Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, has made a rare visit to Iran in a last-ditch effort to persuade it to hold back from attacking Israel in response to the assassination of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran last week.

The western ally with a large Palestinian population is facing a tough balancing act as it faces domestic calls to break off relations with Tel Aviv and to stop protecting it after shooting down Iranian missiles aimed at Israel earlier this year.

The visit looks doomed to fail given that Iran insisted on Sunday that there was no room for compromise and that it would make a decisive response to the assassination.

In the previous Iranian attack on Israel in April, Jordan shot down some Iranian missiles flying over its airspace insisting it would not allow its country to become a battlefield for other conflicts. It also gave the French navy permission to deploy radars.

But the kingdom is also facing mass demonstrations in support of Gaza and is furious with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Natanyahu, for assassinating Haniyeh in what it has condemned as “an escalatory crime and flagrant violation of international law”. Israel has refused to officially comment on Haniyeh’s assassination, but its role is widely acknowledged.

More than half the Jordanian population is Palestinian or of Palestinian descent.

Iran insists the assassination has crossed too many red lines and is calling for a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), at which Tehran would put pressure on Arab Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to adopt sanctions against Israel.

Safadi’s visit to Iran is the first visit by a Jordanian foreign minister for two decades, and reflects the failure of a phone call between the two sides to find a diplomatic solution.

His condemnations of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has been strikingly vivid in recent months. “The Israeli government acts in a way that reflects their racism, extremism and rejection of the right of the Palestinians to live like any other people on this Earth,” he said recently. But Jordan is hugely dependent on the US for its security, and will rejoin the April alliance to minimise the impact of any Iranian assault.

A lively debate is also under way in Tehran among former diplomats and politicians about how to respond in a way that does not play into Netanyahu’s hands. The final decision rests with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the advice given by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Most comment in Tehran assumes Netanyahu’s attack was designed to undermine the newly elected government of the reformist leader Masoud Pezeshkian, and its desire to explore better relations with the west. Israel vowed to kill all Hamas leaders after the 7 October attacks, and its intelligence services have a history of carrying out covert killings inside Iran.

Iran has also been interested in US media reports that Joe Biden upbraided Netanyahu in a phone call on Thursday for misleading him over his plans to assassinate Haniyeh, who was also the chief Hamas negotiator in ceasefire talks, and for setting increasingly impossible preconditions in the talks.

Reports from Israeli media were also widely picked up suggesting Netanyahu’s intelligence and defence chiefs told him they could not reach a ceasefire deal on the parameters he had set them.

But there is scepticism in Tehran that Biden’s frustrations with the Israeli leadership will lead to any effective pressure on Netanyahu to give his negotiators a new more flexible brief. Talks at the weekend made no progress, and the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Qalibaf, called for a decisive Iranian response.

Pezeshkian is still in the process of forming his government, but has appointed Javad Zarif as his vice-president for strategy, a post that may give him more influence than when he was foreign minister. Zarif strongly favours greater contact with the west and helped complete the negotiations that led to the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015. He also has long experience of the forces inside Iran that will seek to undermine him.

The internal debate in Iran about the correct military response has also been coloured by the often bitter debate about whether Iran’s intelligence services have been penetrated by their Israeli counterpart, the Mossad, or instead have just been woefully incompetent.

The IRGC’s official explanation is that Haniyeh was killed by a “short-range projectile” launched from outside his accommodation in northern Tehran.

The Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari had earlier told journalists “there was no other Israeli aerial attack … in all the Middle East” on the night the Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr was killed in Lebanon.

The IRGC explanation differs from the claim that a bomb was placed in Haniyeh’s bedroom two months ago, and was then detonated when he came to Tehran for Pezeshkian’s inauguration. Either explanation requires a level of knowledge about Haniyeh’s precise sleeping arrangements in Tehran because only his apartment was targeted.

Tehran is awash with rumours of betrayal by the intelligence services, including denied reports that Hassan Karmi, the commander of Faraja special units, , had been arrested for espionage. Abolfazl Zahravand, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security commission, said: “The Israelis have an influence network inside Tehran and Iran. Evil elements cooperate with them, who have defined themselves in the ‘Mossad network’.”

The accuracy of the conflicting and often bizarre “exclusive” explanations of the causes of Haniyeh’s death is coloured by the desire of various intelligence agencies, western and Iranian, as well as some newspapers, to undermine their rivals.

At a high-end Beirut seaside resort, guests lathered themselves with sun cream and children splashed in the water as their parents watched from sunbeds. “Here in Lebanon, we like to live our lives,” said Emad, a 60-year-old retiree and Beirut resident, over the sound of techno music.

“There are always wars, every two to three years this happens, it’s nothing new. If you live in Lebanon, you get used to it,” Emad said with a shrug.

While sunbathers sipped cocktails poolside, embassy staff have quietly been making calls to the resort’s front desk, asking if its marina accommodates a very different kind of request – evacuations. The hotel’s harbour, currently used to dock wealthy Lebanese yachts, is being scoped out as one possible evacuation site in the case of a full-scale war in Lebanon, a staff member said.

Hezbollah first fired rockets at Israel on 8 October “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack on Israel the day before – kicking off 10 months of tit-for-tat fighting, mainly along the Lebanon-Israel border.

But over the past week, fears that a full-scale war may break out have heightened, after the back-to-back assassinations of the top Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas’s political head, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in the week after the killing of 12 children in a rocket strike on the town of Majd al-Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israel blamed Iranian ally Hezbollah for the attack, which the Lebanese militia denies, and killed Shukr in response. Israel has refused to officially comment on Haniyeh’s death, but its responsibility is widely acknowledged inside the country and beyond.

Hezbollah and Iran have promised a “serious” response to Israel. US and Israeli officials have said this could involve a wide-ranging missile attack against Israel, similar to Iran’s drone barrage in April.

In Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp 5km from the beach resort, residents said they were impatiently awaiting Hezbollah and Iran’s retaliation.

People gathered on Friday in the camp to pay tribute to Haniyeh as he was buried in Qatar. An empty coffin draped in Hamas’s bright green flag was paraded through the streets by unarmed members of the group’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades as supporters wearing keffiyehs chanted for Palestinian liberation.

