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Iran claims to have attacked 10 ships near strait of Hormuz after US strikes

Tehran has said it attacked 10 ships around the strait of Hormuz after the US sunk five Iranian tankers, as escalating strikes between the two countries sent the oil price above $100 a barrel for the first time since July. The attacks were the sharpest flare-up of strikes in weeks, as the two sides struggled to break a deadlock in the six-month-long war. Fighting in recent weeks has largely revolved around who controls the strait of Hormuz, as Iran attempts to close off the waterway and Washington enforces a blockade of Iranian ports. The strait is a critical route for global energy supplies, with up to 20% of the world’s oil and gas transiting it before the US-Iran war. The rising price of oil, above the psychologically significant $100 mark, is likely to raise inflation and the price of goods. Stocks fell on Wall Street while rising fuel and food prices in the US will further frustrate the Trump administration, which faces a midterm election with an unpopular war and a cost-of-living crisis. Among the vessels struck by Iran were two US vessels and eight oil tankers, the Iranian’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday. The IRGC said the 10 vessels were “noncompliant” – a likely reference to ships that tried to traverse the waterway without its permission. At least one sailor was killed and another was missing. The US denied that its vessels were hit, with US Central Command saying on social media that all “attempted attacks failed”. A tanker in Iraqi waters carrying 2mi barrels of fuel oil was also struck by a drone, according to Iraqi officials. There were no reports of casualties among the crew and the Iraqi government said there were no reported oil leaks. Iran said it also fired missiles at US bases in Jordan – 18 of which authorities said were intercepted while two fell in unpopulated areas. The US had said it destroyed five Iranian oil tankers overnight, publishing videos of ships on fire. The US military said the attacks were a response to Iran targeting a US navy warship twice in the previous two days. Iranian state TV said the US strikes had followed a “complex intelligence and operational action at dawn” to seize a US underwater drone in the strait. The US said the seized craft was a “defective” older model that did not carry any sensitive data. The back-and-forth strikes signalled an intensifying escalation between the two sides as Washington announced a new policy of attacking Iranian tankers if Iran targets its warships. “Iran continues to try to hit US naval ships, and for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers,” the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told reporters. Iran said it would also escalate its attacks, and that for every two or three tankers struck it would respond by hitting 20. The IRGC said it would also release maps of a new, much-larger area near the strait that it considers forbidden for ships to traverse, extending as far as the Gulf off Chabahar for the first time. The conflict has also taken on an increasingly regional dimension as the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen traded strikes with Saudi Arabia. The Houthis launched a wave of attacks on four cities in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, causing large fires at oil installations and wounding 73 people. The Houthis said dozens of people have been killed in Saudi airstrikes, something unconfirmed by Riyadh. Fighting re-ignited between the two sides after the Houthis launched an offensive against the Saudi-backed government of Yemen in south Yemen last week, aimed at reaching the Red Sea. The group is trying to enforce a Red Sea blockade against Saudi Arabia, announced in July. If enforced, it would cut off another route for the kingdom to export its oil.

Air traffic control boss given a week to report after UK flight chaos causes 2,000 cancellations

