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Investigation continues after a vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on the US side of a bridge connecting the two countries at Niagara Falls.

The two people killed when their luxury car crashed into a border checkpoint in Niagara Falls and exploded in a fiery wreck have been identified as a New York husband and wife, police said.

The couple’s 2022 Bentley Flying Spur slammed into a row of security booths at the Rainbow Bridge and burst into flames on Wednesday.

The investigation into what caused them to race through an intersection, hit a low median and become airborne continued, with investigators looking at whether medical or mechanical issues may have contributed, Niagara Falls Police Chief John Faso told local media on Friday.

Police identified the couple as Kurt P Villani and Monica Villani, both 53, of Grand Island, a suburb on the Niagara River between Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

Online business records and the company website indicate the victims’ family owns a lumber business and several hardware stores in the Buffalo area.

Records show they are the owner of Gui’s Lumber and seven Ace Hardware locations in western New York, operating the business since the mid-1980s.

“We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all that extended prayers, condolences and well wishes,” the families and the lumber company said in a joint statement released by the Erie County Sheriff’s Office on Friday.

“At this point, we are requesting privacy so we may begin the process of healing.”

Investigation continues

The wreck prompted widespread concern on both sides of the border, as video and images of what appeared to be the aftermath of an explosion began to circulate online and officials closed the bridge and three other nearby crossings.

Authorities investigated for several hours before the FBI’s Buffalo office said it found no signs of a terror attack and turned the case over to local police as a traffic investigation.

The president of the Grand Island Chamber of Commerce said on Friday that the couple’s support for their community was well known.

“They gave from their heart, so they didn’t make a big deal about it,” Eric Fiebelkorn said.

The eldest Villani died last year, leaving a void in the close-knit business community that has now grown with the loss of the son, Fiebelkorn said.

The Niagara Falls Police Department has said the crash investigation will take time given the complexity.

About 6,000 vehicles cross the Rainbow Bridge each day, according to the US Federal Highway Administration’s National Bridge Inventory. The short, steel bridge offers scenic views of Niagara Falls.

KNOW THEIR NAMES

Danielle was just 24 when she and her partner, Noam Shay, were brutally killed by Hamas at Supernova Festival.

As the daughter of Israeli tech billionaire, philanthropist and peace ambassador Eyal Waldman, 24-year-old Danielle inherited her father’s belief that Jews and Arabs could work together. He hired more than 200 Palestinian engineers at Mellanox, the tech firm he co-founded in 1999 and led until 2020, believing that working together could lead to peace.

“Danielle was the same as me. She believed we must strive for peace. She worked with me as often as she could,” Eyal, who raised $360,000 for an oncology ward at a Gaza hospital in 2020, recalls.

“She always thought that doing good things for other people was the best way to be. She knew many of my Palestinian friends and was friends with them, too, and she was always thinking of other people without thinking of herself. She helped so many people during her short life.”

Danielle was with her boyfriend, 26-year-old Noam Shay, at the Supernova music festival which was taking place close to kibbutz Re’im near the Gaza border when it was attacked by Hamas on October 7. Some 364 people were killed and 40 were taken hostage by Hamas, according to the first Israeli police report into the attack.

Danielle and Noam had met six years earlier when they were both serving in the Israeli military and had been inseparable ever since.

“They had just started talking about getting married,” Eyal explains. “But instead of a wedding, we held a funeral and buried them together.”

Many of the hundreds of Israeli, Palestinian citizens of Israel and foreigners murdered by Hamas fighters at the Supernova music festival sent their loved ones text and voice messages saying goodbye. But Eyal didn’t even have that.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye to her. She sent a text message to say she was OK at 6:30am. That was the last we heard of her. At least I have that,” he says. “I also have a video of when they were in the car before they were murdered and an audio recording from one of her friends who was wounded. But by that time, she was probably already dead.”

“Danielle was amazing. She couldn’t hurt a fly and she loved everyone. Anyone who came into contact with her loved her, too,” he says.

“My ex-wife [Danielle’s mother] called me the other day to tell me she had a dream about their wedding,” Eyal says, choking up with tears.

Despite his unbearable loss, Eyal says he does not regret working with Palestinians and remains optimistic that the day will come when the two people will coexist in peace. He also has reason to believe the current war may turn out to be a catalyst or trigger for reconciliation: “After the [Yom Kippur] war of 1973, we started the peace process with Egypt and signed an agreement with them. There’s no reason that cannot happen again. We need to resolve this conflict. We’ve been killing each other for 75 years.”

When asked about the memory of his daughter he holds most dear, he recalls a skiing holiday in France when Danielle began dancing spontaneously.