“Many of us welcome an expansion of the war if it is to alleviate the suffering of our people in Gaza and the West Bank. We want Iran and Hezbollah to retaliate for what happened,” one of those watching, Wafaa Issa, said, adding that if needed she and her son would join the fight to defend Lebanon.

Further away from Beirut, fighters were preparing themselves. “We are ready for any confrontation with Israel,” said Maj Gen Mounir al-Miqdah, the leader of the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, the armed wing of the Palestinian Fatah faction that has fought alongside Hezbollah. Diplomats have been scrambling to try to prevent the simmering conflict from boiling over into a regional war.

On Saturday, David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, spoke with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken. They reaffirmed the need to “de-escalate rising tensions in the Middle East and prevent the conflict from spreading,” said the US state department’s spokesperson, Matthew Miller.

In Lebanon, however, calls from the west could be ignored. Hezbollah-affiliated media has accused the US mediator Amos Hochstein of leading a “campaign of diplomatic deception” for, they claimed, misleading them about the nature of Israel’s strike.

It further called on Lebanese officials to stop meeting with Hochstein who, until now, has been seen as the main facilitator for a diplomatic solution between Israel and Hezbollah.

With no clear route to de-escalation, many Lebanese are despairing at the prospect of another war. Billboards have sprung up across Lebanon, showing bombed-out buildings, with the slogan, “Don’t repeat the past, Lebanon does not want a war”. Rents in the mountains surrounding Beirut have skyrocketed, as families seek a plan B in the historical safe haven.

Critics of Hezbollah have said it should be the state, rather than the Lebanese party, that should be deciding the fate of the country.

“There’s a major role for diplomacy, which the Lebanese government has not played since the beginning, it’s been completely absent,” Michel Helou, the secretary general of the National Bloc political party, said, adding that there was “no justification for Lebanon being dragged into a regional war”.

Hezbollah has consistently said its rocket fire on Israel is designed to lessen the pressure on its ally Hamas, and pull Israeli resources from Gaza. For some in Lebanon, despite overwhelming sympathy for the high humanitarian toll in Gaza, the cost of Hezbollah’s intervention could be too high to bear.

“How have Hezbollah rockets helped the Palestinian population since October 8? Did it slow the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, did we gain anything as Lebanese?” Helou added.

The surge in extreme rightwing activity in the past week has led to a fivefold increase in threats to Muslims, such as of rape and death, and a threefold increase in hate crime incidents, a national monitoring group said on Sunday.

Muslims in Britain have been left “terrorised” by the increase in extreme rightwing activity since Monday, which is directly linked to a large increase in anti-Islamic hate crimes, according to initial analysis from Tell Mama.

Tell Mama is a monitoring group that tracks complaints of anti-Muslim hate crimes. It says the increase in fear Muslims have experienced is directly linked to the extreme far right.

A total of 10 mosques, the charity says, have faced attacks or threats, including Islamic places of worship in Southport, Liverpool and Hartlepool.

The charity says people have been left too scared to leave their homes, with women wearing head coverings such as the hijab facing threats in the street.

The increases are from initial figures collected from 26 July to 2 August, and are compared with the same period last year. The data includes incidents online and in the real world.

The charity says the figure a year ago was already higher than normal because of a rise in hate crime incidents triggered by the Israel-Gaza conflict. The full data will be released soon, and the experience of Tell Mama, and the Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors anti-Jewish hate incidents, is that threats and attacks are underreported.

Tell Mama’s director, Iman Atta, said the initial data showed a clear trend: “This is due to the extreme far right’s misinformation and disinformation after the Southport attacks, which falsely linked Muslims to the incident.

“This led to far-right anti-Muslim hate marches across the UK, and to the far right mobilising and spreading more hate online. It is a direct result of the surge in far-right activity.

“The marches and violence are terrorising communities. People do not want to be visible, do not want to go to the mosque. People can have legitimate concerns about immigration but that does not mean they vandalise mosques or attack or threaten Muslim communities.”

The analysis is based on reports to Tell Mama; police keep their own data. After the start of the Israel-Gaza conflict last year police recorded higher rises than the CST in antisemitic hate crime.

Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan became the second boxer at the centre of a gender eligibility row to be assured of an Olympic medal in Paris after a testy bout with her Bulgarian rival.

The 28-year-old beat Svetlana Staneva, 34, by unanimous decision but it was an ugly fight after which the coach of the losing athlete suggested Lin should not have been allowed to compete.

Staneva, 34, did shake hands with Lin but before leaving the arena the Bulgarian made a cross with her fingers, possibly indicating the double XX chromosome of a woman. She refused to take questions from the media.

As with Algerian welterweight Imane Khelif who progressed to the semi-finals on Saturday, Lin is competing despite being banned from last year’s World Championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA) due to allegedly failing a gender test, described by the International Olympic Committee as lacking credibility. The gender eligibility of the two boxers remains unclear.

The IBA, which is led by the Russian national Umar Kremlev, has been stripped of its status as the sport’s world governing body due to failures in its financial transparency and concerns over the integrity of its officials and culture.

Speaking to reporters after her winning bout, Lin, who said she had cut herself off from social media for the Games, said: “I know that all the Taiwanese people are behind me”.

Staneva’s coach Borislav Georgiev said: “I’m not a medical person who should say if Lin could compete or not here, but when the test shows that he or she has the Y chromosome she should not be here.”

He added: “You could see that the representative of Taiwan did not want to fight, she was running all the time, she was playing dirty as hell, the very first round was for an official warning for an elbow. And these circus acts, when she fell …

“In general I am indignant at the funfair that is taking place. They have decided to make them champions and that’s it. I expected it, but I hope there are reasonable and honest people who will watch the game and support women’s sports.”

Lin, who like Khelif was born as a female and had contested without dispute as such until the IBA’s ruling, will now face Turkey’s Esra Yildiz Kahraman in a semi-final on Wednesday with the knowledge that she will at least take home a bronze medal.

During a press conference on Sunday, the IOC confirmed that they received a letter from the IBA last year which suggested that Khelif and Lin had failed gender tests but they described the results as lacking credibility.

“Those tests are not legitimate tests. So there was indeed a letter, I can confirm that,” said IOC spokesperson Mark Adams. “But the conception of the test, to how the test was shared, to how the test has become public is so flawed, that it’s impossible to engage with it.

