Archive September 4, 2025

At least 15 people were killed when Lisbon’s Gloria funicular railcar derailed and crashed, emergency services said.

Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa shared his condolences with the families affected by what he described as a tragedy.

The Portuguese government has announced a day of national mourning, while officials in Lisbon have declared three days of mourning in the capital city.

What happened in Lisbon?

At about 6:15pm local time (17:15 GMT), a carriage on Lisbon’s world-famous funicular electric railway derailed and crashed.

Witnesses said they heard a loud noise before one of the trams sped down a steep slope in the city, apparently out of control.

“It hit a building with brutal force and collapsed like a cardboard box; it had no brakes,” a witness told the AFP news agency.

Photos showed the tram carriage toppled on its side along the narrow road it usually travels. The sides and roof of the carriage were partly crumpled by the impact after it appeared to have struck a bend in the road at speed.

Local media reported that emergency crews responded quickly, deploying 62 rescuers and 22 support vehicles to help survivors trapped in the wreckage.

Authorities said it was too early to determine the cause of the accident.

The Lisbon Firefighters Regiment reported that the crash was caused by a “cable that came loose” in the funicular system.

At least 15 people were killed and 18 others injured, five of them critically, according to the National Institute for Medical Emergencies.

What is a funicular railway?

A funicular is a type of cable railway built to carry passengers up and down steep slopes.

It operates with two counterbalanced cars attached to opposite ends of the same cable: as one car ascends, the other descends, and the weight of the descending car helps pull the ascending car, making it highly efficient.

Funiculars are commonly found in hilly cities and tourist destinations where conventional trains or buses would struggle with steep gradients.

The Gloria funicular was opened in Lisbon in 1885 and electrified three decades later. It can carry 43 people, seated and standing. It is commonly used by the capital’s residents.

Where exactly did the crash happen?

The crash took place on a popular tram line in the centre of Lisbon that connects the city’s downtown area near the Restauradores Square with the Bairro Alto (Upper Quarter), which is known for its vibrant nightlife.

The funicular derailed and crashed on Rua da Gloria, a well-known street in central Lisbon.

Gloria is one of three funicular lines operated by the municipal public transport company, Carris.

Carris said in a statement that “all maintenance protocols have been carried out”, with the last one taking place in 2022, and there were daily inspections.

According to a report by Spanish newspaper El Pais, workers had complained on several occasions about “poor maintenance” on the Gloria line.

The Gloria line transports about three million people annually, according to city officials.

O Elevador da Glória descarrilou e tombou esta quarta-feira, junto à Avenida da Liberdade, em Lisboa. Segundo os bombeiros sapadores, o acidente provocou “muitas vítimas”, incluindo feridos graves. pic.twitter.com/ADWpR5c8oe

Translation: The Glory Elevator derailed and overturned this Wednesday, near Avenida da Liberdade, in Lisbon. According to the municipal firefighters, the accident caused “many victims”, including serious injuries.

What do we know about the victims?

Portugal’s Ministry of Health said there were local and foreign surnames among the victims in the crash, but that their nationalities were not yet known.

There were no children among the 15 dead, it added.

In total, 18 people were injured. Of those, nine were taken to hospital, five of them in serious condition. A child was also injured.

The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that two of the injured are Spanish citizens, according to Europa Press.

What is the latest on the ground?

According to local reports, all victims were taken to hospitals by 8:30pm local time (19:30 GMT), and by 9pm (20:00 GMT), police and emergency personnel had cleared the crash site, where an investigation into the cause is under way.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, the streets around the crash site filled with news media and hundreds of tourists stopping to capture images of the wreckage.

Lisbon’s City Council shut down the city’s other streetcars and called for urgent inspections, local media reported.

Survivors who endured abuse at the hands of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein gathered on the steps of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, to demand greater transparency from the federal government.

Their appearance came as a bipartisan group of legislators pushed to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bill that would force Attorney General Pam Bondi to publish all unclassified information about the Epstein case.

On Wednesday, those legislators appeared side by side with the survivors, who shared their stories with supporters on the Capitol steps.

“This is about ending secrecy wherever abuse of power takes root,” said Anouska De Georgiou, a model who has spoken publicly about her experiences as a teenager being groomed and raped by Epstein.

She called upon Congress not only to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act but to commit to helping survivors of sexual violence through legal aid and other forms of support.

