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Middle East crisis live: Kuwait reports missile and drone attack; US says it struck Iran radar sites over weekend

The UN security council is set to hold an emergency meeting on Monday to address the fighting in Lebanon. The meeting was requested by France, whose president Emmanuel Macron said “nothing justifies the major escalation under way in south Lebanon”, calling for an end to fighting. Lebanon was dragged into the Middle East war on 2 March when Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader. A truce to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began on 17 April, but has never been observed. Both sides accuse each other daily of violating the ceasefire and justify their attacks by the other’s alleged breaches. Over the weekend, Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to push deeper into Lebanon and called Sunday’s operation a “dramatic shift” in the campaign against Hezbollah. Multiple media outlets have reported that on Sunday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio spoke with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the ongoing diplomatic negotiations and asserted that Hezbollah must be the first to cease its attacks.

Wildfires devastating richer areas but fewer hectares burned globally – study

“Devastating” wildfires ripped across the wealthier parts of the world in 2025, a study has found, even as globally, the area ravaged by flames fell. Catastrophic blazes claimed lives, homes and jobs last year in California, Canada, Europe and South Korea. But the 335m hectares burned was the second-lowest since 2002, the review found, largely owing to the expansion of African farms that have fragmented landscapes and hampered the spread of large savannah fires. The disasters in 2025 included a Scottish “megafire” that torched more than 100,000 hectares – contributing to the UK breaking its record for burned area – and the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles, which were among the most destructive in US history. Record-breaking blazes in Spain and Portugal burned more than half a million hectares, while South Korea had its biggest and deadliest wildfire season on record. Fires accounted for more than 38% of insured losses from weather disasters in 2025, the study found. “2025 shows that a ‘quiet’ fire year globally can still be devastating,” said Matthew Jones, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and lead author of the study. “We are seeing a growing disconnect between total area burned and real-world impacts.” Changes in land use mean wildfires burn less of the planet than they have historically done, but global heating is creating conditions allowing them to spread, increasing the danger at what researchers call the wildland-urban interface, where people are most at risk. Adverse weather, inflamed by carbon pollution, turned some of last year’s fires into explosive infernos. In southern California and South Korea, the researchers found, high winds and dry vegetation pushed fires through densely populated areas, causing “exceptional mortality, mass evacuations, and major infrastructure losses”. In the Mediterranean, meanwhile, drought and extreme heat drove severe blazes, from Portugal to Turkey. “These conditions do not cause the fires, but in the event of a fire, we have material that is more flammable than usual – because it is drier – and wind conditions that fan the flames,” said David Garcia, an applied mathematician at the University of Alicante, who was not involved in the study. “This makes large fires more likely to occur.” An attribution study Garcia co-authored last year found the extreme weather fuelling the flames in Portugal and Spain last year was made 39 times more likely by climate breakdown. “If we continue to warm the planet, large-scale fires will continue to increase,” he said. The overall reduction in global burned area led to a drop in carbon dioxide emissions to their third-lowest level on record. In Canada, though, extreme wildfire emissions were recorded for the third year in a row. Since 2023, boreal forests in North America have emitted close to 4bn tonnes of CO2, exceeding the total emissions of the preceding 15-year period. As well as heating the planet, the pollutants in wildfire smoke lead to huge numbers of people dying from breathing dirty air. The toxic particles spewed by Canadian wildfires in 2023 killed 82,000 people, according to a study published in September, with smoke even choking cities in the US, Europe and Africa. Adrián Regos, a landscape ecologist at the Biological Mission of Galicia, Spain, who was not involved in the study, said last year’s events illustrated how a relatively small number of extreme fires could dominate the ecological, social and economic consequences of an entire fire season. “The broader pattern highlighted by this study is consistent with what we are observing across southern Europe: while total burned area may fluctuate from year to year, climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme fire-weather conditions, and fuel accumulation associated with rural abandonment is making many landscapes more vulnerable to large, fast-moving fires,” he said. “The challenge is therefore not only reducing the number of fires, but increasing the resilience of landscapes and communities to extreme events.”

Monday briefing: Does Trump’s $1.8bn ‘anti-weaponization fund’ signal a new era of law and disorder?