“It doesn’t mean that there can’t be a process in the future. That we can’t discuss this. But with the credibility of the IBA, as it is, it doesn’t give any credibility to those tests, or the method in which those tests were carried out.”

Julien Alfred made history as St Lucia’s first ever Olympic medallist by beating the US world champion Sha’carri Richardson to take gold in the women’s 100m in Paris, as Team GB clocked up its first medal on the track.

Under teeming rain in the Stade de France, the 23-year-old dominated the final and set a new national record of 10.72 seconds, leaving Richardson in silver and Melissa Jefferson, also of the US, to take bronze after a photo-finish with Team GB’s Daryll Neita in fourth.

Neita, 27, said: “It’s super tough – words can’t describe how I’m feeling right now. I was so close to that medal I was dreaming of for my whole life.”

No athlete from the Caribbean island of St Lucia, population 179,000, had ever won an Olympic medal before.

Alfred’s time made her the eighth fastest woman in history on her first appearance at a Games.

Earlier, Sam Reardon, Amber Anning, Laviai Nielsen and Alex Haydock-Wilson had claimed a first track medal for Team GB in Paris after holding on to win bronze in a tight 4x400m mixed relay that was won by the Netherlands on the home straight.

Reardon, 20, from Beckenham, said: “I think we all executed the gameplan perfectly and to come away with a bronze medal, I can’t really believe it.

“It was electric. When I went out to do my block set-up, the French were really hyping up the crowd, so I fed on that energy and it carried me through. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I went out there and did what I know I can do. I had that belief.”

It followed a Team GB gold in a blue-riband event of the Olympic regatta – the men’s eight – and a dazzling performance by sprinter Louie Hinchliffe who beat the world’s fastest man in the 100m heats, raising expectations of further success.

With medals in rowing, dressage, gymnastics and sailing, Britain had for a brief period on Saturday been ahead of the US in the Olympic medal table, something that has not been achieved at the end of any Games in which both nations have competed since 1908 in London.

An imperious display by Simone Biles, 27, in the women’s vault in the Bercy Arena put that to bed as the US gymnastics superstar notched up her third gold of the Games. Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade took silver and Biles’s teammate Jade Carey finished with bronze.

With three golds in five days, Biles’s overall Olympic medal count now stands at 10, including seven golds, with the finals of the balance beam and the floor exercise to come on Sunday and Monday, respectively.

“I love that the athletes push me to be my best,” she said.

Ryan Crouser, representing the US, became the first man to “three-peat” in the shot put by taking gold ahead of his compatriot Joe Kovacs and Jamaica’s Rajindra Campbell in bronze.

The British team remain on track to hit the upper end of UK Sport’s prediction of between 50 and 70 medals after the best first week of a Games in modern history.

The ambition of the British team was exemplified by the peformance of Hinchliffe in the first round of the 100m where he beat American star Noah Lyles, the world No 1, with a time of 9.98sec.

Asked whether he had been surprised by Hinchliffe, Lyles responded: “Yes and no. He is a talented kid.”

“It was a good feeling,” said Hinchliffe, 22, from Sheffield. “I wasn’t really thinking too much about him, he wasn’t really near me. I didn’t really think about who else was in the race. He said ‘well done’ and acknowledged me at the end.”

The eight day of the Games had begun with the cox in the British men’s eight, Harry Brightmore, leaping on to the stern of his boat to issue a roar of triumph after a perfectly paced race that allowed them to put down the hammer in the final stretch and ease ahead of the Netherlands’ crew.

In the past 100 years, the British eight had only won gold in 2016 and 2000. The win left Britain with eight rowing medals – the most of any nation – although the Dutch topped that table with four golds to the Britons’ three.

Charlie Elwes, 27, from Andover, who won bronze in the men’s eight in Tokyo, said: “I’d say 99.9% of it was perfect.”

Rory Gibbs, another of the world-beating eight, had to seek medical assistance after a heroic push in the last 850 metres while Morgan Bolding was helped from the boat.

Elwes, Gibbs, Bolding, Jacob Dawson, Sholto Carnegie and James Rudkin, Tom Digby and Tom Ford had competed straight after the women’s eight took bronze in a boat coxed by Henry Fieldman, who had coxed the men’s eight to their bronze in Tokyo.

“It was quite breathless, actually,” said Annie Campbell-Orde, 28, from Wells, of the women’s win.

Louise Kingsley, the director of performance for the GB rowing team, said the performances had drawn a line over the nadir of Tokyo in 2021 when the rowing team failed to win a single gold and only collected a silver and bronze.

She said: “An absolutely fantastic regatta, it’s good to be back from Tokyo.”

Britain’s Carl Hester, Charlotte Fry and Becky Moody won bronze in the dressage team Grand Prix Special in defiance of the pressure that came with a ban handed to star rider Charlotte Dujardin on the eve of the Games.

Hester, a mentor to Dujardin who left the Games after the publication of a video showing her repeatedly whipping a student’s horse, said: “It has been really difficult, very hard, and as I said before, we’ve had to put it out of our minds.”

Gymnast Jake Jarman also took bronze in the men’s floor, just behind silver medallist Artem Dolgopyat of Israel. Carlos Edriel Yulo of the Philippines took the gold.

Jarman, 22, from Peterborough, said: “I said to myself: just do the best you can. Especially after seeing there were two ridiculously high scores up first. I knew it was going to be insanely hard. I just wanted to enjoy it, do the best I can.”

Emma Wilson, 25, a favourite for gold in the sailing, was unhappy with her bronze medal off the coast of Marseille after a new winner-takes-all section at the end of the competition.

She said: “It’s not OK to put people in this position every time. I had a 60-point lead at the world championships, and a 30-point lead here.I don’t know how many times you can come back. I think I’m done with the sport.”

Team GB boxer Lewis Richardson is through to the Olympic semi-finals and guaranteed at least a bronze medal after beating Zeyad Eashash of Jordan by split decision 3-2 in the men’s 71kg category. The golf enters its final round on Sunday, with Tommy Fleetwood, from Southport, one shot off the lead in third position.

An Israeli airstrike killed four people in a tent inside a hospital complex in Gaza early on Sunday, and a Palestinian stabbed two people to death in a city near Tel Aviv, amid reports of heated disagreements between US and Israeli leaders about a possible ceasefire deal.

Fears of all-out war in the region have escalated after assassinations this week of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah number two in Beirut.