“To be clear, the only motive for opposing this bill would be to conceal wrongdoing,” de Georgiou told the lawmakers. “You have a choice. Stand with the truth or with the lies that have protected predators for decades.”

Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019, but he is believed to have abused hundreds of underage girls during his decades as a high-powered financier.

Questions have lingered over how he could have evaded justice for so long and whether his vast network of powerful contacts played a role.

Donald Trump was among those Epstein appeared to have encountered socially, and the case has become a thorn in the side for the United States president.

As he campaigned for re-election last year, Trump teased he would release more files from the federal Epstein investigation should he win a second term. In September 2024, for instance, he told podcaster Lex Fridman he would “take a look” at releasing the files.

But since he took office in January, Trump’s supporters have been underwhelmed by the lack of revelations in the documents his administration has released.

Certain administration statements have also fuelled the conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s crimes. Rumours have long swirled that Epstein kept a client list to blackmail powerful people in government and industry.

And in February, Attorney General Bondi told Fox News such a list was “sitting on my desk right now”.

But in July, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation jointly denied the existence of a client list and said there was no evidence of blackmail.

Still, Trump has sought to dispel scrutiny that his name might appear in unreleased files from the Epstein case.

On Wednesday, in an Oval Office meeting with the president of Poland, Trump was asked about the news conference happening outside in support of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

He responded by framing the attention on Epstein as a politically motivated attempt to discredit his administration.

“So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends. You know, it reminds me a little of the Kennedy situation,” Trump said, referencing his release of files related to the assassination of former President John F Kennedy.

“We gave them everything over and over again, more and more and more, and nobody’s ever satisfied.”

Trump continued by saying that the Epstein case was a distraction from his administration’s work.

“They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” Trump said, adding that “it’s enough”.

Some of the survivors at the event, however, directed their comments directly towards the president, calling upon him to take their demands seriously. Haley Robson, one survivor, even invited Trump to meet with her in person.

“I am a registered Republican. Not that that matters because this is not political,” she told reporters.

Hearing the Epstein case described as a “hoax”, she added, was like “being gutted from the inside out”.

“It feels like you just want to explode inside because nobody again is understanding that this is a real situation,” Robson said. “These women are real. We’re here in person.”

Another survivor, actor Chauntae Davies, shared her story about hearing Epstein using powerful friends like Trump to build clout. She explained that Epstein even took her on a trip with former President Bill Clinton and “other notable figures”.

“Epstein surrounded himself, I’m sorry, with the most powerful leaders of our country and the world. He abused not only me but countless others, and everyone seemed to look away,” Davies said.

“The truth is, Epstein had a free pass. He bragged about his powerful friends, including our current president, Donald Trump.  It was his biggest brag, actually.”

One survivor, Marina Lacerda, explained that Wednesday’s event was the first time she had ever spoken publicly about her experiences.

“ The only reason that I am here is because it feels like the people who matter in this country finally care about what we have to say,” Lacerda told the crowd gathered at the Capitol.

A Brazilian immigrant, she explained that she was a struggling 14-year-old, supporting her family, when she met Epstein.

At first, she said, he offered her money in exchange for massages. But soon, his control over her life forced her to drop out of school before she could complete the ninth grade.

“It went from a dream job to the worst nightmare,” she said, adding, “ I had no way out until he finally told me that I was too old.”

Just a day before the women gathered on Capitol Hill, the oversight committee in the US House of Representatives released 33,295 pages of records from the federal investigation into Epstein. But so far, there appears to be little new information among the trove of documents.

Still, US representatives like Democrat Ro Khanna, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene and Republican Thomas Massie have pushed for a full release of all the documents available.

They appeared alongside the survivors at the Capitol on Wednesday.

“A nation that allows rich and powerful men to traffic and abuse young girls without consequence is a nation that has lost its moral and spiritual core,” Khanna said.

Massie, meanwhile, offered some pointed remarks about those who might dismiss the survivors’ suffering as a hoax.

“ I think it’s shameful that this has been called a hoax,” Massie said.

Hamas has urged the United Nations and the wider international community to intervene immediately to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as the Israeli army escalated its brutal assaults on Gaza City and elsewhere in the enclave.