The head of the air traffic control provider Nats has been given a week to report back on the reasons for a technical failure that grounded thousands of flights, as the transport secretary declared she did “not believe the issue was unavoidable”. Heidi Alexander said on Tuesday she had also commissioned an independent review by the Civil Aviation Authority into the latest Nats meltdown that severely disrupted travel for hundreds of thousands of passengers. The comments will pile pressure on Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe, despite Downing Street saying the government still had confidence in him after a morning meeting with Alexander, and as the number of flight cancellations passed 2,000. The minister told the Commons: “Safety must remain air traffic controllers’ overriding priority, and this morning I have spoken to Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe, who informed me this outage was due to a technical issue at their Swanwick site. “So, while my understanding from Nats is that we can rule out a cyber-attack on this occasion, I do not believe this issue was unavoidable.” Airlines have urged action, with Rolfe facing increasing pressure to quit, after the third large-scale stoppage to flights in just over three years. Latest industry estimates say about 330,000 passengers had their travel disrupted and delayed, with many stuck on grounded planes for many hours as the incident unravelled. Other passengers were stranded overnight at airports in the UK and abroad. A Downing Street spokesperson earlier said Alexander had asked Rolfe to “carry out a full investigation into what happened to make sure that lessons are learned, so that this doesn’t happen again”. Alexander said she would “leave absolutely no stone unturned in understanding what has happened here, and what can be done to drastically reduce the likelihood of something like this ever happening again. “I do think we need to ask tough questions about resilience of Nat systems …. We also need to think about consumer redress issues as well.” The prime minister’s spokesperson added: “We have confidence in him and he’s been tasked with the investigation, which will report in a week’s time.” Airlines including Ryanair and Wizz have called for Rolfe to resign or be sacked by Alexander. He had earlier defended the resilience of the systems run by Nats, which provides services to 15 UK airports. “We will be doing a very thorough and full investigation,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We have at this point ruled out a cyber-attack … This will be something we haven’t seen in more than 50 years of operation.” Nats said the problem occurred in its flight processing system but was not the same fault as those that caused outages and mass disruption in 2023 and 2025. Ryanair queried the explanation and said lessons had not been learned. The carrier, which on Tuesday said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted when 50 flights were cancelled, said it had now cancelled more than 250 flights and its costs would run into millions. The airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said: “Martin Rolfe’s position as Nats CEO is untenable. We don’t need more investigations, we don’t need more reports, and we don’t need another parliamentary committee hearing where Martin Rolfe will promise change, will promise resilience, and will promise an effective backup system.” He said the UK’s air traffic control services were one of the most expensive in Europe “and yet it keeps repeatedly failing”. O’Leary said Alexander should “today demand that failing Martin Rolfe must quit, or be dismissed”. Yvonne Moynihan, the managing director of Wizz Air UK, called on Rolfe to consider resigning. “In any industry when you’ve had three failures, you need to consider three strikes and you’re out,” she told Today. “A third time and a third excuse is not enough any more. What we need to see from leadership is accountability.” Luke Petherbridge, the director of public affairs at the travel association Abta, said: “While the immediate priority is supporting customers … the industry and the public will want answers as to what has gone wrong.” Nats said the fix it eventually implemented on Tuesday, almost four hours after the incident first occurred, had been a “very complex recovery and has created difficulties for the whole aviation network, from which it will take time to recover”. More than 300 flights were cancelled on Wednesday in the continuing fallout from the outage. According to data from the analysts Cirium, nearly 2,100 flights in and out of UK airports have been cancelled because of the failure, including 1,750 on Tuesday out of 5,800 scheduled flights. Of these, 541 were at Heathrow. A spokesperson for British Airways said: “Tuesday’s air traffic control issue has forced us into cancelling almost 550 of our flights, affecting more than 85,000 of our customers. We’re incredibly sorry for the experience they’ve endured because of an issue that has been entirely out of our control.” Rail passengers affected by flight disruption could use booked tickets on a different date or to a different airport if needed, or apply for a refund, the Rail Delivery Group said. The airport breakdown started at about 1pm on Tuesday and affected departing flights at many of Britain’s biggest airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted. London airports as well as Manchester were among the most directly affected, with operations effectively suspended for hours in the afternoon. While Heathrow said the fault initially only stopped takeoffs, the airport was soon too full to accommodate more planes, with arriving flights diverted to other European airports. Flights to and from other airports around the UK, including Birmingham, Edinburgh and Belfast, were also disrupted. The air traffic control problems follow an “isolated event” a year ago that caused widespread disruption, and appeared less severe than the full grounding of flights in August 2023, which prompted a parliamentary inquiry.