France and Italy became the latest countries to urge their citizens to leave Lebanon, as Israelis reported GPS jamming around Tel Aviv on Sunday, something the Israeli military has said in the past it does to counter the threats of drones and missiles.

Iran has sworn revenge for the killings of two key allies. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that the country was ready for any scenario and would “exact a heavy price” for any retaliation.

The US has also promised to defend Israel, ordering an aircraft carrier to sail to the region and moving other military assets into position.

Despite the promise of US solidarity in the face of Iranian attack, US president Joe Biden has been open about concerns that the killing of Haniyeh will complicate efforts to stop fighting in Gaza, which is key to regional de-escalation.

He had a “heated conversation” this week with Netanyahu, who was forced to deny that he was an obstacle to a ceasefire and hostage release deal, the New York Times has reported, quoting a senior US official.

That was just the latest confrontation between two increasingly uneasy allies. Biden reportedly told the Israeli leader to “stop bullshitting me” when the two men discussed the return of hostages at an in-person meeting at the White House late last month.

“Biden realised that Netanyahu was lying to him about the hostages,” Haaretz newspaper quoted a senior administration official as saying.

Biden’s reported scepticism about Netanyahu’s commitment to the return of Israeli hostages puts him on the same page as Israel’s defence chiefs. They believe that the country’s leader is not interested a ceasefire deal even though a workable proposal is on the table, Israeli media reported this week.

In Gaza on Sunday, Israeli airstrikes killed 18 people, Gaza health authorities reported, including four displaced people who had been sheltering in the courtyard of the al-Aqsa hospital, the main medical facility in the central city of Deir al-Balah.

The area outside the hospital has become an informal settlement for people who have fled their homes, many of them displaced multiple times as Israeli troops have moved across the strip during 10 months of war.

Video from the Associated Press showed men trying to put out flames and rescue the injured. A second strike on a nearby home killed a girl and her parents, the hospital said.

Those attacks came the day after 16 people were killed and 21 injured in an airstrike on displaced people sheltering in a school in Gaza City. Israel said it had struck a Hamas command centre at the school, and that the hospital strike targeted a militant, AP reported.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians, according to Health authorities in the strip. It does not distinguish between civilians and military, but more than half of those who have been identified are women, children and older people.

Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas launched cross-border attacks that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostage on 7 October.

The stabbings in Israel on Sunday took place in the city of Holon, just south of Tel Aviv, in a park and near a fuel station. The victims were a woman in her 70s and a man in his 80s. Two men were injured, Israel’s ambulance service said.

The attacker, who police said was a Palestinian, went on a rampage over half a kilometre before police shot him dead.

An Israeli airstrike killed four people in a tent inside a hospital complex in Gaza early on Sunday, and a Palestinian stabbed two people to death in a city near Tel Aviv, amid reports of heated disagreements between US and Israeli leaders about a possible ceasefire deal.

Fears of all-out war in the region have escalated after assassinations this week of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah number two in Beirut.

France and Italy became the latest countries to urge their citizens to leave Lebanon, as Israelis reported GPS jamming around Tel Aviv on Sunday, something the Israeli military has said in the past it does to counter the threats of drones and missiles.

Iran has sworn revenge for the killings of two key allies. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that the country was ready for any scenario and would “exact a heavy price” for any retaliation.

The US has also promised to defend Israel, ordering an aircraft carrier to sail to the region and moving other military assets into position.

Despite the promise of US solidarity in the face of Iranian attack, US president Joe Biden has been open about concerns that the killing of Haniyeh will complicate efforts to stop fighting in Gaza, which is key to regional de-escalation.

He had a “heated conversation” this week with Netanyahu, who was forced to deny that he was an obstacle to a ceasefire and hostage release deal, the New York Times has reported, quoting a senior US official.

That was just the latest confrontation between two increasingly uneasy allies. Biden reportedly told the Israeli leader to “stop bullshitting me” when the two men discussed the return of hostages at an in-person meeting at the White House late last month.

“Biden realised that Netanyahu was lying to him about the hostages,” Haaretz newspaper quoted a senior administration official as saying.

Biden’s reported scepticism about Netanyahu’s commitment to the return of Israeli hostages puts him on the same page as Israel’s defence chiefs. They believe that the country’s leader is not interested a ceasefire deal even though a workable proposal is on the table, Israeli media reported this week.

In Gaza on Sunday, Israeli airstrikes killed 18 people, Gaza health authorities reported, including four displaced people who had been sheltering in the courtyard of the al-Aqsa hospital, the main medical facility in the central city of Deir al-Balah.

The area outside the hospital has become an informal settlement for people who have fled their homes, many of them displaced multiple times as Israeli troops have moved across the strip during 10 months of war.

Video from the Associated Press showed men trying to put out flames and rescue the injured. A second strike on a nearby home killed a girl and her parents, the hospital said.

Those attacks came the day after 16 people were killed and 21 injured in an airstrike on displaced people sheltering in a school in Gaza City. Israel said it had struck a Hamas command centre at the school, and that the hospital strike targeted a militant, AP reported.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians, according to Health authorities in the strip. It does not distinguish between civilians and military, but more than half of those who have been identified are women, children and older people.

Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas launched cross-border attacks that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostage on 7 October.

The stabbings in Israel on Sunday took place in the city of Holon, just south of Tel Aviv, in a park and near a fuel station. The victims were a woman in her 70s and a man in his 80s. Two men were injured, Israel’s ambulance service said.

The attacker, who police said was a Palestinian, went on a rampage over half a kilometre before police shot him dead.

Ukrainian pilots have started flying F-16s, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, confirming the long-awaited arrival of the US-made fighter jets more than 29 months since Russia’s invasion.

The Ukrainian leader announced the use of F-16s, which Kyiv has long lobbied for, as he met military pilots at an airbase flanked by two of the jets, with two more flying overhead.

“F-16s are in Ukraine. We did it. I am proud of our guys who are mastering these jets and have already started using them for our country,” Zelenskiy said at a location that authorities asked reporters not to disclose for security reasons.

The arrival of the jets is a milestone for Ukraine after many months of waiting, though it remains unclear how many are available and how much of an impact they will have in enhancing air defences and on the battlefield.

Russia has been targeting bases that may house them and has vowed to shoot them down.

