this is bbc news. i'm martin stanford. our top stories: urgently searching for trapped survivors of the indonesian tsunami. at least 220 people are now known to have died. these cars i am told were parked on the other side of the road and they had been pushed into each other, on top of what was a holiday villa. pushed before he jumped. president trump forces out his defence chief two months ahead of his expected departure. meanwhile, president macron of france says he deeply regrets president trump's decision to pull american troops out of syria. and we have a special report from uzbekistan, where a new president wants to put his country on the global tourist trail. hello, and welcome to bbc news.

indonesia is braced for the possibility of a further tsunami after a wave, triggered by an erupting volcano, killed more than 200 people and injured nearly 900 others. thousands of people who live on the islands of java and sumatra have been forced to evacuate to higher ground as the tsunami hit coastal areas. in the last few hours, there have been further eruptions from the anak krakatau volcano, fuelling fears of further tsunami. 0ur indonesia correspondent rebecca henschke reports. a popular local tourist destination, now a disaster zone. the only road in, cleared to allow aid supplies to get through. people here now trying to piece together their lives.

a work party to celebrate the end of the year. 0nstage, the stars of the night, a local rock group in full swing. the next second, a wave engulfed the stage. the lead singer confirmed that four bandmembers had died and that his wife is still missing. this coastline where the band were playing is now littered with trouble. rani says she doesn't know how they will rebuild. translation: we were all set up for christmas and new year holiday period. but it's been destroyed by the waves and the rest has been stolen. what am i going to do? families here say they had no warning and there was confusing information coming out from the government.

translation: what was the government doing? at first they said there hadn't been a tsunami last night. they took ages to act. these waves were devastating. it was clearly a tsunami. over here, an image that gives you a sense of the power of the waves. these cars i'm told were parked on the other side of the road, and they've been pushed into each other on top of what was holiday villa, full at this time of year. here at this local clinic, desperate families are looking for their relatives. the injured are still arriving. and the death toll is still rising. translation: the victims were local people who owned shops and stalls here.

but there were many visitors, too. we're trying to open the access road. last night a lot of debris had been dragged in and had clogged the road. officials believe underwater landslides caused by eruptions at the nearby anak krakatau volcano may have triggered the huge waves. it's still active. authorities are warning that there could be another tsunami, and telling people to stay away from the beaches. well, a little earlier, rebecca gave us the latest on the rescue and relief effort in the area worst affected by the tsunami. with the government warning that there could be another tsunami, people here are going to bed with a sense of unease. those that can are leaving the area. tourists that flocked here to spend their holiday time

on these beautiful beaches are now rushing to leave. others have gone to higher ground, and are sleeping in mosques or at relatives' homes. along this road here, we've watching ambulances come in to help the injured and also to retrieve the dead. this area, these sleepy beached villages, are not prepared for the scale of a disaster like this. but the access to this area is much better than in previous disasters, such as the tsunami that hit sulawesi a few months ago. so, with relative speed, authorities have been able to bring in health workers, emergency equipment, in order to help people here, with yet another disaster in indonesia. bbc reporter monica miller is in our singapore bureau. monica, indonesia having to handle

yet another emergency. do they have the resources they need? well, they are trying to pull them together. certainly they have at the red cross and other first responders and organisations that are on the scene. but as rebecca hinged he has mentioned, it has been a very challenging year between sulawesi and palu which it not long ago. now we are hearing reports from the disaster management officials, who are explaining exactly why there wasn't a warning, that was one thing that officials had said, that they didn't know this was coming. and a p pa re ntly didn't know this was coming. and apparently this was a bit of a unique situation for the area that is referred to as the ring of fire. and what that means is they are affected by earthquakes, waves that come from bose, but in this particular instance it is looking like there was an underground corruption that normally happens —— those. but instead of an earthquake, there was a landslide, and this is what caused this, and there isn't a detection system in place for something like this. and of this

volcano system, what's the latest on whether it is likely to erupt again, to the extent that it might present a further danger? right, well, this has been brewing for quite sometime, but some officials there were saying that they had seen quite a bit of activity prior to this happening on saturday. at this point, it is a little unclear as to whether that's going to happen again, but theyjust can't take their chances. they have told everyone to seek higher ground, which in this instance, people in that area understand what that means. there was even someone who said that they could detect when something alarming was going to happen because the sea turns a certain colour. and so even the locals are very attuned to what is happening but none of them could see this happening in terms of this type of tsunami. monica miller live from singapore, thank you very much. let's get some of the day's other news now. the us treasury secretary, steven mnuchin, has been in contact with the chief executives of the nation's six largest banks. last week us stocks had one of their worst falls

since the financial crisis of 2008. mr mnuchin's talks are part of efforts to calm businesses and investors before trading starts again on monday. the head of a team of united nations observers in yemen, patrick cammaert, has arrived in the red sea port of hodeidah. he travelled via the capital, sanaa. his monitors have been given the task of administering a ceasefire which came into force last week. flights from the airport of britain's second city, birmingham, were briefly suspended on sunday because of an air traffic control problem. the incident comes days after gatwick airport near london was closed for several days after a drone was seen flying near the airport perimeter. staying with that story: british police are examining a damaged drone found near gatwick‘s perimeterfence. they've also released, without charge, two people who were arrested on friday, no—one else is being held as part of the investigation.

