MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian man rescued after 67 days adrift in a small inflatable boat in the Sea of Okhotsk described Wednesday how he survived by battling shivering cold and drinking rainwater.
Mikhail Pichugin, 46, had set off to watch whales with his 49-year-old brother and 15-year-old nephew. But the boat's engine shut down on their way back on Aug. 9.
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In this image taken from footage provided by the RU-RTR Russian television on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, Mikhail Pichugin, who was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east, speaks to medics and journalists in a hospital in Magadan, Russian far east. (RU-RTR Russian Television via AP)
In this photo taken from video released by the official telegram channel of the Russian Far Eastern Transport Prosecutor's Office on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, a Russian man who spent more than two months adrift in an inflatable boat is seen before being rescued by a fishing vessel in the Okhotsk Sea near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east. (Official telegram channel of the Russian Far Eastern Transport Prosecutor's Office via AP)
In this photo taken from video released by Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, Russian emergency workers pull Mikhail Pichugin ashore after he was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east. (Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image taken from footage provided by the RU-RTR Russian television on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, Mikhail Pichugin, who was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east, speaks to medics and journalists in a hospital in Magadan, Russian far east. (RU-RTR Russian Television via AP)
In this image taken from footage provided by the RU-RTR Russian television on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, Mikhail Pichugin, who was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east, speaks to medics and journalists in a hospital in Magadan, Russian far east. (RU-RTR Russian Television via AP)
In this image taken from footage provided by the RU-RTR Russian television on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, Mikhail Pichugin, who was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east, speaks to medics and journalists in a hospital in Magadan, Russian far east. (RU-RTR Russian Television via AP)
Initial efforts by emergency services to locate the trio failed. Pichugin’s brother and nephew later died, and he tied their bodies to the boat to prevent them from being washed away.
A fishing vessel spotted the boat this week and rescued Pichugin about 20 kilometers (11 nautical miles) off Kamchatka and about 1,000 kilometers (540 nautical miles) from its departure point.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday from his hospital bed, Pichugin described how the boat's engine broke down and then one of the oars broke, making the boat uncontrollable.
The phone on board was useless as there was no network coverage, but the trio used it for geolocation for a week until the phone battery and a power bank ran out. They tried unsuccessfully to attract rescuers' attention using the few flares they had.
“A helicopter flew past close, than another one after three days, but they were useless,” Pichugin said in comments broadcast by Russian state television.
He said they collected rainwater and struggled to get warm on the sea off eastern Russia.
“There was a sleeping bag with camel wool, it was wet and didn't dry,” he said. "You crawl under it, wiggle a little and get warm.”
They had a limited stockpile of noodles and peas and tried to catch some fish.
Russian media quoted Pichugin as saying his nephew died of hypothermia and hunger in September. His brother started behaving erratically and tried at one point to jump off the boat.
Pichugin said he survived “thanks to God's help," adding softly that “I simply had no choice, I had my mother and my daughter left at home.”
Doctors at the Magadan hospital said he was suffering from dehydration and hypothermia but in stable condition.
In this image taken from footage provided by the RU-RTR Russian television on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, Mikhail Pichugin, who was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east, speaks to medics and journalists in a hospital in Magadan, Russian far east. (RU-RTR Russian Television via AP)
In this photo taken from video released by the official telegram channel of the Russian Far Eastern Transport Prosecutor's Office on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, a Russian man who spent more than two months adrift in an inflatable boat is seen before being rescued by a fishing vessel in the Okhotsk Sea near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east. (Official telegram channel of the Russian Far Eastern Transport Prosecutor's Office via AP)
In this photo taken from video released by Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, Russian emergency workers pull Mikhail Pichugin ashore after he was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east. (Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image taken from footage provided by the RU-RTR Russian television on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, Mikhail Pichugin, who was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east, speaks to medics and journalists in a hospital in Magadan, Russian far east. (RU-RTR Russian Television via AP)
In this image taken from footage provided by the RU-RTR Russian television on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, Mikhail Pichugin, who was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east, speaks to medics and journalists in a hospital in Magadan, Russian far east. (RU-RTR Russian Television via AP)
In this image taken from footage provided by the RU-RTR Russian television on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, Mikhail Pichugin, who was rescued by a fishing vessel following 67 days adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk near the village of Ust-Khairuzovo in Kamchatka region of Russian far east, speaks to medics and journalists in a hospital in Magadan, Russian far east. (RU-RTR Russian Television via AP)
QANA, Lebanon (AP) — Israeli airstrikes pounded areas across Lebanon, killing at least 25 people, officials said Wednesday, including more than a dozen in a southern town where Israeli bombardments in previous conflicts are seared into local memory.
Elsewhere in the south, a city’s mayor was among the dead in a strike that Lebanese officials said targeted a meeting to coordinate relief efforts.
The Israeli military said they were targeting a Hezbollah commander in the strikes late Tuesday on the southern town of Qana, where 15 people were killed. Associated Press photos and video of the scene showed several flattened buildings and others with their top floors collapsed. Rescue workers carried away the remains of dead people and used a bulldozer to remove rubble, as they searched for more victims.
Israel said the target was Jalal Mustafa Hariri, Hezbollah's commander in charge of the Qana area.