The F-16s had been on Ukraine’s wishlist for a long time. They are equipped with a 20mm cannon and can carry bombs, rockets and missiles.

Talking to reporters on the tarmac of an airfield, Zelenskiy said Ukraine still did not have enough pilots trained to use the F-16s or enough of the jets themselves.

“The positive thing is that we are expecting additional F-16s … many guys are now training,” he said.

Ukraine has previously relied on an ageing fleet of Soviet-era warplanes that are outgunned by Russia’s more advanced and far bigger fleet.

Russia has used that edge to conduct regular long-range missile strikes on targets across Ukraine and to pound Ukrainian frontline positions with thousands of guided bombs, supporting its forces that are slowly advancing in the east.

“This is the new stage of development of the air force of Ukraine’s armed forces,” Zelenskiy said.

“We did a lot for Ukrainian forces to transition to a new aviation standard, the western combat aviation,” he added, citing hundreds of meetings and unrelenting diplomacy to obtain the F-16s.

It remains unclear what missiles the jets are equipped with. A longer range of missile would allow them to have a greater battlefield impact, military analysts say.

Zelenskiy said he also hoped to lobby allied neighbouring countries to help intercept Russian missiles being launched at Ukraine through conversations at the Nato-Ukraine Council platform.

“This is another tool, and I want to try it, so that Nato countries can talk to Ukraine about the possibility of a small coalition of neighbouring countries shooting down enemy missiles,” he said.

“I think this decision is probably difficult for our partners, they are always afraid of excessive escalation but we are fighting that.”

Russia has pledged humanitarian assistance to North Korea after devastating floods damaged thousands of homes and caused an unknown number of casualties, with reports from South Korea that the number of dead or missing could be as high as 1,500.

President Vladimir Putin offered condolences and humanitarian aid after a record downpour on 27 July which submerged swathes of farmland in the north near China, the Kremlin and North Korean state media said.

“I ask you to convey words of sympathy and support to all those who lost their loved ones as a result of the storm,” Putin said in a telegram to Kim, adding “you can always count on our help and support”.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un thanked Putin for the offer but said since his government has already taken measures to conduct recovery work, he would ask for help “if aid is necessary”, KCNA state media said.

Heavy rains have pummelled North Korea’s north-western areas in recent days, flooding more than 4,000 homes and isolating 5,000 residents, KCNA has reported. State media said Kim had personally inspected the affected areas.

On Saturday, Kim accused South Korean media outlets of spreading rumours about damage and casualties from the floods, days after Seoul reached out to offer humanitarian aid.

South Korea’s government on Thursday said it was willing to “urgently provide” humanitarian assistance to “North Korean disaster victims” following reports in local media that the toll of dead and missing could number 1,500.

The report by South Korea’s TV Chosun, which was later picked up by other outlets, also reported on the possible death of rescue workers killed in helicopter crashes.

North Korea’s Kim slammed the reports for “spreading the false rumour that the human loss … is expected be over 1,000 or 1,500”, according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency.

The flooding reports constituted a South Korean “smear campaign to bring disgrace upon us and tarnish” the North’s image, he added.

North Korea and Russia have been allies since the North’s founding after the second world war, but Pyongyang and Moscow have ramped up diplomatic and security ties in recent months, with Kim and Putin exchanging visits and signing a “comprehensive strategic partnership” pact in June.

Reuters and Agence-France Presse contributed to this report.

Of all the lessons Kamala Harris’s campaign will have learned from Hillary Clinton’s botched run for president eight years ago, among the most important is that it’s better to talk about jobs than guns in the three rust belt states that hold the key to the White House.

The peculiarities of the US’s electoral college will almost certainly see November’s presidential election decided by voters in just seven states. Four – Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia – lie in the southern sun belt.

But it is the three to the north – the rust belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that Democratic strategists are focused on. They are, in many ways, the real battleground within the battleground.

Shortly before Joe Biden dropped out the presidential race two weeks ago, his campaign team wrote a memo laying out victory in the rust belt swing states as the “clearest pathway” to defeating Donald Trump.

If Harris, the presumed Democratic presidential candidate, can win the “blue wall” alongside the states that can be relied on to support her then that should deliver the 270 electoral college votes required to take the White House whatever the outcome in the sun belt. But while some of the early signs are good for Harris, the rust belt can be tricky electoral ground, as Clinton found.

Dan Kannien, the director of Harris campaign in the battleground states, claimed on Monday that they are not focusing on one region over another.

“We already have 600 staff on the ground in the blue wall and we’re adding another 150 to that region in the first two weeks of August,” he said.

“The vice-president is strong in both the blue wall and in the sun belt and we are running hard in both.”

But it’s clear that both campaigns see the rust belt as decisive.

Trump’s choice of JD Vance, the Ohio senator and author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about the struggles of the white working class, as his running mate was a move to win over a key constituency, although Vance’s failure to connect with audiences at recent rallies may be causing the former president some regret.

Harris is expected to reveal her vice-presidential running mate before a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. The location has fuelled speculation that it will be that state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, although Harris’s aides have cautioned against reading too much into the connection.

Two other state governors, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, are also reported to be serious contenders for the post. Either would probably play well in key rust belt constituencies. But the appeal of Shapiro lies in his strong approval ratings even among some Republicans and his defeat of a Trumpist rightwinger, Doug Mastriano, by a wide margin in the governor’s race two years ago.

Harris has also made Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a campaign co-chair after she ruled herself out of the vice-presidential contest. Whitmer will be a valuable asset in keeping the campaign focused on the issues that matter to midwestern voters after she defeated a Trump-backed candidate by 11 points in 2022 while Democrats took control of the Michigan state legislature for the first time in 45 years.

All of this is a tacit acknowledgment of how badly wrong Clinton’s campaign got it in 2016. She was the first Democratic presidential candidate since the late 1980s to lose the three blue wall seats. Her defeat can in part be attributed to a mix of hostility to elitism in general and the Clintons in particular, a perception compounded by controversies surrounding her speeches to Wall Street firms and other wealthy groups.

Her campaign focused on urban voters and too often neglected rural and working-class whites who felt left behind by globalisation and free trade policies that saw jobs exported. Union officials complained that Clinton’s team failed to listen to advice to talk more about protecting jobs from unfair competition by China and less about gun control.