0ur correspondent andy moore has been at gatwick and sent us this update. this damaged drone was found yesterday morning, and police say they are treating it as a significant development. the working assumption is that this may well be the drone that was seen by so many people over gatwick. so there is a forensic examination of that drone. that means checking it forfingerprints or dna. a parallel digital investigation, is there any electronic evidence of when and where it was flown. meanwhile, the couple from crawley, nearby crawley, who were arrested, they have been released without charge. police say they are no longer being treated as suspects. the airport here has been working at full tilt today, almost as normal, trying to catch up on that backlog of flights from a couple of days ago. police say they are interviewing 67 people who said they saw that drone, that includes police officers, ground staff here at gatwick, members of the public. they say that, despite that weight of evidence, they have to keep an open mind. they say there is a possibility, just a possibility, that there may

not have been any drones over gatwick in the first place. president trump has promoted deputy us defence secretary patrick shanahan to replace his boss james mattis on an acting basis. general mattis announced his resignation last week after the president's decision to withdraw american forces from syria. he had said he would stay in his post until the end of february, but mr trump's announced that mr shanahan would take the job from the new year. president macron of france has condemned mr trump's decision to pull out us troops, saying that an ally should be dependable. he's reported to have called mr trump last week warning him against the syria decision. with more on that and the mobilisation of turkish forces towards the syrian border, here's david campa nale. heightened turkish military activity close to their border with syria.

according to local media, turkey has sent tanks, howitzers, machine guns and buses carrying commandos to reinforce its border posts, while other vehicles have crossed into syria itself. these are the american allies controlling a third of syria that turkey's president erdogan has threatened to annihilate. an alliance of kurds, syrian christians and local arab tribesmen, known as the sdf, who've been at the frontline of the war against islamic state. the kurdish element of the syrian democratic forces, the ypg, are seen as terrorists by president erdogan. several days ago, he announced the postponement of a turkish attack on them — for the moment. the focus of a fresh phone conversation, according to president trump, with his turkish counterpart has been on how the continued campaign against is is to be co—ordinated. and a tweet made clear american forces are only going to be

slowly sent home. but the political and diplomatic fallout of the surprise announcement about the us withdrawal and general mattis's resignation is continuing. speaking on a visit to french troops in chad, france's president said an ally should be trustworthy. he deeply regretted president trump's decision. translation: we must not forget that since the beginning of our involvement in the levant, the international coalition — including the us, who is the main force — carried out operations in syria with one supporter, the sdf. in washington, president trump announced that the us deputy secretary of defence, patrick shanahan, would replace his former boss general mattis on the january the ist, not the secretary of defence's preferred departure date, february 28. insiders say that president trump

was angry at mattis's resignation letter and his rebuke of his foreign policy. but that will remain centrestage. the president's preferred pick for the defence role will hang on the approval of the us senate, and senators are already indicating that, without clarity on how american interests in the middle east will be protected, that process will not be straightforward. stay with us on bbc news. still to come: blast off for an upgrade to the american global satellite navigation system. the world of music has been paying tribute to george michael, who's died from suspected heart failure at the age of 53. he sold well over 100 million albums over a career spanning over three decades. the united states troops have been trying to overthrow the dictatorship of general manuel noriega. the pentagon said that it's failed in its principle objective to capture noriega and take him to the united states to face drugs charges.

the hammer and sickle was hastily taken away. in its place, the russian flag was hoisted over what is now no longer the soviet union, but the commonwealth of independent states. day broke slowly over lockerbie, over the cockpit of pan am's maid of the seas nose down in the soft earth. you could see what happens when a plane eight storeys high, a football pitch wide, falls from 30,000 feet. christmas has returned to albania after a communist ban lasting more than 20 years. thousands went to midnight mass in the town of shkoder where there were anti—communist riots ten days ago. this is bbc news. the latest headlines: rescue workers in indonesia are continuing to search for people trapped by a tsunami which is now known to have killed more than 200 people. president trump has announced that his new secretary of defence,