Germany’s Merz cancels phone call with Trump after social media post celebrating AfD win – as it happened

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. German chancellor Friedrich Merz cancelled a planned phone call with US president Donald Trump on Wednesday, hours after Trump publicly celebrated a regional election win by Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party (14:02). The news came hours after a fierce exchanges between Merz and AfD’s leader Alice Weidel during a parliamentary debate in the Bundestag, during which the chancellor accussed the far-right party of seeking “ethnic cleansing” (10:05), and his defence minister Boris Pistorius pointed out its links with Russia (15:07). Celebrating her party’s win in the Saxony-Anhalt election over the weekend, Weidel said Merz “failed to understand the message” from the voters, but his time was “up anyway”. In other news, Norway bid farewell to King Harald V in a ceremonial funeral attended by royals and leaders from several other countries (12:03, 13:04, 14:33, 17:01). Moldova’s president Maia Sandu warned that “Russia’s frontline is moving further west” after a Russian strike on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border overnight, a day after a drone incursion into Moldovan airspace (10:59). Two people were killed in an explosion at a power plant in southern Switzerland, which police said was “a serious workplace incident” (11:49, 17:16). One person died and four were seriously injured after a passenger train collided with a cement truck in Poland (12:47, 17:16). Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić dissolved ⁠parliament and announced snap elections for next month as he seeks to extend his ⁠hold on power by ⁠running for prime minister (12:49). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Tens of thousands line the streets as Norway bids farewell to King Harald V

Norway has observed a minute’s silence as it takes leave of King Harald V in a series of ceremonies, bringing to a close 13 days of national mourning that followed the popular monarch’s death last month at the age of 89. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Oslo and foreign heads of state and government converged on the Norwegian capital for the funeral of the late king, a light-touch and unassuming reformer who ruled for more than three decades. With the king’s casket carried on an artillery carriage, draped in Norway’s red royal banner and topped with white flowers, the funeral cortege made its way on foot along Oslo’s main avenue from royal palace to the cathedral, as a 21-gun salute rang out from the Akershus fortress. King Haakon VIII, who succeeded his father on Harald’s death, and other royal family members walked in the cortege, with Harald’s widow, Queen Sonja, 89, and Haakon’s wife, Queen Mette-Marit, who is recovering from a lung transplant in June, following in a car. The procession was followed by a church ceremony attended by royals including Britain’s Prince William and Princess Anne; Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia; ‌Sweden’s royal family; Denmark’s King Frederik and Queen Mary; the Netherlands’ King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima; and Japan’s Crown Prince Akishino. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and political leaders and dignitaries from more than 20 countries were at the service, at which the speaker of Norway’s parliament, Masud Gharahkhani, recalled a monarch who was “not afraid to meet his people with his rubber boots on”. The prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, said Harald “struck a balance between being stately and being down-to-earth. He made Norway greater. He spoke of a ‘we’ in Norway where everyone is there for each other.” After the service four F-35 fighter jets flew over the cathedral, one breaking away to symbolise the king’s passing. The casket was then carried to the Akershus fortress where it was due to be lowered into the royal crypt, next to Harald’s parents and grandparents, in a private ceremony. Norwegian police said securing the funeral had been the largest planned operation in the force’s history. More than 46,000 Norwegians have filed past the king’s casket in the past week and schoolchildren were allowed to miss ⁠classes for the occasion. Harald’s death came at a time of numerous crises for the Norwegian royal family, with Mette-Marit, 53, in particular coming under heavy criticism – including from the prime minister – for her association with the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The new queen’s son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Høiby, who is under house arrest and wearing an ankle monitor pending his appeal against a conviction for rape and domestic violence, was given permission to attend the funeral and was a pallbearer during the transfer to the royal chapel. Despite its recent scandals, however, the monarchy remains broadly popular: 72% of Norwegians support it, while 20% favour a republic or another form of government, according to a poll for the public broadcaster NRK.