Trump, on the other hand, tapped into rust belt grievances by promising to renegotiate trade deals, bring back manufacturing jobs and “drain the swamp” of Washington politics.

On election day, voter turnout among key demographics in the rust belt, including Black voters, was lower than expected for Clinton in contrast to real enthusiasm for Trump.

Four years later, Trump’s vote went up substantially in all three states but he lost them because voters who stayed away when Clinton was on the ticket came out for Biden. But as Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June shifted the focus on to his health and fitness for office, there was a real risk that enough voters would stay away again to deliver Trump back into the White House.

Harris has been the presumptive nominee for less than two weeks but has already gained ground against Trump in all but one of the seven swing states. One poll shows her doing better than Biden in the rust belt and as neck and neck with Trump in the three key states. Another poll puts Harris 11 points ahead in Michigan and two in Wisconsin although she trails Trump by four points in Pennsylvania.

Harris is also doing as well as Biden, if not better, among older voters and white men without a college degree, two key demographics in the rust belt states who could decide the election.

It remains to be seen how enduring the shift is once the Republicans start blasting out negative advertising accusing Harris of responsibility for the crisis on the Mexican border after Biden appointed her to look into the root causes of the flood of migrants from Central America, a key issue for many voters even in Wisconsin, 1,500 miles from the frontier.

But for now, Harris has injected new life into the campaign where it matters. The shift from a shuffling, hesitant Biden to a vigorous Harris has re-energised Democratic campaign workers who were increasingly demoralised about the prospects of defeating Trump.

The first Black, female vice-president looks more likely than Biden to draw Black voters to the polls, a key to winning Michigan in particular but also of significance in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. She is also expected to prove a more effective advocate for abortion rights than Biden, a major political issue after the supreme court struck down Roe v Wade.

Reproductive rights is the most important political issue for 15% of voters in Wisconsin, where the issue decided an election to the state supreme court last year in favour of a judge committed to upholding abortion rights. Those voters alone could decide who wins a state that Biden took by fewer than 21,000 votes, just 0.6% of the ballot, in 2020.

The Harris campaign is already blitzing the blue wall states with messaging emphasising Trump and Vance’s support for a national abortion ban.

Harris could also prove an additional advantage in Michigan, where Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza did him damage with the state’s significant number of Arab and Muslim voters. More than 100,000 people voted uncommitted in the state’s Democratic primary in February in a protest against the man widely derided as “Genocide Joe”.

Biden won Michigan in 2020 by only 154,000 votes.

Harris’s record on the Gaza war is less contentious. She has spoken in support of Israel but has been more open than Biden in her criticism of its military strategy in Gaza and condemned the deaths of “too many innocent Palestinians”.

Harris also snubbed Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last month, although she did hold a meeting with him and Biden. Afterwards Harris said she told the Israeli prime minister of her “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza”.

“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating – the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent,” she said.

Trump responded by accusing Harris of “running away from Israel”, but her statements will do her no harm among younger voters who have become alienated from the Democratic party over Biden’s position on the war.

Of all the lessons Kamala Harris’s campaign will have learned from Hillary Clinton’s botched run for president eight years ago, among the most important is that it’s better to talk about jobs than guns in the three rust belt states that hold the key to the White House.

The peculiarities of the US’s electoral college will almost certainly see November’s presidential election decided by voters in just seven states. Four – Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia – lie in the southern sun belt.

But it is the three to the north – the rust belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that Democratic strategists are focused on. They are, in many ways, the real battleground within the battleground.

Shortly before Joe Biden dropped out the presidential race two weeks ago, his campaign team wrote a memo laying out victory in the rust belt swing states as the “clearest pathway” to defeating Donald Trump.

If Harris, the presumed Democratic presidential candidate, can win the “blue wall” alongside the states that can be relied on to support her then that should deliver the 270 electoral college votes required to take the White House whatever the outcome in the sun belt. But while some of the early signs are good for Harris, the rust belt can be tricky electoral ground, as Clinton found.

Dan Kannien, the director of Harris campaign in the battleground states, claimed on Monday that they are not focusing on one region over another.

“We already have 600 staff on the ground in the blue wall and we’re adding another 150 to that region in the first two weeks of August,” he said.

“The vice-president is strong in both the blue wall and in the sun belt and we are running hard in both.”

But it’s clear that both campaigns see the rust belt as decisive.

Trump’s choice of JD Vance, the Ohio senator and author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about the struggles of the white working class, as his running mate was a move to win over a key constituency, although Vance’s failure to connect with audiences at recent rallies may be causing the former president some regret.

Harris is expected to reveal her vice-presidential running mate before a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. The location has fuelled speculation that it will be that state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, although Harris’s aides have cautioned against reading too much into the connection.

Two other state governors, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, are also reported to be serious contenders for the post. Either would probably play well in key rust belt constituencies. But the appeal of Shapiro lies in his strong approval ratings even among some Republicans and his defeat of a Trumpist rightwinger, Doug Mastriano, by a wide margin in the governor’s race two years ago.

Harris has also made Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a campaign co-chair after she ruled herself out of the vice-presidential contest. Whitmer will be a valuable asset in keeping the campaign focused on the issues that matter to midwestern voters after she defeated a Trump-backed candidate by 11 points in 2022 while Democrats took control of the Michigan state legislature for the first time in 45 years.

All of this is a tacit acknowledgment of how badly wrong Clinton’s campaign got it in 2016. She was the first Democratic presidential candidate since the late 1980s to lose the three blue wall seats. Her defeat can in part be attributed to a mix of hostility to elitism in general and the Clintons in particular, a perception compounded by controversies surrounding her speeches to Wall Street firms and other wealthy groups.

Her campaign focused on urban voters and too often neglected rural and working-class whites who felt left behind by globalisation and free trade policies that saw jobs exported. Union officials complained that Clinton’s team failed to listen to advice to talk more about protecting jobs from unfair competition by China and less about gun control.

Trump, on the other hand, tapped into rust belt grievances by promising to renegotiate trade deals, bring back manufacturing jobs and “drain the swamp” of Washington politics.

On election day, voter turnout among key demographics in the rust belt, including Black voters, was lower than expected for Clinton in contrast to real enthusiasm for Trump.