patrick sha na han, will take over two months earlier than previously planned. the previous secretary, jim mattis, resigned last week. the volcano thought to have caused the tsunami has seen increased activity for the last few months, but it is not known as yet exactly how it caused the massive wave. 0ur correspondent richard galpin has been exploring the possibilities. last night, after months of activity, came this particularly large eruption from the volcano known as the ‘child of krakatoa.‘ and, just 20 or 30 minutes later, the tsunami hit nearby coastal areas in the sunda strait. it is this violent volcanic activity, not an earthquake, according to experts, which is believed to have triggered the deadly tsunami. it is quite rare, but can happen in several ways. either an underwater part of the volcano breaks away, displacing enough water

to create a huge wave, or a section of the upper half shears off, plunging into the sea and having the same effect. the seismometers, either locally or around the world, have not recorded a large earthquake associated with this event. and that's why the eruption of the volcano, and perhaps the movement of — the failure of the flanks of the volcano and the movement of material off the flanks of the volcano seems to be the most likely explanation. the fact hundreds were killed and injured may be down to there being no tremors, which would have alerted people to the danger of being close to the shore before the wave hit them. sitting on the pacific ring of fire, indonesia has a long history of volcanic activity. this volcano emerged less than 100 years ago, from what was left of the original krakatoa, which blew itself up in one of the biggest eruptions are recorded. and now, the child of krakatoa has

been showing its potency. there is no sign so far of the eruptions dying down. richard galpin, bbc news. drjanine krippner is a vulcanologist at concord university in athens, west virginia, where she joins me from now. from what you have been able to see, and the data you have been able to gather, what do you think is the most likely to have happened in this case? based on new satellite images and video and photos that are coming out from the area, it does look like a landslide or a flank collapse has occurred on the volcano, which has put material into the ocean which has caused this tsunami. and the warning system, the signals that should have alerted people, why did they fail in this case? this case is pretty different to the normal tectonic earthquake based tsunamis,

in that it is quite close to shore. so they just wouldn't in that it is quite close to shore. so theyjust wouldn't have been any time to these systems to pick this up time to these systems to pick this up before it hit the land. and hence the siren system is that normally signals some kind of civil emergency, they failed to go off as well. exactly, with this kind tsunami, normally there is no warning. ok. what do you think... people need to get on with their lives, i suppose, people need to get on with their lives, isuppose, eventually, once this emergency has passed. how can they have any confidence that this may not happen the next day or the day after? unfortunately, wejust don't know. we don't know what the stability of the volcanic edifice is, we don't know when this could happen again. but people need to know, they need to be aware, that if they see water changing, or those signs that they are aware of, or starting to come towards them, to immediately evacuated to higher ground. i see that a number of pilots who happened to be traversing

past that volcano have been taking footage of it today, and the eruptions have continued. some kind of video monitoring of that area, would that be important, do you think, in adding to the base of scientific knowledge? there is a lot of monitoring that goes on with krakatoa, since of monitoring that goes on with kra katoa, since it of monitoring that goes on with krakatoa, since it is such an active volcano, especially this year. but when it comes to a tsunami, when you are further out at sea, you actually cannot see it coming. so irrespective of whether you know what the volcano is doing, it is impossible to predict the consequences of a particular a ruptured? unfortunately. -- eruption. when people are watching this on the beach, the volcanic activity appeared to go quiet before this occurred. it is a horrible situation. so the local people just need to stay on higher ground, then, for the time being, would you say? that is the official recommendations right now, is to stay on higher ground until there is more certainty

about the situation. thank you very much indeed. the central asian republic of uzbekistan is frequently criticised by human rights groups for its poor record on abuse. but it wants to change its image, and it is using its history as a key point on the ancient trade route known as the silk road, linking the far east to europe, as a way of promoting tourism. the bbc has rarely been able to report from the country over the last decade, but the bbc‘s ben tavener and cameraman maxim lomakin have been invited to see how the country is attempting to lure in foreign visitors. an opposition injail, a muzzled press, isolationism — some of the things uzbekistan has long been associated with. but this central asian country, with its rich silk road history, is keen to change that. after decades of dictatorship, the country's new president is betting on tourism to reinvigorate the country's economy. uzbekistan has a huge unrealised tourism potential.

during 2017, you had roughly 3% or 4% of the gdp attributed to tourism. i expect to see significant increase, starting this year, probably. for most, uzbekistan's ancient silk road cities are the main attraction. when we head across country, every spare inch of land is covered in fields of cotton. we ask to stop and film, but our request falls on deaf ears. human rights activists say over a million people on the government payroll were forced to work the fields last year. translation: we still have teachers forced out before school to pick cotton. they use their holidays to do it. and certainly, any weekend during the cotton harvest, you'll see teachers and doctors out there. nothing has changed. a un agency has since reported progress on forced labour, and the government insists it is tackling the issue. as far as human rights, you can see such a huge push

