A kayaker’s leg was amputated during a dramatic, hours-long rescue operation to free him from between rocks on a river in Australia on Saturday, local police said.

The man, a foreign tourist in his 60s, was airlifted to a hospital in Tasmania’s state capital Hobart where he was in a critical condition, police said, adding they were contacting his family.

His 20-hour ordeal began at about 2:30pm on Friday when he became trapped while kayaking through rapids with a group on the Franklin River, police said in a statement.

Authorities received an emergency alert from the man’s smartwatch and dispatched rescue units and paramedics, police said, adding that the area’s remoteness added complexity to the rescue effort.

Set in the rugged landscape of the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park in the island state, the powerful 129-kilometer- (80-mile-) long river is a popular spot for kayaking and rafting.

Rescuers made several unsuccessful attempts to extract the man between Friday evening and Saturday morning. When his condition deteriorated after so many hours partially submerged in the water, a decision was made in consultation with the man to amputate his leg, police said.

“This rescue was an extremely challenging and technical operation, and an incredible effort over many hours to save the man’s life,” said Tasmania Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Doug Oosterloo in the statement.

“Every effort was made to extract the man before the difficult decision to amputate his leg.”

Oosterloo also praised the emergency responders. “I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to this operation in the most difficult of circumstances,” he said.

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said on Saturday she would have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. assassinated if she herself were killed, prompting Marcos’ office to vow “immediate proper action.”

In a dramatic sign of a widening rift between the two most powerful political families in the Southeast Asian nation, Duterte told an early morning press conference that she had spoken to an assassin and instructed him to kill Marcos, his wife and the speaker of the Philippine House if she were to be killed.

“I have talked to a person. I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM (Marcos), (first lady) Liza Araneta, and (Speaker) Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. “I said, do not stop until you kill them and then he said yes.”

She was responding to an online commenter urging her to stay safe, saying she was in enemy territory as she was at the lower chamber of Congress overnight with her chief of staff. Duterte did not cite any alleged threat against herself.

The Presidential Communications Office responded with a statement saying: “Acting on the Vice President’s clear and unequivocal statement that she had contracted an assassin to kill the President if an alleged plot against her succeeds, the Executive Secretary has referred this active threat to the Presidential Security Command for immediate proper action.

“Any threat to the life of the President must always be taken seriously, more so that this threat has been publicly revealed in clear and certain terms,” it said.

Duterte’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the presidential office’s statement.

“This country is going to hell because we are led by a person who doesn’t know how to be a president and who is a liar,” she said in the briefing.

Duterte, the daughter of Marcos’ predecessor, resigned from the cabinet in June while remaining vice president, signaling the collapse of a formidable political alliance that helped her and Marcos, son and namesake of the late authoritarian leader, secure their 2022 electoral victories by wide margins.

Speaker Romualdez, a cousin of Marcos, has slashed the vice presidential office’s budget by nearly two-thirds.

Duterte’s outburst is the latest in a series of startling signs of the feud at the top of Philippine politics. In October, she accused Marcos of incompetence and said she had imagined cutting the president’s head off.

The two families are at odds over foreign policy and former President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly war on drugs, among others.

In the Philippines, the vice president is elected separately from the president and has no official duties. Many vice presidents have pursued social development activities, while some have been appointed to cabinet posts.

The nation is gearing up for mid-term elections in May, seen as a litmus test of Marcos’ popularity and a chance for him to consolidate power and groom a successor before his single six-year term ends in 2028.

Past political violence in the Philippines has included the assassination of Benigno Aquino, a senator who staunchly opposed the rule the elder Marcos, as he exited his plane upon arrival home from political exile in 1983.

At least 11 people have been killed and several others injured after an Israeli strike flattened a multi-story residential building in central Beirut overnight, Lebanese officials said.

Rescue workers in Lebanon were on Saturday morning searching for survivors under the rubble in the densely populated Basta area of the Lebanese capital, authorities said.

The attack left a “deep crater” in the area that it hit, the country’s state National News Agency (NNA) reported, blaming powerful “bunker busting” bombs.

At least 23 other people were injured in the strike, according to a toll provided by Lebanon’s Civil Defense.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not issue an evacuation order for the area ahead of the strikes, and has not yet commented on the attack.

Saturday’s attack marks the latest in a string of Israeli strikes on central Beirut in recent weeks, following the killing of a Hezbollah spokesperson in an airstrike last Sunday.

Most Israeli airstrikes have targeted the Lebanese militant group’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs since hostilities ramped up early last month.

On Friday, the director general of Dar Al Amal University Hospital near Baalbek in eastern Lebanon was killed along with six of his colleagues in an alleged Israeli strike, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. The IDF said it was looking into reports of the strike on the hospital.

President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russia will continue to test and start mass-producing the hypersonic ballistic missile that it fired at Ukraine Thursday.

The experimental strike Thursday marked a decisive moment in Moscow’s war and capped off a dramatic week that has transformed the conflict. The firing of the missile came after the White House authorized Ukraine to fire its long-range missiles into Russia.

In a televised meeting with the leadership of Russia’s defense ministry, Putin claimed the missile could not be intercepted by air defenses and said Russia will begin serial production of the new weapon.

“There are currently no means of countering such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world. And I will emphasize once again: We will continue testing the latest system,” Putin said.

Putin added Russia was developing “several similar systems” for further testing.

“Based on the test results, these weapons will also go into production. That is, we are developing a whole line of medium- and shorter-range systems,” he said.

Putin’s comments come a day after Russia fired the “Oreshnik” missile – which contains multiple warheads – at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack, saying in a video posted on Telegram that “today, our crazy neighbor has once again shown who he really is and how he despises dignity, freedom and human life in general.”

Zelensky said Friday that Ukraine was holding meetings with its allies about developing “new air defense systems” in response to the new threat from Russia.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a key ally of Ukraine, said the conflict was “entering a decisive phase.”

NATO and Ukraine are due to hold talks next week following Russia’s firing of the experimental missile.