Good morning. It has been two weeks since details of a settlement in the case of Trump v the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) first emerged. An out-of-court agreement with the US president created a $1.8bn fund for the Trump administration to dish out at its discretion. In response, the outrage has been unrelenting. Critics argue the result stinks of cronyism and corruption, effectively a “scheme for the Trumps to reward political friends while indirectly benefiting the family”. There has been rare pushback from within Trump’s own party: more than a dozen Republican senators have reportedly urged the administration to change course. YouGov polling found a majority of Democrats and Republicans oppose the fund. On Friday, a federal judge reopened the case, after a bipartisan group of federal judges filed a lawsuit in Florida arguing the settlement “is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the court”. For today’s First Edition, I spoke to Guardian US political enterprise editor, George Zornick. We discussed the background to this case, Trump’s term of self-enrichment and how his (relatively) new team is covering Trump’s second presidency. First, the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | A trove of government documents about Peter Mandelson contains no record of any measures taken to mitigate serious security concerns over his appointment as Washington ambassador, the Guardian has learned. Health news | A daily pill can double survival time in patients with the world’s deadliest cancer, according to the results of a clinical trial that experts are saying is a “gamechanger” and one of the biggest breakthroughs in decades. Lebanon | European leaders have condemned Israel’s expanding incursion into Lebanon, after its military captured the medieval Beaufort castle and Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to push even deeper into the country. Employment | An Indian citizen who came to the UK to work as a care worker through the post-Brexit visa scheme has been awarded nearly £30,000, because his employer failed to give him a single day of work for a year. UK news | Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence on stage at an event at Hay festival, after lawyers advised her not to speak because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta. In depth: ‘The level of graft and self-enrichment is truly unprecedented’ The settlement is a response to a federal case dating to January 2024, when an IRS contractor was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking the tax returns of high-net worth individuals. These revealed Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017, and no federal income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years. Trump sued the IRS for $10bn over the leak, explains George. It seems to be a habit of his. A federal judge ordered a hearing to determine whether a president could sue federal agencies he oversees. “The IRS wrote an internal memo saying the lawsuit is weak and should be fought … Somewhere along the way, the administration overruled that position and settled.” An agreement was announced: in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, US authorities would be “forever barred” from auditing the past tax returns of Trump and his family. “It also created a $1.8bn fund to provide financial restitution to people subject to ‘weaponised lawfare’ from the federal government,” says George. This has been widely criticised as a slush fund of taxpayer cash to benefit Trump allies. Acting US attorney general, Todd Blanche, suggests anyone, not just Trump’s associates, can apply for financial restitution from the fund – although ultimately a five-member commission appointed by the attorney general, not a court or a jury, will get to decide on the merit of those applications – a highly unusual way of administering publicly funded compensation schemes. Of the five commissioners appointed to oversee payouts, four are to be selected by Blanche himself, Trump’s personal lawyer turned legal enforcer. The fifth will be appointed in consultation with congressional leadership. “These commissioners can be fired at any time, and for any reason, by Trump himself. The idea that this is a non-partisan fund? I am sceptical,” says George. It’s down to the sheer scale of stories like this emanating from the United States that the Guardian US’s political enterprise team was assembled. “Every day here … [there are] constant curve balls. It puts such pressure on the bandwidth of reporters and the attention span of readers,” says George. But with people specifically tasked with examining abuses of power at the federal level, George’s team are able to keep laser-focused. “We have the flexibility, once our teeth are in a story, to stay there.” The White House is occupying much of their attention. “In my lifetime, and the modern era,” George tells me, “the level of graft and self-enrichment we are witnessing is truly unprecedented. I say this in a journalistically neutral way: there is no modern parallel.” *** Power for profit In 2016, in advance of his first presidency, Trump signalled he’d cede day-to-day control of his businesses to avoid conflicts of interest. Despite a 2017 announcement that he was handing control of his empire to his sons, Donald Jr and Eric, it soon transpired the fledgling president retained direct ties to his commercial ventures. “His message then was, ‘I am stepping back from all of this’,” says George. “It