التصنيف: أخبار

One person has died and at least 12 people have been injured in a terror attack in central Israel, according to emergency services.

Israeli police said two people driving vehicles ran over several people in the city of Ra’anana, to the north of Tel Aviv.

Police described the incident as a “multiple car-ramming” terror attack, in which the suspects used three different vehicles, at least one of which was stolen.

The two suspects are from the same family in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank, and entered Israel illegally, police said.

“They went out together and in parallel, to two different locations, took two cars and launched a series of rammings,” central district police chief Avi Biton told reporters.

Police said 13 people were taken to hospital, one of whom, a 70-year-old woman, died of her injuries.

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Israel’s national ambulance service, Magen David Adom (MDA), earlier said the woman had been taken to hospital in a critical condition.

MDA said a total of 14 people had been injured, including a 34-year-old man and a 16-year-old boy who were in a serious condition.

Eight people were in a “moderate” condition, and three in a “mild” condition, according to paramedics.

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Eli Raymond, from MDA, said: “We arrived at the scene with large forces, and we saw a number of injured people with different levels of injury.

“Immediately we began administering medical care, including stopping bleeding, treating, and giving medication. We evacuated those injured for further treatment in the hospitals.”

The incident comes amid heightened security tensions over the more than three-month-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Israel’s Shin Bet security agency has been brought in to investigate the incident, alongside police.

The search for a man who fell into a crack in the ground that opened up after a volcano erupted in Iceland last month has been called off.

Ludvik Petursson, 50, was working to fill crevasses formed by earthquakes and volcanic activity in the fishing town of Grindavik, which had been evacuated in November, according to local media.

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He went missing on 10 January. Hundreds of people were involved in the search, which had to be stopped after a rockfall made conditions too dangerous.

“Unfortunately the man was not found,” police told Sky News.

Local police said Mr Petursson was a father of four and said he had two grandchildren.

The news emerged as Iceland suffered another volcano eruption – the second in less than a month.

Nearly 4,000 people had already been evacuated from Grindavik after the first eruption in December.

But following a series of earthquakes, another fissure opened and began spewing lava nearby in the early hours of 14 January.

Conman Mark Acklom is challenging a bid to seize his assets, five years after he was jailed for a notorious romance scam.

His lawyer told a judge that another man had admitted “pilfering” money from the victim, so it was difficult to know how much Acklom got.

Acklom, 50, was jailed for defrauding divorcee Carolyn Woods of £300,000 after wooing her and promising to marry her in Gloucestershire.

He used a false name and convinced her he was a wealthy banker and MI6 agent, before going on the run.

After being extradited from Switzerland in 2019, he admitted five charges, but had originally faced 20 charges that amounted to the theft of £750,000.

The Crown Prosecution Service now wants a court to establish exactly how much Acklom benefited from his crimes against Ms Woods – and what he has left – so it can try to confiscate his assets.

Prosecutors believe Acklom, who was first jailed for fraud when he was 18, has profited by £1.3m in his whole criminal career, in which he has been jailed in several countries.

His lawyer Martin Sharpe said prosecutors had abused the current confiscation process under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) by not disclosing certain documents to the defence.

Mr Sharpe told a court in Bristol: “Paul Kaur is somebody who made admissions in interview [with police] that he had pilfered money from the complainant [Ms Woods].

“Part of the prosecution case was that the money Mr Acklom took from the complainant he channelled into Paul Kaur’s account.”

Mr Sharpe said: “In order to assess the benefit to Mr Acklom we need to find out how much money he [Kaur] took.”

The lawyer said he didn’t know how much money Mr Kaur took because he hadn’t spoken to him and “because he wouldn’t co-operate”. He said he did not know how to contact Mr Kaur.

Mr Kaur, a businessman, told Sky News last year that he had worked for Acklom and, like Ms Woods, had been duped by him. He was never charged by police.

The bid to establish Acklom’s benefit from the scam on Ms Woods began, effectively, from the day he was jailed and there have been several court hearings.

The latest is being held in front of Judge Martin Picton, who sentenced Acklom and told him at the time that he had acted in a “ruthless and utterly selfish manner”.

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The court was told Acklom had been freed from a Spanish jail last year, after being extradited at the end of his UK sentence, and was subject to a Spanish confiscation order of €374,000 euros (£321,000). His lawyer didn’t know whether he had paid it.

Acklom was not in court in Bristol, and is living in Spain with his family and likely to become a Spanish citizen. His wife is Spanish.

Judge Picton said the hearings have “gone on for a bit now, to put it mildly”, and said that, so far, he has not “heard a word from Mr Acklom”.

He added: “It leaves me utterly bemused that we spend a lot of time, here today, tomorrow and another four days later establishing a [monetary] figure that has beyond even an outside chance of ever being recovered from a person living outside the jurisdiction.”

Acklom’s lawyer described the law around confiscation as “a confused landscape”.

The hearing was adjourned for the day after the judge suggested lawyers from the two sides could discuss a possible agreement before coming back to court on Tuesday.

Judge Picton is expected to make a final decision on a confiscation order in April.

Paul Kaur has been asked for a response.

Ms Woods has always believed there was little chance of getting her money back from Acklom and has urged Barclays Bank to compensate her.

Acklom persuaded Ms Woods to put her money into a Barclays account and conned her into “lending” him regular amounts, up to £30,000 a day, through the bank which she says failed in its duty of care to question the payments.

A Barclays employee, a woman, was arrested and questioned by police early on in the investigation, but was never charged.

Barclays has been considering Ms Woods’ claim for compensation since July and has promised her an update on its internal investigation this week.