An ocean away from Nepal, Sonia spends her spare time piecing together clues about missing flood victims: ‘I wanted to be useful’

A chain of flowers tattooed from knee to foot, a gold nose ring worn on a left nostril, a primary school tie caked in mud: these are the images that linger in Sonia Patil’s mind as she tries to help Nepali flood victims find their loved ones. More than 1,300 have died and at least 5,500 have been reported missing since a glacial collapse sent a torrent of water, mud, ice and debris through riverside communities along the Nepal-Tibet border on 26 August. Families and friends of those reported missing have spent weeks searching through graphic photos of bodies, which were uploaded by Nepali police for the community to identify. Some show only partial corpses – disconnected torsos, limbs splayed at unnatural angles, decomposition eating away at extremities – while in others, the faces of flood victims are turned to the camera, their expressions frozen in their death masks. Patil, a Melbourne-based chef, has no direct connection with Nepal or any of the people whose loved ones have been reported missing. But when she saw videos of their grief, she knew she could help share their burden. “It’s a very harrowing task for them,” she says. “If I had lost a family member, the prospect of coming across their body in that condition would be unbearable. “I knew I wanted to be useful, it’s the least I can do, even if it’s just being another pair of eyes.” Almost every day since the disaster, she arrives home at midnight after a 12-hour shift and spends another four to five hours on the Nepali police website, trawling through the hundreds of images of decomposing bodies and limbs. If any have distinctive features - like clothes, tattoos and jewellery – she adds them to her list and posts it to Facebook groups filled with those looking for their loved ones. It can be a confronting and tedious process, Patil says. During the day, the Nepal police website slows or malfunctions under the weight of all the families looking for information, so she finds it easier to work at night. The listings, which grow by the day, may only show partial remains, and most only have one image per body – meaning she cannot see any other angles. Missing persons posters are also spread across multiple platforms, forcing Patil to search across the internet to crosscheck information. But no matter how hard it is, she says it is worse for those on the ground. “It’s very disturbing to know that I may be looking at a picture of a live person and somebody who is deceased at the same time, trying to compare them,” she says. “I find it easier when I go in with the mindset that all the images on that website are all human: they have lived lives, they have stories, they have families looking for them.” Patil is part of a group which includes people from the US, Europe, New Zealand and other countries who work together to identify bodies. They generally look for matches for those who have reached out to them with photos of their missing friends and family. It is difficult to be 100% certain through visual identification alone, as many images of the bodies are unrecognisable. So when members think they have made a match, the group asks relatives to submit their DNA to labs in Nepal for official confirmation. If they believe they have made a match for someone who has not asked for their help, the group tries to report it to Nepali authorities. Making a likely identification is bittersweet for everyone involved, Patil says, because while they are glad a family will get closure, “it’s not a great feeling to know that person is no longer here”. But it is worse when she posts her lists and no one responds. “In some cases, entire families have been wiped out, which means that even people with the most recognisable tattoos have nobody left to identify them,” she says. Patil does not want any thanks for her work. Instead, she urges everyone to keep sharing the lists in case someone in their network recognises the missing. It is now becoming harder to discern any distinctive features as the bodies disintegrate under the sun and sludge with the passing days. But Patil has vowed to continue. “So long as I can find tattoos or anything identifiable, I will keep going,” she says.

‘I fear the price could be high’: Inside the German state where the far-right surged