In 1996, Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and wounded scores more people, including four U.N. peacekeepers. During the 2006 war, an Israeli strike on a residential building killed nearly three dozen people, a third of them children. Israel said at the time that it struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.
“Qana always gets its share,” Mayor Mohammed Krasht told the AP, referring to the town’s grim history.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, meanwhile accused Israel of “intentionally targeting” a municipal council meeting to discuss relief efforts in Nabatiyeh, where six people were killed.
“What solution can be hoped for in light of this reality?” he asked in a statement.
Strikes continued across Lebanon, including in the eastern Bekaa Valley and Nabatiyeh, in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah command centers and weapons facilities that had been embedded in civilian areas. Hezbollah launched more than 90 projectiles towards Israel on Wednesday, wounding four civilians, according to Israel Rescue Services.
Israel also resumed its barrage on Beirut’s southern suburbs after a six-day pause, hitting what it said was an arms warehouse under an apartment building, without providing evidence. The military warned residents to evacuate before the strike, and there were no reports of casualties.
During an assessment of the situation in Israel's north on Wednesday, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was gleaning intelligence from their capture of Hezbollah militants that was significantly weakening Hezbollah's ability to launch attacks. “We will conduct negotiations under fire, I said that on the first day, I said it in Gaza, I said it here - this is our tool,” he told soldiers operating in southern Lebanon.
The strikes on southern Beirut came after Mikati said the United States had given him assurances that Israel would curb its strikes on the capital.
Hezbollah has a strong presence in southern Beirut, known as the Dahiyeh, which is also a residential and commercial area home to large numbers of civilians and people unaffiliated with the militant group.
The Israeli military posted an evacuation warning on the social media platform X ahead of the strike in Beirut. An Associated Press photographer saw three airstrikes in the area, the first coming less than an hour after the notice.
In Nabatiyeh, more than half a dozen strikes hit the city and surrounding areas, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry, which said at least six people were killed and 43 wounded, with rescue efforts still underway. The city's mayor, Ahmad Kahil, was among those killed, provincial governor Huwaida Turk told The Associated Press.
In his statement about Nabatiyeh, Mikati, the caretaker prime minister, said the international community has been “deliberately silent” about Israeli strikes that have killed civilians.
U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert called reports of Kahlil's death “alarming.”
“This attack follows other incidents in which civilians and civilian infrastructure have been targeted across Lebanon,” she said.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, following the surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
A year of low-level fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border escalated into all-out war last month, and Israel invaded Lebanon at the start of October. Israeli airstrikes have killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders, and Israel has vowed to continue its offensive until its citizens can safely return to communities near the border.
Some 2,300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since last October, more than three-quarters of them in the past month, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. The fighting has displaced some 1.2 million people in Lebanon.
Hezbollah's rocket attacks, which have extended their range and grown more intense over the past month, have driven around 60,000 Israelis from their homes in the north. The attacks have killed nearly 60 people in Israel, around half of them soldiers.
Hezbollah has said it will keep up its attacks until there is a cease-fire in Gaza, but that appears increasingly remote after months of negotiations brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar sputtered to a halt.
Israel is still at war in Gaza more than a year after Hamas' attack, in which some 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and another 250 were abducted. Around 100 captives are still being held, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel has been carrying out a major operation for more than a week in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in the territory's north dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to Jabaliya and other areas after saying that Hamas militants had regrouped.
Hospitals have received around 350 bodies since the offensive began on Oct. 6, according to Dr. Mounir al-Boursh, the director-general of Gaza's Health Ministry.
He told the AP that more than half the dead were women and children, and that many bodies remain in the streets and under the rubble, with rescue teams unable to reach them because of Israeli strikes. “Entire families have disappeared,” he said.
Israel's offensive has killed over 42,000 people, according to the Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but says more than half were women and children. The offensive has left large areas in ruins and displaced around 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people, forcing hundreds of thousands into crowded tent camps or schools-turned-shelters.
Chehayeb reported from Beirut and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press reporter Ahmad Mantash in Sidon, Lebanon contributed.
Find more of AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
A Lebanese barber cuts the hair of a customer in front of his shop in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. The Arabic placard on the window reads: "We will not leave Palestine." (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
A member of Israeli security forces surveys damage to a home struck by a rocket fired from Lebanon in the town of Majd al-Krum, northern Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Damage to a home struck by a rocket fired from Lebanon in the town of Majd al-Krum , northern Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Rescue workers carry remains of people at at site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Smoke from Israeli bombardment rises from the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
Smoke from Israeli bombardment rises from the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
Rescue workers carry remains of killed people at the site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Smoke rise from destroyed buildings that were hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers search for victims at the site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers carry remains of dead people at the site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers use a bulldozer to remove rubble of destroyed buildings, as they search for victims at the site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers use a bulldozer to remove rubble of destroyed buildings, as they search for victims at the site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers use a bulldozer to remove rubble of destroyed buildings at the site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
An excavator is used by a rescue worker to remove the rubble of destroyed buildings at the site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Destroyed buildings that were hit by Israeli airstrikes are seen in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers carry remains of killed people at the site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers remove rubble, as they search for victims at the site that was hit by Israeli airstrikes in Qana village, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