“She loved to dance. She was dancing all the time,” he says. “I just posted a video from that day when she was dancing in France and my three kids joined in. It was the song, Titanium, that says ‘I’m bulletproof’. It’s the best memory I have.”

A couple killed when their luxury car slammed into a border checkpoint in Niagara Falls and exploded in a fireball triggering a security scare have been identified.

Police have named the victims as husband and wife Kurt and Monica Villani, both 53, of Grand Island, New York, whose family owns a lumber business and several hardware stores in the Buffalo area.

An investigation is under way into what caused the Bentley Flying Spur to crash at the Rainbow Bridge, linking New York state and Ontario, on Wednesday.

Security footage showed the vehicle travelling from the US side of the border at high speed before hitting an object, flying into the air and then hurtling into a row of security booths where it burst into flames.

A US customs officer suffered minor injuries at the scene and was treated at a nearby hospital before being released later.

The incident immediately raised concerns both sides of the border of a terrorist attack, prompting the closure of four US-Canadian border crossings in the area and a halt to international flights at Buffalo International Airport.

An initial investigation by the authorities, including the FBI, found it was not terror-related and turned the case over to local police.

Traffic investigators are looking at whether medical or mechanical issues may have contributed to the tragedy, Niagara Falls police chief John Faso said.

A statement issued by the victims’ family said: “We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all that extended prayers, condolences and well wishes.

“At this point, we are requesting privacy so we may begin the process of healing.”

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The president of the Grand Island Chamber of Commerce said the couple’s support for their community was well known.

“They gave from their heart, so they didn’t make a big deal about it,” Eric Fiebelkorn said.

New York governor Kathy Hochul described the crash scene as “surreal” with the vehicle “basically incinerated”, leaving little behind but the engine and a scattering of charred debris.

She said: “You actually had to look at it and say, was this generated by AI?

“Because it was so surreal to see. How high in the air this vehicle went, and then the crash, and the explosion, and the fire.”

One of the more disturbing things that Ranin Odeh has observed during the activity sessions she runs for children at the Freedom Theatre in the West Bank’s Jenin camp is that their play often turns violent. Children frequently become overly rough and even hit each other.

It is a typical trauma response, she says. “They don’t understand why they do it, but I do.” She has often seen children coping with the trauma of Israeli incursions into the camp through violent play. She doesn’t allow that kind of play in her setting, offering instead cultural and artistic activities as an alternative way to focus their fear and rage.

With short, black hair and a welcoming presence, Odeh, 30, has the brightness and energy of a young person, but also the tough look of someone who has seen and lived through a great deal. Her job is particularly important to her as someone who remembers growing up during the second Intifada, or uprising. She identifies strongly with the need that children have to heal from trauma through art and play.

Children need safe spaces where they can feel good, she says. “They need a place where they can fly.”

Life for children in Jenin is traumatic. One day, the kids are having fun with an activity in the Freedom Theatre, says Odeh, and the next, there is an armed raid by Israeli forces on the camp – an event which has become far more frequent since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7.

Facing down Molotov cocktails

The Freedom Theatre itself is no stranger to danger and violence.

Originally called the Stone Theatre, it was founded in 1987, after the first Intifada, by Arna Mer-Khamis, an Israeli activist who died in 1995. Mer-Khamis was born into a Jewish family in 1929 and became a lifelong supporter of the rights of Palestinians, especially children. With her theatre, she hoped to offer children a space for healing and to empower women through the theatre and arts.

The first building which housed the theatre was destroyed in 2002 by Israeli forces during the second Intifada. In 2006, Juliano Mer-Khamis, Arna’s son by her Palestinian Christian husband, Saliba Khamis, reopened the theatre on a new site in Jenin, doubling as a community centre.

Not everyone was in favour, however. In 2009, an unidentified person threw two Molotov cocktail bombs at the theatre while it was empty. Juliano was shot dead by a masked attacker in Jenin in 2011 at the age of 52. His murder was never solved.

Amid the latest crisis, Mustafa Sheta, the tall, broad director of the theatre, says he begins each day in the knowledge that probably nothing he has planned will actually happen.

Sheta has an inviting smile, engaging intensely with you when he talks about his theatre or about Israel’s war on Gaza and frequent raids on the occupied West Bank. These days, that is nearly every time the 43-year-old speaks to visitors at the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp, situated in the West Bank.

Two weeks ago – between November 6 and 10 – multiple Israeli military incursions took place in and around Jenin. On November 9, a Thursday, Sheta and theatre staff were inside when a massive raid by Israeli forces took place from midnight until Friday dawn and resumed mid-morning. There was heavy fighting, accompanied by Israeli drone attacks.