from the government, from the president himself, in order to stop the forced labour. judge not based on the last 20 years, but based on the past 1, 1.5 years. uzbekistan undoubtedly has a lot of the elements, the history, the culture, the hospitality, that could make this country a successful international tourism destination. what is less clear is whether some of the larger issues, things like the state of the country's democracy and alleged human rights violations, whether they would make people think twice about coming here. almost any place in the world, you can talk about politics, you can about human rights. so, in my opinion, things like travel can really be a force for good. certainly, as more tourists come here, i hope that uzbekistan will continue to open up. uzbekistan is at a crossroads in many ways. the steps being taken to ready the country for mass tourism are plain to see. but is the country as determined

to follow through on pledges to improve on human rights, or are these promises just for show? queen elizabeth will urge people to treat each other with respect in her annual christmas message, to be broadcast on tuesday. buckingham palace has released some excerpts. the queen talks about the teachings of christ, and says, billionaire elon musk‘s spacex company has launched a falcon 9 rocket into orbit. the craft took up a new, ultra—precise navigation satellite for the us airforce, which could eventually improve

domestically used gps systems too. the global positioning system iii, nicknamed vespucci, lifted off from cape canaveral in florida. let's end by hearing a bit of the czech christmas mass being played at prague's main railway station. it is a christmas tradition that is now in its 18th year. professional musicians are joined by amateurs to make up the orchestra and choir, whilst hundreds stand on the concourse to listen. the event organiser conducts the whole ensemble from the top of a stepladder. let's listen to some of the music. applause

well done to all of them. let me remind you of our top story, and we now know that at least 222 people have been killed and some 843 injured after a tsunami hit coastal towns in indonesia's sunda strait. no warning of the giant waves, which struck at night, destroying hundreds of buildings. you are seeing some of the attempts to rescue those whose buildings have been flattened. we have seen some of the motor vehicles caught up in this, the destruction of many homes, and now officials are warning that people need to take to higher ground for their own safety. thank you for watching bbc news.

that is the way the world looks today. good morning. as we head properly into christmas week, there may be no snow in the christmas week forecast, but at least there's no real severe weather to trouble us. winds will be light, most places will be dry. could be some festive frost by night, but the big worry, i suppose, for those travelling, especially england and wales later on, could be some lingering dense fog patches. we'll have some fog tonight under a blossoming area of high pressure, across the uk and into the morning. there is a weather front towards the south—west continuing to bring outbreaks of rain on christmas eve. notice on our temperature profile the green colours here — a mild start, with temperatures 10-12. further north and east, a chilly one. widespread frost. temperatures lowest in scotland. could some ice around where ground is damp. still some fog in the morning, around glasgow, northern ireland,

north—west england, north—east wales and the west midlands. that could cause travel issues through the morning rush. elsewhere, though, most will have sunshine to start the day. always a bit more cloud across the south, and patchy rain and drizzle becoming lighter towards the far south—west. still mild here but a cooler day for many. a bit of lingering fog into the afternoon, eastern parts of wales and the west midlands. but the best of sunshine the further north you go, even if temperatures are on the struggle. into the evening, as soon as the sun sets, eastern england, driving home for christmas maybe, here is where we could see dense fog to take us into the latter stage of christmas eve and the start of christmas day. blue colours on the temperature chart show lots of frost for scotland and england, but it does ease away in the west as milder air pushes up from the south throughout. that could come with a bit of drizzle across western areas for christmas day. but the christmas day forecast itself is a largely dry one. a bit of frost around in the morning, especially across scotland and eastern england, and there will be some fog patches.

central, eastern england could linger for some all day long. elsewhere, sunshine will break through what cloud we have. in the west, cloud thickest. could produce some drizzle but even the odd bright spell possible here too. temperatures in the west around christmas day, around 11 or 12. single figures across much of eastern scotland and eastern england in particular. mild air in the west will push eastward as we go into boxing day as a high pressure drifts southwards. notice the weather fronts clipping across the northern half of scotland will produce rain or drizzle for boxing day. the odd heavy burst in the highlands and hebrides. most, though, stay dry. there will be some lingering fog across parts of the midlands and eastern england. clearer skies in towards the south later on, and temperatures for all up a little bit relative to christmas day, and the dry weather continues into thursday. that's how it's looking, see you again soon. this is bbc news. the headlines: people living in the sunda strait region of indonesia have been warned to keep away from beaches amid fears the anak krakatoa volcano could trigger another tsunami.

more than 200 people are now known to have died after the waves struck late on saturday. the number is expected to rise. president trump has announced that his current secretary of defence, jim mattis, will leave office two months earlier than originally announced. general mattis resigned last week over mr trump's plans to withdraw us troops from syria. he will be replaced by his deputy, patrick shanahan, on january the first. police in britain have released without charge a 47—year—old man and a 54—year—old woman who were questioned in connection with the drone disruption at gatwick airport. they're no longer considered suspects. separately, police say they've found a damaged drone, which forensic experts are examining. the uk is being inundated with fake designer goods on a scale never seen before, that's according to the trade body,