Tornado kills one, injures four near French capital

This handout photograph taken and released on Oct. 20, 2025 by the Syndicat Alliance Police Nationale (National Police Alliance Union) shows a collapsed crane which fell during high winds in Ermont, Val-d’Oise, on Oct. 20, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 21 October 2025
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Tornado kills one, injures four near French capital

  • The town of Ermont, about 20 kilometers northeast of Paris was worst hit by the sudden twister
  • The tornado toppled cranes and tore off building roofs

CERGY-PONTOISE, France: A tornado tore through districts north of Paris on Monday, toppling three construction cranes that killed one person and left four others with critical injuries, authorities said.
The town of Ermont, about 20 kilometers (13 miles) northeast of Paris was worst hit by the sudden twister that caused damage across about 10 districts.
Regional prosecutor Guirec Le Bras told AFP one 23-year-old construction worker was killed on a building site and 10 people had been injured with four in critical condition.
The tornado toppled cranes and tore off building roofs, authorities said. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on the X platform that it had been a storm of “rare intensity.”
Videos shared on social media showed three cranes falling within seconds of each other.
One crane fell on a clinic, without causing injuries, and another on a residential building. Scores of firefighters, police and medical personnel were at the scene, authorities said.


Russia sends ‘hundreds’ of missiles, drones at Ukraine

Updated 7 sec ago
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Russia sends ‘hundreds’ of missiles, drones at Ukraine

Russia pounded Ukraine with drones and ballistic missiles overnight on Thursday, ​targeting energy systems and injuring at least seven people in the capital Kyiv, and the cities of Dnipro and Odesa, officials said.
“Hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles targeted energy systems, depriving people of power, heating, and water,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.
Two people were hurt in a “massive” attack on Kyiv, which also hit various buildings, Mayor Vitali ‌Klitschko said.
Klitschko ‌said on Telegram there had been ​hits ‌on ⁠both residential ​and non-residential ⁠buildings on both sides of the Dnipro River bisecting the city.
Fragments had fallen near two residential buildings in one district, but no fire had broken out.
Reuters witnesses heard explosions resound in the city.
Four people, including a baby boy and a four-year-old girl, were hurt in a missile and drone attack on the southeastern ⁠city of Dnipro and surrounding district, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha ‌said on Telegram.
One person was ‌hurt in a drone attack on ​the southern city of Odesa on ‌the Black Sea, which also damaged an infrastructure facility and ‌an apartment building where a fire broke out at an upper floor, head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Lysak said.
Lysak also said that a fire engulfed pavilions at one of the city’s markets and damaged ‌a supermarket building.
Regional Governor Oleh Kiper said that energy infrastructure was damaged in Odesa district.
’BLOW TO ⁠PEACE EFFORTS’
“Each ⁠such strike is a blow to peace efforts aimed at ending the war. Russia must be forced to take diplomacy seriously and de-escalate,” Sybiha said.
Ukrainian officials have met Russian officials under US mediation in Abu Dhabi in the latest US push to end the war.
But the talks so far have failed to resolve differences over Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, sources say, and Russia has pressed on with attacks often focused on Ukrainian
energy facilities
in the depths of a harsh winter.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said ​on Wednesday the US needed
to put ​more pressure on Russia
if it wanted the war to end by summer.