Before the big push into Jenin began on Thursday night, there had already been some attacks by Israeli forces during the day. In the evening, the electricity to the camp was cut off and Israeli forces used loudhailers to announce a two-hour window for civilians to evacuate the camp.

That night, children, women and men with flashlights or the light of their mobile phones walked to the Jenin hospital, waiting for the raid to restart. During the night, many children were trapped inside schools in the camp, waiting for the incursion to end so they could be reunited with their families. Fourteen Palestinians, some of whom were fighters, were killed.

Resistance through art

Given the likelihood of armed incursions, therefore, the theatre staff begin each day trying to find out if there is going to be an attack on the camp; Sheta says he needs to know if his audience, his four children – two boys and two girls – his staff and their families will be safe.

It is very difficult to organise regular programmes and he always has to have a plan B. But this is his method of resistance, he says. Indeed, “resistance through art” is the motto of the theatre.

“We also struggle in the fight to free Palestine,” Sheta says. He believes there are many ways to contribute to Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation – armed struggle is just one.

Sheta considers himself a “cultural fighter” but he has not escaped the effects of violence. His father, a high school teacher, was killed by Israeli troops in 2002 in Jenin just one month before Sheta graduated from college – one of his dreams for his children.

Sheta has also been arrested in the past, and has spent eight months in two Israeli prisons, accused of “inciting violence”. He saw that as an opportunity to learn more about the plight of Palestinian prisoners. “The violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, particularly in Jenin, did not start on October 7,” he says.

Mostly, however, he believes in the importance of preserving Palestinian culture and establishing an identity for his people which goes beyond the occupation. “It is time to invest in Palestinian culture. The struggle has to come with many steps, not only with guns.”

Palestinians are temporarily safe from bombardment, but the UN said Gaza saw an ‘intensification’ of Israeli strikes ahead of truce.

Palestinians in the war-stricken Gaza Strip are experiencing a second day of relative calm absent of Israeli attacks as a temporary pause in fighting holds.

After almost 50 days of constant Israeli bombardment that has killed nearly 15,000 Palestinians in the enclave, a four-day truce came into effect from early Friday and appeared to be proceeding unhindered on Saturday.

But the United Nations said on Friday that “the 24 hours prior to the pause witnessed an intensification of Israeli strikes from air, land and sea” throughout Gaza.

The temporary truce has allowed the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza – where no place has proven safe in the past seven weeks – to experience their first night of sleep without the fear of being killed in an Israeli air raid.

It also provided some time for families to try to secure supplies of food and water, which have become scarce amid the unrelenting assault on the besieged enclave.

Some chose to go back to the northern parts of Gaza – which have seen the worst of the fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas – amid a ground invasion of the area by Israeli troops supported by heavy machinery and air strikes. Several Palestinians were killed on their way north as Israel ordered them to stay in the south.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said some Palestinians had a chance to visit surviving family members.

“It’s also an opportunity for those who lost loved ones and friends or family members to pay them respects and offer them a prayer, as funeral processions and proper burials were not permissible under heavy bombardment and relentless air strikes,” Mahmoud said.

More captives to be released

Palestinian journalist Ismail Abu Omar on Saturday shared a video – verified by Al Jazeera – that shows a man searching for his family’s clothes from under the rubble of their Gaza home, which was destroyed in the Israeli onslaught.

Palestinian photojournalist Magdi Fathi has documented the testimonies of several displaced women who say nothing is left of their homes in Khan Younis amid Israel’s bombardment of the enclave.

“I came to my house to take out some things, but I did not find anything. The Israeli army destroyed the place in a way that we did not expect,” said one woman, who was among the thousands who returned to their neighbourhoods after the start of the truce yesterday.

Another woman, a resident of Khuzaa in eastern Khan Younis, said she was “shocked” by what she found. “The destruction is very big,” she said.

Khan Younis is one of the southern cities where residents of northern Gaza were ordered by Israel to evacuate to, but it has been repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces.

As part of the truce, 24 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were released on Friday, 13 of whom are Israelis. More are expected to be let go, as the Israeli prime minister’s office said it had received a list of captives to be released on Saturday.

Friday also saw the release of 39 Palestinian women and children who had been detained by Israel, some of them for years. They returned to their homes in the occupied West Bank.

During the four days of the pause, at least 50 people are expected to be freed by Hamas, leaving an estimated 190 captives in Gaza. In exchange, 150 Palestinians are expected to be released by Israel.

The truce, which could potentially be extended, allowed the first aid deliveries since the start of the war to arrive in northern Gaza.