wasn’t believable.” Trump has lamented the lack of deals he made during his first tenure. This time, there’s no such pretension: “I found out that nobody cared. I’m allowed to,” he told the New York Times. In January, the New Yorker suggested that Trump and his family have racked up profits in the region of $4bn by leveraging his presidential position. The Trump family has been busy. “[Trump’s sons] Eric and Don Jr, and [son-in-law] Jared Kushner are conducting deals in places that are key to US foreign policy, building towers, golf courses and resorts.” None of this is likely a coincidence, George believes. “Foreign governments, as part of their strategy to deal with Trump, are green-lighting projects where you wonder: would that really have been allowed otherwise?” The domestic market is proving just as lucrative. “The sons have been particularly fast to spin up companies – whether drones, AI, crypto – which have been pretty good at winning big government contracts.” Last week, ProPublica reported that the White House asked the Pentagon to give a $620m loan to a company with ties to Trump’s eldest son. The Trump family cryptocurrency firm, meanwhile, has seen their wealth balloon by billions. A minority stake is owned by the UAE: its $500m investment steered $187m to Trump family entities. *** An administration uninhibited Allegations of self-enrichment from Trump’s first term focused on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “People would spend money eating, staying renting the ballroom, hopefully on a weekend the president was there” – all of which, critics argued, was a way to keep a steady stream of income flowing towards the president’s businesses. Since taking office again, this has continued, “but in the second term, it’s a lot more out in the open”, says George, adding that he believes it’s been “turbo-charged”. A 2024 supreme court ruling would certainly embolden any president looking to push limits and line pockets. In Trump v United States, justices decided former presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts”. “This is defined very broadly in the judgment,” says George. “It also gives the president the power to pardon anyone in the administration,” he says. “Now, anyone working in the Trump administration who sees an opportunity to make money in a legal grey area or worse, knows Trump can pardon them at the end of his term.” George thinks the effects of the ruling go further. “You know that if you want that pardon in late 2028, you better stay in Trump’s good graces,” he says. And if Trump now looks invincible to many of his supporters, you can see why: “[He left] the White House in the middle of a pandemic with terrible approval ratings. There was a riot in the capital. He [was then] hit with all these charges,” says George. Going into the 2024 election, Trump stood accused of 91 felony counts. But then: “He beat the charges and came back to the White House.” *** The new normal? It’s widely understood that, in Washington DC, money talks. The US federal lobbying industry was worth billions long before Trump’s presidency. Wealthy donors are also handed plum jobs by Democrats. “This has always been somewhat the case,” says George. “People in each party raise billions from wealthy individuals and special interests to campaign. Certain positions are quite clearly patronage jobs.” But George distinguishes this from what we are witnessing now: “It’s apples and oranges. This is the blending of his business pursuits with the business of being president, and allowing people he appoints to enrich themselves as they go about conducting the business of the White House.” With the midterms coming in November, Trump’s opponents are looking for leverage. “Democrats will likely focus on corruption,” he says, “and the potential 2028 candidates already doing so. If they win with that message and mandate, and control Congress – two big ifs – you can see an early 2029 far-reaching anti-corruption package coming out of Congress.” Still, the supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling is going nowhere soon. “The bigger question,” says George, “is the extent of the corrosive effect on American democracy, and to what extent people become numb to it.” In recent months, he has been thinking about the optics Trump creates in the Oval Office. “When he has cameras in, Trump sits at the desk with all his people standing around him. It is almost like a king: I am the boss, I will do what I want and take my spoils.” What else we’ve been reading This morning’s New start after 60 story from a woman who became a full-time carer – about the ways our world can expand even as it feels as if is shrinking – is surprising in the most wonderful of ways. Poppy Noor, newsletters team When Reform took control of Durham county council, cutting every penny of funding for the city’s annual Pride event was a priority. Hannah Al-Othman has a heartwarming report on how trade unions stepped in to keep the event afloat. This year’s parade held on Saturday was the biggest in its history. Michael I easily get stuck in the habit of eating the same (delicious) meals over and over again. So Ann Lee’s list of Korean dishes to try – including some dumplings that sound particularly appetising – made me very excited. Poppy I’m obsessed with Saturday magazine’s This is how we do it column, and this week’s was fascinating: “I was looking for a one-night stand. Now we’re married with two babies.” Michael I was touched looking through the