Asking residents in a city where a seismic political event has just taken place ‘How do you feel?’ demands chutzpah – this struck me as I walked around Magdeburg, Germany on Monday. The night before, the far-right populist, anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin party Alternative für Deustchland (AfD) had landslide 44% win in Saxony-Anhalt’s state elections, sending shock waves to Berlin, across Germany and way beyond. Regardless of how people in the capital voted, it felt like a bit of an affront to probe. Given the radical plans of the victors, a party classified by domestic intelligence as “rightwing extremist”, that is what I wanted to know. But from the 21-year-old Guinean-German paramedic I met at the central bus station, collecting donations for a local hospice, to the elderly couple returning to their apartment after a stroll down the Elbe river, almost everyone I met opened up to me warmly. Judith, 88, was initially reluctant to talk, but shared some of her life story. Her experience as an eight-year-old refugee, forced to leave Poland in 1946 and eventually ending up move with her family in Magdeburg, had shaped her outlook on life, her successful career as a project engineer – as well as her politics. The news that AfD had not only won the election, but by such a wide margin, was “heartbreaking”, she said. Huy, from Vietnam, who runs a newsagents in the city centre, was also reticent, but laughed and rolled his eyes as he sold the last copy of that day’s local paper, Die Volksstimme, and pointed to the headline that read: “Landslide in Saxony-Anhalt”. Shaking his head, he said: “44%!” “I don’t want to think what it might mean … but maybe it will all be OK?” His question hung in the air. A glance at the AfD’s manifesto, in particular its pledge for the first 100 days, focuses the mind. Top of the list: challenging Germany’s post-war memory culture (which it says stands in the way of national pride) – so, “more Bismarck, less Hitler”, as they put it. “From the first minute”, they say, the party will start the deportation of what it refers to as “irregular migrants”. I met Franz-Josef, a 71-year-old retired mechanic and Green voter, on holiday from a small west German town. He called the election a “catastrophe”, particularly in the light of the country’s Nazi past. Luisa, a 34-year-old bank teller told me she hopes “those who voted for the AfD thought about what they were doing”. It was one thing, she said, to “deliver a kick in the shins” to Berlin, over its failure to pull the German economy out of the doldrums. And maybe the AfD would fail to push through its promises in government. “But we cannot know, and I fear the price could be high.” *** Fragrance of power It remains unclear how precisely the AfD, led by charismatic former fragrance salesman Ulrich Siegmund, might take the reins of power in Saxony-Anhalt, if at all. He lacks an absolute majority by a whisker. There have been rumblings for days – even prior to the election – of an AfD charm offensive to try to lure members of chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats, to make up the necessary numbers. The CDU denies any defections are expected. Some AfD members have brazenly appropriated Ronald Reagan’s appeal to the Soviets to “tear down this wall”, from his 1987 speech in West Berlin. They are calling on mainstream parties to “tear down the firewall”, a reference to the Brandmauer, or refusal to ever coalesce with the AfD in an effort to prevent the far-right populists from coming to power. Yet an increasing number doubt that the firewall will hold much longer. Especially now that almost one in two of those who cast their votes on Sunday have opted for the party. Turnout at 78% was a record for the state. Whatever the outcome, we can expect weeks, even months of wrangling. Expect stasis in the meantime on the federal government front, as we’re close to elections on 20 September in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin, where the AfD is also expected to do well. Merz will be wary of doing anything that might drive more voters away. At the same time politicos in Berlin are debating how long he has in the job. In the Bundestag today, Merz accused the AfD of seeking “ethnic cleansing”. No wonder Maryam, 16, whom I met as she returned from work experience at a retirement home, said she and her family were on edge. The Syrian teenager, whose father arrived in Germany in 2015, followed by her and her mother, told me she couldn’t stop thinking about what this vote might mean for her family. She wished, she said, for a return to the days of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who welcomed in a million migrants including Maryam’s father, resentment over which turbo-charged support for the then-fledgling AfD. Across the road, Doreen, a cleaner, who reluctantly admitted voting for the AfD, said: “What on Earth is there to thank Merkel for? It’s owing to her that we are in the state we’re in.” She recalled an attack near the Christmas market in the city centre in 2024, where six people were killed when a Saudi doctor drove a car into the crowd, an incident that helped fuel support for the AfD. “That attack is symbolic for a whole lot of misery, the decision to open our doors to strangers has brought us,” Doreen told me. “I say, good on the AfD for promising to clean up the mess.” For such a small state, home to 2.1 million people, Saxony-Anhalt has managed to create a political maelstrom, the ramifications of which will be felt across Europe. To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.