At least 73 Palestinians, including several aid seekers, were killed in relentless Israeli bombardments across Gaza on Wednesday, among them 43 in Gaza City alone.

Entire families are being killed together in their tents and shelters as the Israeli forces are targeting densely populated areas in Gaza.

“My brother was killed, struck inside his room. They killed him with his wife and children; they erased them all. No one is left,” Sabreen al-Mabhuh, a displaced Palestinian, told Al Jazeera.

Israeli grenades have also ignited tents at schools sheltering displaced families in Sheikh Radwan, Reuters reported. “Sheikh Radwan is being burned upside-down,” resident Zakeya Sami said. “If the takeover of Gaza City isn’t stopped, we might die. We won’t forgive anyone who watches this and does nothing.”

Gaza’s media office says Israel has detonated at least 100 explosive-laden robots in Gaza City over the past three weeks to destroy entire residential blocks and neighbourhoods. About 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza City alone during Israel’s assault there since August 13.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, described the situation as apocalyptic. “It feels endless and all-consuming … entire neighbourhoods are being erased block by block,” he said. “People are losing everything they’ve built over decades. For many, this feels like a living nightmare.”

Hamas ready to accept a comprehensive ceasefire

In a statement on Wednesday, Hamas reiterated its readiness to accept a comprehensive Gaza ceasefire and release of all Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. The group’s remarks come shortly after United States President Donald Trump calle

Hamas slammed Israel for committing “horrific war crimes” with a strike on the al-Jarisi family home in northern Gaza City, which killed at least 10, calling it part of a systematic campaign to destroy Palestinian life.

>The call came as Gaza’s Health Ministry reported six more deaths from “famine and malnutrition” in the past 24 hours, including a child. It said 367 Palestinians, 131 of them children, have died from hunger-related causes during Israel’s blockade, which continues to severely limit the entry of food and aid.

The Israeli operation to seize Gaza City will likely displace one million Palestinians, with most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people displaced multiple times. A spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday said that more than 82,000 new cases of forced displacement were recorded in Gaza between August 14 and 31, including 30,000 people forced from north to south.

UNICEF has warned that 132,000 children under five are at risk of dying from acute malnutrition by mid-2026, adding up to over 320,000 Palestinian children facing severe hunger. “With famine at risk of spreading, children urgently need a mass influx of humanitarian aid – including specialised nutrition products,” the agency said on X.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification confirmed in August that famine conditions had gripped northern Gaza and were rapidly spreading south. Aid workers say the total Israeli blockade has turned basic survival into a daily struggle.

Abdullah Al-Arian, an associate professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, said Israel’s scorched-earth offensive shows it is waging genocide with “total impunity”. He noted that Palestinians are refusing evacuation orders due to exhaustion from repeated displacements and the absence of safe zones, which Israeli forces have systematically bombed.

Growing global outrage

Israel has rejected Hamas’s latest offer to end the Gaza war. In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office reiterated Israel’s stance that “the war can end immediately on the conditions set by the cabinet”, which include the release of all the Israeli captives being held in Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas.

Hamas has agreed to ceasefire proposals presented by the mediators, but it has refused to disarm until the Palestinian state is established as part of the so-called two-state solution. Qatar, which has mediated in the conflict, said that Israel has yet to agree to its latest ceasefire proposal, which was accepted by Hamas last month.

Israel’s campaign is drawing mounting international backlash. Several European countries, including France, Britain, Belgium, Canada and Australia, are expected to formally recognise a Palestinian state at the upcoming UN General Assembly later this month.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez slammed Europe’s response to the war on Wednesday as a “failure” that has damaged its credibility. “We can’t last longer if we want to be taken seriously on crises like Ukraine,” he said. Sanchez was the first European leader to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

In Scotland, First Minister John Swinney announced his government will block funding to arms companies supplying Israel. “We will pause new awards of public money to arms companies whose products are linked to countries committing genocide. That will include Israel,” he said, urging London to suspend its trade agreement with Israel.

The UAE also issued a stark warning, saying Israel’s potential annexation of the occupied West Bank would cross a “red line” and undermine the Abraham Accords. “Our position has not changed since 2020: We support a Palestinian state,” said Lana Nusseibeh, a senior UAE diplomat.

This came as Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveiled a plan for Israel to annex nearly all of the occupied West Bank, urging Prime Minister Netanyahu to endorse it.