images from photographer Martin Parr’s funeral. He found beauty in life’s small details, and the send-off his family organised, inspired by his work, felt like a window into something very intimate and resonant. Poppy Sport Football | About 75 people had to be rescued from height and 16 people were arrested during Arsenal’s victory bus parade on Sunday, emergency services said. Women’s FA Cup | Manchester City’s Khadija Shaw has been praised for not allowing speculation about her future to hinder her performances, after she scored the first goal in Sunday’s 4-0 Cup win over Brighton. Cycling | Jonas Vingegaard completed his Giro d’Italia triumph, securing the first part of a coveted Grand Tour double in a procession finale around Rome won by the home hero Jonathan Milan. The front pages “Mandelson files show no mitigation of security concerns over top US job”, is the Guardian’s front page today. Elsewhere on the political front, the Times leads with “Reform vote in unions at same level as Labour” and the Mail splashes “You’ve not won anything yet, Andy!”. The Telegraph runs with “Reeves looks at PFI to fund new towns” while the i Paper says “Leadership rivals back revolution in UK voting system”. Metro has “Sturgeon: 25ft motorhome? I didn’t spot it”. The Express leads on “Cancer hope for millions as drug doubles survival”, and on the same story the Mirror says “Precious gift of time”. Lastly, the FT splashes “Wall St’s bulls bet US stocks rally has further to go”. Today in Focus ‘A husband expects a yes’: wife schools and the Christian nationalist movement Alaina Demopoulos, a features writer for Guardian US, reports on the Christian influencers telling women to submit to their husbands. And Mariah Wellman, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, explains what a shifting culture on women’s rights means for policy. Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad It’s a tonic for burnout, anxiety and insomnia, and it’s not the latest peptide or wellness trend. Although it can’t cure all ailments, being outdoors in nature is “a great healer”, according to Guardian readers, who responded to a recent study finding that almost half of adults in the UK spend fewer than three hours a week outdoors in nature, and shared stories about why being in nature means so much to them. Hannah Powell, who has dealt with burnout and functional neurological disorder told us: “I have to look at plants every day.” David Lynch, meanwhile, says of being outside: “I am more fully human, my whole self. Anxiety levels drop, all worldly concerns are put in perspective and I feel younger.” Others shared the gratitude they feel to be in green spaces. In the words of reader Yve: “I believe that nature and being outdoors is a great healer.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Colombia’s far-right presidential candidate Espriella wins first round of vote ahead of runoff

The far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday and will face senator Iván Cepeda, the candidate backed by leftwing president Gustavo Petro, in the runoff. With 99.97% of ballots counted, the outsider and Donald Trump admirer Espriella secured 43.7% of the vote – just over 10.3m votes – compared with 40.9% (about 9.6m votes) for Cepeda, a philosopher and human rights activist who has served as a senator since 2014. The two will face each other in a runoff on 21 June. Although polls in recent weeks had already detected Espriella’s rapid rise, most still showed him trailing Cepeda, who for months seemed to hold a solid lead. Espriella appears to have consolidated much of the vote that had previously been going to the rightwing senator Paloma Valencia, who at one point polled above 20% and was running in second place but finished Sunday with just 6.9%. Espriella, who calls himself el Tigre (the Tiger), celebrated the result: “Compatriots, defenders of the homeland, more than 10 million Colombians placed their trust in el Tigre and joined the pack ... In 21 days, we are going to change the history of Colombia forever,” he said in a video alongside his wife and children, all wearing shirts of the Colombian national football team. Petro posted on X that “as president, I do not accept the preliminary results” released by the National Civil Registry, the independent public body responsible for organising Colombia’s elections. Without showing any evidence, the president claimed the count included “800,000 additional people” and said he would only “consider and accept” the results of the official scrutiny process, during which the National Electoral Council reviews the physical tally sheets, a procedure that can take days or even weeks. The lawyer Juan Carlos Galindo Vácha, who previously headed the National Civil Registry on two occasions, accused Petro of spreading “disinformation”. “Historically, in presidential elections, the difference between the preliminary count, which is unofficial, and the official scrutiny process is less than 1%. That alone undermines any claim by President Petro that there was fraud in the count,” he said in an interview with Radio Caracol. He added: “The president should show greater respect for the citizens who take part in the electoral process, whether as polling officials or electoral observers. He should not make these wild claims that even he does not understand.” Cepeda delivered his speech shortly after Petro’s post and echoed the president’s allegations, likewise without presenting evidence. The senator said there was “information regarding a certain number of polling stations” in which “atypical voting patterns” had allegedly occurred. “Only once the electoral commissions have fully clarified this matter will we comment on tonight’s results,” he added. After a wave of victories by far-right candidates in recent years in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Honduras, Colombia remains one of the few countries in Latin America still governed by the left, alongside Mexico and Brazil, which will hold its own presidential election in October. Espriella is an outspoken admirer of several rightwing leaders in the region, including the US president, Donald Trump, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei. A criminal lawyer and millionaire businessman who has never held public office, Espriella built his campaign around a promise to return to a policy of total confrontation in response to Colombia’s worsening security crisis, now considered the worst since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Espriella advocates ending Petro’s “total peace” policy of negotiating the dismantling of criminal groups – of which Cepeda is widely regarded as the architect – and replacing it with a mano dura (iron-fist) strategy inspired above all by El Salvador’s populist strongman Bukele, who has imprisoned at least 2% of his country’s adult population as part of a controversial crackdown on gangs. Even the lawyer’s neatly trimmed beard and habitual use of baseball caps have drawn comparisons with Bukele’s style. Espriella has incorporated his tiger nickname into much of his campaign branding. He has attracted controversy by attacking journalists and, at one point, telling a radio host that he was winning over female voters because of the size of his genitals. In a speech on Sunday night, Valencia acknowledged the result and endorsed Espriella in the runoff. Despite widespread concern about security, election day itself passed peacefully. The past few months have been marked by a surge in guerrilla attacks, homicides, kidnappings, forced displacement and massacres, and last year the rightwing senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot during a campaign event by a Farc dissident group and later died.

European leaders condemn Israel’s deepening incursion into Lebanon

European leaders have condemned Israel’s expanding incursion into Lebanon, after its military captured the medieval Beaufort castle and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to push even deeper into the country. France’s president Emmanuel Macron called for an end to fighting, saying “nothing justifies the major escalation under way in south Lebanon”. The country’s foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, has requested a meeting of the UN security council for Monday. The foreign ministers of the UK and Germany joined France in condemning the new operation. Britain’s Yvette Cooper called for the ceasefire that has been in place between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah since April to be respected. The US-brokered truce to halt the fighting between both sides has rarely been observed. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah, which has a strong political presence in southern Lebanon and has launched thousands of missiles and drones into northern Israel. Israel’s campaign has forced more than a million people from their homes, while 3,300 people, including dozens of children, have been killed. The current conflict began in March, after Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader. Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, on Saturday accused Israel of “implementing a policy of total destruction of cities and towns”. Netanyahu has called Sunday’s capture of Beaufort castle a “dramatic shift” in the campaign against Hezbollah. Israeli forces used the Beaufort castle, also known as Qalaat al-Shaqif, as a base during their previous two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000. The castle offers views across Lebanon and into northern Israel. It was built as a crusader castle around the 12th century and later occupied by Saladin’s Jerusalem army, the Ottomans, the French and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In a video statement released after the military took Beaufort, Netanyahu said “We have returned united, determined and stronger than ever. “Now my directive is to deepen and expand our hold in places that were under Hezbollah’s control.” Netanyahu noted the historic significance of the castle, which the military first seized in 1982, calling it a “symbol of a heroic battle for our fighters.” But some experts have questioned the strategic significance of the capture, and said its capture amounted to little more than a public relations coup. The military’s presence there will not solve the issue with Hezbollah, Orna Mizrahi, a former deputy director in Israel’s national security council, told the Associated Press. “We are damaging them in the operations, but in parallel we need to pursue a political and diplomatic solution,” Mizrahi said. Talks between senior officials from Israel and Lebanon began in April in Washington, the first in more than three decades between the countries, which have no formal diplomatic relations. Those discussions are set to continue this week, but Hezbollah is not taking part and has said it will not accept any results. Israel’s latest advance and the continuing violence in Lebanon also present a challenge in efforts to secure a lasting peace agreement between the US and Iran. Tehran has continued to insist that any agreement to extend the current ceasefire with Washington and return shipping to the strait of Hormuz must include an end to fighting in Lebanon as well. Observers have suggested Israeli officials and military commanders want to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before a potential deal imposes new limits or stops the current offensive. With Agence France-Presse

