to tell

US President Donald Trump suggests the flydubai pilot who tried to crash a plane full of Israelis may be linked to Iran.

Asked by reporters outside the White House whether the pilot is linked to Iran, Trump responds, “We’re working on it. They’re being very open with us. I would say the answer based on what I’m hearing is yes.”

A reporter then pushes him on whether the pilot was either planted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps or radicalized some other way, and Trump gives a less definitive answer.

“Could have been, yeah,” he responds.

It’s unclear whether Trump has received intelligence or been briefed on the ongoing probe into the flydubai incident.

Yesterday, he suggested he was largely relying on information he received from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and wasn’t sure if it was accurate.

Netanyahu has told Fox News twice in the past day that it’s “too early” to know whether Iran was involved.

Senior official in government-run company interrogated for suspected crimes — police

A senior official in a government-run company was interrogated today on suspicion of fraud, breach of trust, forgery and perjury, police say.

Officers from the Israel Police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit arrested the unnamed official this morning, searched his home and office, and seized documents and digital files for the investigation, according to police.

The official was released under restrictive conditions following the interrogation, police say.

Dual UK-Iranian national arrested over suspected terror plot at US-run air base in England

British police have arrested a dual UK-Iranian national on suspicion of plotting a terror attack, following a security incident at a US-run air base over the weekend.

The 27-year-old man is arrested in London, and police have searched two properties in the UK capital.

On Sunday, five men, all in their 20s and from London, were arrested over the incident at RAF Fairford, which has been used by American bombers to strike Iran. They have since been released on bail.

Counter-terror police say a second man, a 26-year-old UK national, has also been questioned under caution.

“As we’ve made clear, we’re looking at all possible angles — including possible foreign state involvement,” the senior national coordinator for counter terrorism policing for the Metropolitan Police, Vicki Evans, says. “I’d like to thank the public for their continued support and patience whilst we work through this investigation.”

Police say they’re probing Palestinians’ stone-throwing near where settlers reportedly killed man

Israel Police says it has opened an investigation after “dozens of Palestinians hurled stones at Israeli citizens,” lightly wounding a minor next to Yasuf, the northern West Bank village where the Palestinian Authority said a man was shot dead by settlers this afternoon.

Officers accompanied by the IDF are gathering evidence on the scene and are also probing a claim that the Palestinians tried to lure settlers in the direction of the village, police say.

The police do not mention any Palestinian casualties.

Palestinian medics earlier said 51-year-old Mashhour Yassin was shot dead, while another man was wounded by shrapnel during a settler attack and ensuing IDF raid in the area of Yasuf.

The police statement says troops opened fire at “rioters.” The IDF does not immediately comment.

El Al prohibits luggage, carry-ons on Dubai-Tel Aviv rescue flights

Israel’s flagship carrier El Al says Israeli passengers on rescue flights from Dubai to Tel Aviv, which will begin tomorrow, will not be permitted to check their suitcases or bring carry-on luggage into the cabin.

Following directives by Israeli security authorities, passengers may carry only a personal bag on board for now, El Al says.

Passengers’ luggage is expected to be sent separately.

ToI poll: Netanyahu’s bloc leads, Likud tied for 1st, as voters fret over election’s outcome

The bloc of parties supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken the lead with less than a month to go until Israel’s October 27 election, and his Likud party is tied for the most votes with Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition Yashar faction, according to a new poll by The Times of Israel’s sister site, Zman Yisrael.

But the prime minister’s supporters, as well as the bloc of four Jewish-led parties opposing him, are both far from winning a majority of the 120-seat Knesset, the poll finds.

The poll is the latest one in recent weeks to show Netanyahu’s presumed bloc pulling ahead, after months in which nearly every poll showed his supporters trailing the presumed opposition bloc.

The shift has sparked anxiety among Netanyahu’s opponents, the poll finds, with 88% saying they are worried about the election’s outcome. But the other side is also uneasy, with nearly 70% of Netanyahu’s supporters saying they’re worried about the result.

Overall, the poll finds that more than 80% of voters are worried about the election’s outcome.

The poll finds that the parties supporting Netanyahu would collectively win 53 seats in the Knesset, while the four Jewish-led parties opposed to him would win 49. Both camps are far from a 61-seat majority.

Arab-led parties, which also oppose Netanyahu but have rarely been included in governing coalitions, would win 13, while a non-aligned party led by Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha would win five seats.

Sitting atop the poll are Likud and Yashar, with 21 seats each. Previous polls had shown Yashar in the lead by a few seats.

Next come two opposition parties, B’Yachad and Yisrael Beytenu, with 10 seats each. The Sephardi Haredi Shas party would win nine, followed by three parties with eight seats each: the left-wing Democrats, the Arab-led Joint List and the Ashkenazi Haredi United Torah Judaism.

The far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism-Zehut parties would win six and five seats, respectively. The Arab-led Ra’am would also win five, as would the Hendel-Zelekha faction. The right-wing, pro-Netanyahu People of Israel party, led by Ofer Winter, would win four.

The poll was conducted on September 30 and October 1 by Yossi Tatika of Tatika Research & Media in collaboration with the Adgenda panel, and surveyed a total sample of 500 respondents with a margin of error of ±4.4%.

While horse-race polls are an almost daily occurrence in Israel in the months leading up to elections and are not seen as overly reliable, taken together, the surveys can often serve as a general gauge of the political climate and where the vote may be headed.

Syrian government officials and Hezbollah held secret talks in Turkey, sources tell Reuters

Representatives of the Syrian government and the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah have held face-to-face talks in Turkey to try to calm tensions between them, six sources briefed on the first known meeting between the longtime foes tell Reuters.