Four years later, Trump’s vote went up substantially in all three states but he lost them because voters who stayed away when Clinton was on the ticket came out for Biden. But as Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June shifted the focus on to his health and fitness for office, there was a real risk that enough voters would stay away again to deliver Trump back into the White House.

Harris has been the presumptive nominee for less than two weeks but has already gained ground against Trump in all but one of the seven swing states. One poll shows her doing better than Biden in the rust belt and as neck and neck with Trump in the three key states. Another poll puts Harris 11 points ahead in Michigan and two in Wisconsin although she trails Trump by four points in Pennsylvania.

Harris is also doing as well as Biden, if not better, among older voters and white men without a college degree, two key demographics in the rust belt states who could decide the election.

It remains to be seen how enduring the shift is once the Republicans start blasting out negative advertising accusing Harris of responsibility for the crisis on the Mexican border after Biden appointed her to look into the root causes of the flood of migrants from Central America, a key issue for many voters even in Wisconsin, 1,500 miles from the frontier.

But for now, Harris has injected new life into the campaign where it matters. The shift from a shuffling, hesitant Biden to a vigorous Harris has re-energised Democratic campaign workers who were increasingly demoralised about the prospects of defeating Trump.

The first Black, female vice-president looks more likely than Biden to draw Black voters to the polls, a key to winning Michigan in particular but also of significance in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. She is also expected to prove a more effective advocate for abortion rights than Biden, a major political issue after the supreme court struck down Roe v Wade.

Reproductive rights is the most important political issue for 15% of voters in Wisconsin, where the issue decided an election to the state supreme court last year in favour of a judge committed to upholding abortion rights. Those voters alone could decide who wins a state that Biden took by fewer than 21,000 votes, just 0.6% of the ballot, in 2020.

The Harris campaign is already blitzing the blue wall states with messaging emphasising Trump and Vance’s support for a national abortion ban.

Harris could also prove an additional advantage in Michigan, where Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza did him damage with the state’s significant number of Arab and Muslim voters. More than 100,000 people voted uncommitted in the state’s Democratic primary in February in a protest against the man widely derided as “Genocide Joe”.

Biden won Michigan in 2020 by only 154,000 votes.

Harris’s record on the Gaza war is less contentious. She has spoken in support of Israel but has been more open than Biden in her criticism of its military strategy in Gaza and condemned the deaths of “too many innocent Palestinians”.

Harris also snubbed Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last month, although she did hold a meeting with him and Biden. Afterwards Harris said she told the Israeli prime minister of her “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza”.

“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating – the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent,” she said.

Trump responded by accusing Harris of “running away from Israel”, but her statements will do her no harm among younger voters who have become alienated from the Democratic party over Biden’s position on the war.

Huge crowds have gone back on to the streets of Venezuela’s cities to continue their campaign against President Nicolás Maduro’s alleged attempt to steal last week’s election and denounce his intensifying crackdown on opposition supporters.

Maduro said 2,000 people had been arrested and would face “maximum punishment”.

Tens of thousands of dissenters packed an avenue in the heart of the capital, Caracas, to hear María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who claims her candidate for the presidency, Edmundo González, was the true winner of the 28 July vote.

“Today is a very important day. After six days of brutal repression they thought they would silence us, frighten us and paralyse us … [But] we are going to go all the way,” Machado told a sea of supporters, many of them waving Venezuela’s tricolour flag or holding placards denouncing Maduro’s authoritarian regime.

“We are not afraid!” the crowd chanted back.

González’s claim to victory has been recognised by countries including the US, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru. Meanwhile the leftwing governments of Brazil and Colombia have yet to accept Maduro’s win despite their historical ties to the political movement he inherited after Hugo Chávez’s 2013 death. China and Russia have backed Maduro.

On Saturday lunchtime, caraqueños of all ages and from all walks of life hit the streets to demand an end to Maduro’s 11-year presidency, during which the oil-rich South American country has become increasingly authoritarian and slipped into a devastating economic and humanitarian crisis that forced millions to flee abroad.

They did so despite a crackdown by security forces in which hundreds of people have been arrested on terrorism charges and at least 11 killed.

“This morning I woke up to the news that they had taken my best friend because they went out to buy ice,” said one 28-year-old protester who asked not to be named for fear of suffering the same fate.

“Before I came out today my daughter threw herself on top of me and made me promise that I would come home,” added the woman, as thousands of people marched through the Las Mercedes district to see Machado speak.

Many protesters fretted about a round-up of targets being carried out by a widely feared counterintelligence unit that has been baptised Operation Tun Tun (Knock-Knock).

“It’s like a horror movie. It’s a nightmare,” said Andreina Canelón, a 24-year-old who was at Saturday’s march.

One demonstrator held a poster reading: “They are killing us.”

Canelón’s sister, Angélica, said opposition supporters would not be cowed. “The people are done – they are done with their bullshit – and they are ready to go until the very end,” the 28-year-old graduate vowed as Machado addressed the throng from the bonnet of a sound truck.

Maduro has called his opponents “terrorists” and “traitors” claiming they are part of a criminal far-right conspiracy against his supposedly leftist rule.

Angélica rejected that portrayal of the situation in Venezuela. “This is not about left and right. No. This is about a country and its right to be free. Nothing more,” she said.

For Tahyde Colmenares, who was also at the protest, the election was about seeing her family again. “All of my children and my grandchildren are out of the country,” the 78-year-old said, weeping as she described how they had fled Venezuela’s economic meltdown for the US and Brazil.

“I don’t know if they will come back to live here [if Maduro leaves power] but at least they will visit,” she said, claiming her tears were tears of joy prompted by the hope Machado’s campaign had instilled in her. “She represents freedom, progress and the happiness of so many Venezuelan men and women being able to come home.”

Maduro, who has refused to release proof of his supposed victory, organised his own protest on Saturday afternoon in an attempt to project strength, calling it “the mother of all marches”.

“There was no fraud. It’s a farce,” said one pro-Maduro marcher, 57-year-old Reinaldo Guevara, who manages a government-owned concrete plant.

Also among the thousands of government supporters was Albelys Gómez, 57, who said the opposition would have to accept Maduro’s win.

Addressing supporters at the presidential palace, Maduro said his forces had captured 2,000 people who would be sent to high-security jails and subjected to “maximum punishment”.