Israel seizes strategic castle in deepest incursion into Lebanon in 26 years

Israeli troops have captured a clifftop castle as they made their deepest incursion into Lebanon in more than 26 years, further shattering a nominal US-brokered ceasefire and complicating efforts to extend the separate truce between Washington and Tehran. After days of intense fighting and airstrikes in nearby villages, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said the military had captured Beaufort Castle, also known as Qalaat al-Shaqif, which it had used as a base during its previous occupation of southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) already controlled territory up to the Litani River in its campaign against Hezbollah, but troops are now pushing towards the Zahrani River, about six miles north. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, requested an emergency meeting of the UN security council on Monday to discuss Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, which he described as unacceptable. “Nothing can justify the prolongation of Israeli military operations in Lebanon and its increasingly deep occupation of Lebanese territory,” he said. Images and footage showed Israeli and Golani Brigade flags flying over Beaufort Castle, which overlooks much of southern Lebanon, giving it strategic importance, as shelling echoed across the surrounding hills and plumes of smoke rose from the area. The IDF said it had “launched an operation in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki area of southern Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure and expand its control of the area”. Israeli forces appear to be positioning themselves for a potential encirclement of Nabatieh, a city that serves as an economic centre and a cultural heartland for southern Lebanon. Prof Yagil Levy, the head of the Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations at the Open University of Israel, described the latest advance as no more than “victory of image”. “There was already debate in 1982 over how necessary the capture of Beaufort really was,” he said. “It attempts to present an accomplishment within a public discourse that increasingly assumes that Israel is not winning. “Protests are growing in the northern communities, criticism is emerging from within the military over soldiers’ vulnerability to drone attacks, Hezbollah remains intact, and there is no realistic plan for its disarmament.” The advance also poses a challenge to stalled negotiations between the US and Iran, as Tehran wants any deal to include the end of fighting in Lebanon as well. Observers have said Israeli officials and military commanders want to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before a potential deal imposes new limits or stops the current offensive. The fighting in Lebanon has been the broadest spillover of the Iran war, displacing more than 1.2 million people as a result of Israeli strikes and evacuation orders since 2 March. A truce officially began on 17 April but has never been observed. Israel and Hezbollah accuse each other daily of violations as justification for their attacks. For many in Lebanon, Nabatieh carries a significance that extends beyond its strategic value. Long regarded as a symbol of resistance, the city has repeatedly been on the frontline of Israeli military campaigns and is deeply embedded in the political and historical memory of southern Lebanon. Israeli forces have moved past the towns of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah and Mayfadoun in recent days and are approaching Choukine, where local people were ordered to evacuate on Saturday amid fears of further military operations. Taking over Nabatieh would deal a blow to Hezbollah’s morale, said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, a thinktank based in Beirut. Addressing fears of a virtual annexation, he said: “Given the level of destruction in the so-called ‘yellow zone’, the range of possibilities is between denying the return of the population, and annexation/settlement in a similar fashion to the West Bank. “Annexation is no longer a wild conspiracy theory. There are ministerial statements to this effect from Israel’s finance and national security ministers, among others.” Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, accused Israel on Saturday of “pursuing a scorched-earth policy and collective punishment” by “destroying towns and villages, and forcing their inhabitants into exile” in the south of the country. He said the country was facing a “dangerous” escalation and called for “a swift and real ceasefire”. The actions would bring “neither security nor stability” to Israel, he said. Salam defended his government’s engagement with its southern neighbour after military delegations held security talks in Washington on Friday. More US-brokered negotiations are planned next week. He said the outcome of the talks was not guaranteed, but called them “the least costly path for our country and our people”. The Lebanese health ministry said eight people, including three women, had been killed after a strike on southern Lebanon on Sunday. Reuters reported the Israeli military as saying one of its soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah said earlier on Saturday that it had targeted the air traffic control unit at the Meron base in northern Israel, a strategic surveillance and command facility near the Lebanese border. The group also claimed responsibility for rocket fire towards Kiryat Shmona, one of the Israeli communities most exposed to the conflict. Videos on social media appeared to show beachgoers in northern Israel running for shelter as Hezbollah rockets were launched towards the area, according to local media. The barrage was the first fired from Lebanon towards the coastal city of Nahariya in three weeks. The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli attacks had killed at least 3,371 people since 2 March, when Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in support of Iran. The group said it had attacked Israel in retaliation for the death of Iran’s supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes when the war erupted on 28 February. Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

WHO calls for community cooperation to contain Ebola outbreak in DRC

Containing the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo requires community cooperation and is “everybody’s business”, the World Health Organization has said. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organisation’s director general, made the plea on Sunday during a visit to eastern Congo where some residents have protested against stringent medical protocols for handling victims’ bodies. “We can stop this Ebola and anyone who has it can also recover. But the rule … is this thing is everybody’s business and every citizen should be involved,” Ghebreyesus said at the opening of a treatment centre in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, which is at the centre of the outbreak. Protesters have complained restrictions on handling victims’ bodies violate local burial rites, a sentiment that has been linked to at least three attacks against health centres. There is no vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, the strain behind the current outbreak, but infected people can recover, according to Ghebreyesus. He said: “If you come to health facilities when you have symptoms, you can get the support and recover, so the key is to come forward as early as possible and to get the necessary support.” Five patients had recovered and four were to be discharged on Sunday, after the earlier discharge of the other patient, the WHO chief said. The organisation has recorded 906 suspected cases and 223 suspected deaths in the DRC. Authorities in neighbouring Uganda have confirmed nine cases and one death. The number of confirmed cases in the DRC had increased to 282, with 42 deaths, after 19 new positive test results were recorded, according to data distributed by the communications ministry on Sunday. Fighting between rival armed groups in the mineral-rich Ituri region has complicated relief efforts, prompting Ghebreyesus to call for a ceasefire, saying: “No cause, no conflict, no grievance is worth condemning innocent people to death from a preventable disease.” Brazilian health authorities said they were monitoring two patients for possible Ebola infection in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, although one later tested negative for the virus. A 37-year-old man from DRC “exhibited symptoms such as fever, meeting the definition of a suspected case” of Ebola, the São Paulo state government said on Saturday. The health department in Rio de Janeiro state meanwhile reported that it had activated safety protocols after a man from Uganda showed “viral symptoms such as cough, chills and diarrhoea”. He later tested negative but remained in isolation until the investigation was completed, Brazilian authorities said. The DRC outbreak – which the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern – is the 17th recorded Ebola epidemic in the country. The disease was first identified in the central African country in 1976 and has an average death rate, across all outbreaks, of 50%. Health officials and aid workers have complained they lack basic supplies such as masks. Medical aid donated by the European Union reached Ituri last week and the US announced $80m (£60m) in additional aid, raising its total commitment to $112m. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said national incident systems must be activated rapidly and that investments in pandemic preparedness must become permanent. Jean Kaseya, the organisation’s director general, said in the Financial Times on Sunday that international support was vital and most effective when it aligned with the strategies of African institutions and African governments. “Africa’s response to Ebola must be defined by Africa itself,” he wrote. The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned on Saturday that the disease’s spread was deeply alarming and that never before had so many cases been recorded so soon. MSF teams were “witnessing a response that has not yet caught up to the rapid spread of the epidemic”, said the organisation’s deputy director, Alan Gonzalez. “The reality today is that nobody knows the true scale and severity of this outbreak. New suspected cases are being reported daily, yet hundreds of samples remain untested.”