The Syrian officials and Hezbollah met secretly at least once last month, say the sources — who include two Syrian officials, a US official and a senior Lebanese security source close to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah for years dispatched fighters to Syria to defend former President Bashar al-Assad’s government in the country’s civil war.

After Assad was ousted in late 2024 in a lightning rebel offensive, tensions rose between Syria’s new government and Hezbollah, with Damascus accusing the group of transferring arms through Syria, and the United States encouraging Syria’s military to send forces into Lebanon to fight Hezbollah.

The six sources say Hezbollah representatives and Syrian intelligence and foreign ministry officials took part in the meeting last month at the invitation of Turkish security and intelligence agencies in an effort to de-escalate.

All the sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting.

Syria’s foreign ministry, Turkey’s foreign and defense ministries and the US State Department do not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions about the meeting. Hezbollah’s media office declines to comment.

After publication, the Syrian government’s English-language account on X denies such a meeting took place, saying, “these claims are false.”

The meeting focused on resolving points of tension between the two parties and went well, according to the US official, the Syrian officials and the Lebanese source.

One of the Syrian officials said both sides agreed they held no hostility towards one another, and that Syria assured Hezbollah that it would not intervene militarily in Lebanon to disarm the group.

In turn, Syrian officials asked Hezbollah to help stop cross-border smuggling attempts and dismantle its remaining sleeper cells, particularly in southern Syria, the official says.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report. 

Pilot to ToI: If relief pilots hadn’t been on flydubai plane, passenger could’ve landed it in miracle ‘gentle crash’

Yaniv Hayun, one of the Israelis who helped subdue the flydubai copilot who stabbed the captain in an apparent attempt to crash the plane, grabbed the plane’s controls and says he learned from the TV show “Air Disasters” how to pull the levers to fly the plane upward.

After that, two off-duty flydubai pilots took over and landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

If those pilots weren’t on the flight, could an untrained passenger such as Yaniv have landed it safely?

It is theoretically possible for a passenger to land it in “a gentle crash,” a commercial pilot tells The Times of Israel. “Most people could walk away.”

But the passenger would have to know how to get on the radio with a flight tower first, he says.

“You have to be a very smart person who can take a lot of instruction over the radio,” the pilot explains. “They would probably send them to a very, very long runway.”

“If he had the radio in his ear, you could listen to the radio and someone could talk you through,” he continues, cautioning that “It’d be a very big miracle.”

Of course, someone with experience flying small planes would have a huge advantage.

“A guy who flew a Cessna would be able to line up a plane,” says the pilot. He added, however, “Now, it wouldn’t be a pretty landing.”

Senior UN figure says he lost his job for criticizing Israel over Gaza

A senior official at the UN’s agriculture agency said yesterday that he had lost his job for criticizing Israeli policies in Gaza, as another official condemned staff who “play the game of human rights.”

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) director Ben Davis told AFP he had been informed in July that his contract would not be renewed after 26 years because he had allegedly breached impartiality rules.

“They accused me of organizing these moments of silence on the situation of starvation and famine in Gaza,” he said, referring to weekly silent protests by some employees at the Rome-based organization.

Davis was also criticized for a report he worked on about food availability in Gaza and humanitarian law, published in May.

“We were told to take it down,” he said. “We weren’t allowed to make any references to humanitarian law.”

Israel has repeatedly denied that there was a famine in Gaza, where hunger was widespread last year after Israel halted the entry of aid for more than two months. Israel accused Hamas of stealing aid and said there were sufficient supplies in the territory.

Israel also views the UN as systemically antagonistic to it, and frequently condemns or rejects reports put out by the global body.

FAO director-general Qu Dongyu appeared to warn FAO staff Tuesday that “we don’t allow you to play the game here of human rights.”

He was speaking in public comments made at the start of a filmed session on forestry.

“Of course, human rights is very important, but we have the human rights agency in Geneva,” he added. “If you want to take care, go there.”

“That’s why some senior members play the political game here, I fire [them],” he said. “You should follow the FAO constitution… You are against staff regulations… But I’m a very soft person, I didn’t fire that many.”

“I will fire more people if they are against the law,” he added.

FAO did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked if he thought the director general’s comments were about him, Davis said “absolutely.”

“He has already scolded me in public in the past for being too political,” he added.

Davis also said he was “concerned” about the director general’s comments on firing more people.

Hundreds of people attended the moments of silence at their height and there are now only 30-40 people coming on a weekly basis, he said.

‘He’s stabbing the pilot!’: Woman who alerted crew to flydubai attack recounts harrowing moments

Tali Manes, the woman who alerted the crew on flydubai Flight 1073 to the attack taking place in the cockpit, recounts the experience in an interview on Channel 12.

Manes recalls that she was taking her young daughter to the bathroom on the flight when she heard strange noises coming from the cockpit. When she began to hear someone knocking on the cockpit door from the inside, which “sounded very, very unusual to me,” she alerted a flight attendant sitting nearby, she says.

“Something is happening in there,” she recalls telling the crew member. After she felt that the flight attendant wasn’t reacting, she says, “I screamed at him and touched his hand forcefully. I said, “Something is happening in there!’ He simply went to the door and opened it.”

Once the door was open, Manes says, she saw “blood all over the cockpit and very, very sharp fighting moves… I saw it all with my own eyes, and I began to scream.”

She continues, “I screamed, ‘He’s stabbing the pilot, he’s stabbing the pilot, come help!’ with screams of fear… People looked at me and didn’t understand. My voice is still a little hoarse.”

Manes says the thwarting of the attack, which saved the lives of the 180 people aboard the flight, was a “great miracle.”