But as he spoke, Maduro faced fresh calls to release the vote tallies from the electronic voting machines used in the election, this time from Argentina’s former leftwing president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“I am asking – not just for the sake of the people of Venezuela, or the opposition, or democracy – but for the very legacy of Hugo Chávez – that the tallies be published,” Fernández de Kirchner said at an event in Mexico.

In the week since the election, Maduro has struck a defiant tone and offered no hint that he is prepared to step down leaving observers fearful that the standoff could lead to violence in the coming weeks. Opposition leaders have called on the military to abandon Maduro but so far there has been no hint of that happening or of any other challenge to the president emerging from within his administration.

“It’s been 25 years since Chávez was first elected [and] there’s now such a network of interests built around Chavismo’s control of the state, and effectively criminal activity, that people just aren’t prepared to walk away from power,” said Tom Shannon, a veteran US diplomat who has been involved in Venezuela since the 1990s and knows many of the movement’s key players.

“And it appears that they’re prepared to endure significant international pressure and isolation in order to protect themselves and what they consider to be their economic interests,” Shannon added, warning: “We’re in a tricky moment … there’s going to be significant repression, I think.”

A fifth of medicines in Africa could be substandard or fake, according to a major research project, raising the alarm over a problem that could be contributing to the deaths of countless patients.

Researchers from Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia analysed 27 studies in the review and found, of the 7,508 medicine samples included, 1,639 failed at least one quality test and were confirmed to be substandard or falsified.

Claudia Martínez, the head of research at the Access to Medicine Foundation, an Amsterdam-based non-profit group, described the finding as a major public health concern.

“If patients are getting medicines that are substandard or outright fake, it can result in their treatment failing or even preventable deaths,” she said.

Estimates published last year by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime put the human cost of falsified and substandard medicines at up to 500,000 deaths a year in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Substandard medicines” refer to those that are authorised but do not meet quality standards, whereas “falsified medicines” are those that deliberately misrepresent their identity, composition or source.

A World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson said antibiotics and antimalarial products were the most falsified medicines in Africa.

Substandard or falsified antibiotics can contain incorrect dosages or the wrong active ingredients, leading to ineffective treatments and survival of resistant strains. The WHO said such products were likely to be fuelling an increase in antimicrobial resistance.

Malawi was found to have the highest proportion of substandard and falsified medicines, according to the study.

Martínez said several factors contributed to the problem, which left patients without access to essential medicines.

She said: “Pharma supply chains in many low- and middle-income countries are often complex, inefficient and fragmented; the region relies heavily on a limited number of suppliers for essential medicines, and many countries face significant challenges in procuring products in time and effectively policing the quality of products in the market.”

Martínez said the role of multiple middlemen in the distribution of products on the continent made it easier for substandard or falsified medicines to infiltrate the supply chain.

A previous study by the WHO found that an estimated one in 10 medical products in developing countries were substandard or falsified, with 42% of reports of substandard and falsified medicines coming from Africa, 21% from the Americas and 21% from Europe.

Sean Cavany, a mathematical modeller at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, cautioned against generalising findings from the new research.

Cavany said: “There is a potential for bias in these types of reviews, for instance surveys which didn’t find any substandard and falsified medicines may not get published, and some of the surveys are not random, so it may be that they have specifically selected samples for this.

“Also, substandard medicines and falsified medicines will differ greatly over time between countries and between medicines, so producing an average across all of these different factors has the potential to be misleading.”

Cavany said while previous studies showed substandard and falsified medicines were highest in Africa, the paucity of studies outside Africa and Asia made it difficult to generalise the findings.

Martínez said immediate action was needed to address the problem by governments, national authorities, regulators and pharmaceutical companies manufacturing and selling the products.

“We need to strengthen supply chains across the continent by enhancing infrastructure, improving logistics and implementing better surveillance-monitoring systems.

“But there is also a lot that pharma companies can do by reporting any cases of substandard or falsified medical products to national health authorities and the WHO rapid alert system promptly and contributing to capacity building.”

A WHO spokesperson said: “Recent incidents of contaminated oral liquid medicines have demonstrated that we need a concerted multi-stakeholder approach to prevent, detect and respond to substandard and falsified products.

“Increasing the public awareness of the scope, scale and potential harm that these products cause is a key activity in this.”

Greek farmers have denied that production of feta cheese is likely to be hit hard by the outbreak of a deadly virus among goats and sheep that has led to the culling of thousands of animals.

Livestock industry officials sought to dispel fears that the cheese, a mainstay of the Mediterranean diet, could be imperilled because of the rate at which the highly infectious disease has spread.

“Around 9,000 animals have had to be killed because of the outbreak but it won’t endanger feta exports,” said Christos Tsopanos, a senior figure at the Association of Greek Livestock (SEK). “Our country has 14 million goats and sheep, more than any other [EU] state.”

He said 120,000 tonnes of the soft, crumbly cheese would be rolled out this year. “We have enough milk. Authorities have moved fast to deal with this situation.”

Known as the “sheep and goat plague” or peste des petits ruminants (PPR), the virus can kill between 80% and 100% of infected animals. It was first confirmed in Greece on 11 July.

EU regulations state that if a PPR case is detected in any herd the entire flock must be culled. Affected areas, including farmsteads, have to be disinfected.

Greece’s ministry of rural development and food has stepped up measures to tackle the disease, imposing nationwide restrictions on the movement of goats and sheep. More than 200,000 animals have been tested for the infection, mostly in the central Thessaly region, where the outbreak was first reported. The province was only just beginning to recover from a deadly storm that caused severe flooding and widespread damage to livestock farming last September.

Greece’s minister of agriculture and rural development, Kostas Tsiaras, has also banned the commercial slaughter of goats and sheep, raising fears of meat shortages if it lasts for long.

“Tightening security measures across the country is deemed necessary for preventive reasons and is aimed at limiting the spread and eradicating the disease,” the ministry said in a statement.

Greek officials have emphasised that the virus does not affect humans. “Consumers must understand that only animals are affected by this disease,” said SEK’s vice-president, Dimitris Moskos. “This is the first time it has appeared in Greece and we now believe it was imported from Romania in herds destined for slaughter.”

The virus was first recorded in 1942 in Ivory Coast, one of the most populous countries in west Africa, before spreading around the world. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates the disease accounts for losses worth up to $2.1bn (about £1.6bn) every year.