EU unveils ‘buy European’ public procurement rules to counter China

European authorities will be encouraged to buy more domestic goods and services when they spend public money under the EU latest effort to counter China’s economic might. In a further “Buy European” plan, the European Commission published proposals on Wednesday for a sweeping overhaul of EU public procurement rules. National authorities and public bodies, such as schools and hospitals, will be encouraged to buy goods and services made in Europe but, unlike earlier plans to promote domestically manufactured clean tech, there will be no binding “made in Europe” quotas. Brussels officials are concerned that many public agencies think existing EU rules oblige them to choose the cheapest bid when spending public money, which can lead to the contract going to a non-European firm. The European Commission’s lead official on industrial policy, Stéphane Séjourné, told reporters the regulation would give public sector buyers greater legal certainty and clarity about purchasing goods and services made in Europe. “Purchasers can have a more preferential approach to European bids [and] restrict or reject bids from countries which do not have a public procurement agreement or do not play by binding rules in terms of public procurement internationally,” he said. Public procurement is estimated by EU officials to amount to 15% of the bloc’s gross domestic product, about €2.6tn (£2.2tn) a year, and is seen in Brussels as an underused lever already deployed by Washington and Beijing to support their respective domestic companies. The new rules will oblige public buyers in the EU to put more emphasis on quality and metrics such as environmental sustainability and local supply chains, rather than opting for the cheapest bid. Under the proposals public agencies will be obliged to give a minimum 30% weighting to quality when they draw up conditions to award a contract, or explain why they chose to disregard this indicator. Labour-intensive contracts will have a minimum 50% weighting for quality, so purchasers must ensure decent jobs when awarding the contract, not simply the cheapest price. Séjourné hopes the proposals will encourage more democratic scrutiny over the spending of public money by local authorities. “It won’t be the European Commission’s fault if purchasers were to prefer Chinese buses to European buses because … in the [draft regulation] there is every possibility to give preference to European buses.” Brussels is concerned about inroads Beijing is making into European markets for transport and infrastructure, especially Chinese firms benefitting from state subsidies that make them cheaper than European alternatives. In April, the commission blocked a Chinese rolling-stock company from joining a consortium to build a new line on the Lisbon metro after an investigation found the firm had benefited from state subsidies that gave it an “unfair competitive edge”. Last year, Brussels opened an investigation into Chinese security company Nuctech, which has supplied European airports and ports with security scanners. EU officials suspect the company was helped by subsidies and tax breaks that gave it an unfair advantage in the European market, although the investigation has not reached final conclusions. Séjourné – a close ally of France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, who has long championed European preference – said spending public money on goods made in Europe should become “part of public discourse and accountability”. He added: “It should be very clear that it’s not because of European Union rules that a foreign product was preferred over a European one, but because it was a political choice that was made.” The draft regulation, which also aims to radically simplify rules by merging three laws into one, must be agreed by the European parliament and the EU ministers before it enters into force. It is likely to be altered during the legislative process. Séjourné is also spearheading a push for made-in-Europe rules to apply to the public purchase of renewable energy products and electric cars under the the Industrial Accelerator Act. The IAA, which also is likely to be changed by MEPs and ministers, marks a departure for Brussels, long a bastion of open markets. The plans have alarmed the British government, but EU officials said the latest draft rules on procurement would not disadvantage UK firms because existing agreements ensured both sides played by the same rules. Séjourne said the EU had agreements with the UK whereby reciprocal market access was respected. “There should not be any difficulties for the UK,” he added. Non-EU countries that have agreements with the bloc on public procurement are not expected to face barriers. An online tool will allow public purchasers to see which countries are covered by the EU’s web of free-trade agreements and other international deals that cover procurement. Membership of the World Trade Organization’s agreement on government procurement (GPA), which promotes fair competition in markets to supply state bodies, will be an important indicator. The GPA has 22 members including the EU (counted as one), the UK, the US, Canada and Japan. Mainland China is not party to the agreement.