Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israeli air raids targeting Hezbollah rockets in southern Lebanon in the early hours of Sunday morning were “not the end of the story”, after the two sides exchanged their heaviest fire since the war in Gaza began, raising fears of an all-out regional conflict.

The Israeli prime minister did not specify what further action, if any, was planned after the intense exchanges but he suggested Israel’s moves would be aimed at “changing the situation in the north”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used 100 jet fighters that hit more than 40 target sites inside Lebanon in sorties over a period of seven hours. Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel.

According to Netanyahu, the raids “destroyed thousands of short-range rockets, all of which were designed to attack our citizens and our forces in the Galilee” in northern Israel.

He also said the IDF had “intercepted all of the drones that Hezbollah launched at a strategic target in the centre of the country”.

Netanyahu did not name the target but the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, described it as “a military intelligence base 110km inside Israeli territory” just outside Tel Aviv, an apparent reference to the Glilot military base, home to the Mossad spy agency and military intelligence agencies such as the Unit 8200 electronic surveillance section.

Two Hezbollah fighters and a militant from an allied group were killed in the strikes on Lebanon. An Israeli navy officer was killed and two other service members injured on a patrol boat off the coast of northern Israel that was hit by shrapnel from an Iron Dome interceptor missile.

On Sunday evening the armed wing of Hamas said that it had fired an “M90” rocket at Tel Aviv in response to what it said was the “Israeli massacres against civilians”.

The IDF said sirens sounded in Rishon LeTsiyon, about 15 miles south of Tel Aviv, but the rocket landed “in an open area”.

A Hamas official also said on Sunday evening that it rejected new Israeli conditions put forward in Gaza ceasefire talks, casting further doubt on the chances of a breakthrough in the latest US-backed effort. “We will not accept discussions about retractions from what we agreed to on July 2 or new conditions,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told the group’s Al-Aqsa TV on Sunday.

In a speech earlier on Sunday, Nasrallah downplayed the impact of Israeli airstrikes and portrayed Hezbollah’s aerial attack, intended to avenge the killing of a senior commander last month, as a success.

Nasrallah said that Hezbollah had used its Katyusha rockets (320 of them according to its official statements) to distract Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system from a mass drone attacks. He added that all the drones involved had been successfully launched and had entered Israeli airspace, but did not say how many, if any, had reached their intended target.

The Hezbollah secretary general claimed the Lebanese Shia militia had decided not to respond to the killing in late July of its commander, Fuad Shukr, with attacks on Israeli civilians or infrastructure but to focus on exclusively military targets.

He added that Hezbollah’s arsenal of guided missiles had not been used and had not been damaged by Israeli airstrikes, so could be used in the future. The impact of Sunday’s salvo would be assessed before a decision on whether to take further action to avenge Shukr.

“If results are not seen to be enough, we will respond another time,” Nasrallah said in a televised address.

While Netanyahu and Nasrallah left open the possibility of further exchanges across the Israeli-Lebanese boundary, Reuters quoted two unnamed diplomats as saying that both sides had been in contact to confirm that each considered the exchange “done” and that neither wanted a full-scale war. Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, also stressed his country did not want an all-out conflict, though it would “act according to developments on the ground”.

However, Netanyahu’s government is under persistent political pressure to create conditions in northern Israel for 80,000 displaced residents to return to their homes. They had been driven out by Hezbollah rocket and artillery fire in solidarity with Hamas, after the Palestinian militant group launched its surprise attack on Israel on 7 October last year.

“Nasrallah in Beirut and [Iranian supreme leader] Khamenei in Tehran need to know that this is an additional step in changing the situation in the north, and returning our residents securely to their homes,” Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday. “And I reiterate – this is not the end of the story.”

Military observers in Israel believe that some IDF generals and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are in favour of further sorties against Hezbollah military positions following Sunday’s apparent success.

Gallant told IDF officers that Hezbollah had been thrown off balance by pre-emptive Israeli action minutes before the Lebanese militia was due to launch its rocket and drone attack.

“We have destabilized Hezbollah, and their operation failed,” he said, according to Haaretz newspaper. “Thousands of rockets were destroyed, precision missiles were also hit at several points, dozens of drones were taken out, and overall, a very successful result.”

“The enemy planned to launch many hundreds of rockets at the northern communities. The pre-emptive action meant that over fifty per cent, maybe two-thirds of them, were not launched,” Gallant said. He argued that Israel was at a “strategic crossroads” between possible negotiated solutions to the conflict in Gaza and the confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“We need to use the negotiations to bring about the release of hostages, and through the release of the hostages, also open the possibility of creating a resolution in the north, and later, to calm the region,” the defence minister said.

Meanwhile, Israel was “operating militarily and preparing as if we will not reach a resolution, and we are ready at any moment for war in the north, whatever may come”, Gallant said. “However, this is not our preferred path, and we are still giving a chance to the possibility of resolving this through an agreement.”

Israel’s allies have expressed support against the threat from Hezbollah while urging restraint to avoid a regional war.

Sean Savett, a spokesperson for the US national security council, said: “President Biden is closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon. He has been engaged with his national security team throughout the evening. At his direction, senior US officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts.

“We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will keep working for regional stability,” Savett added.

The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Charles Brown, arrived in Israel on Sunday for talks with military officials as part of a tour of Middle East capitals, planned before Sunday’s hostilities. The French press agency AFP quoted an unnamed US military official as saying that Washington had helped track incoming Hezbollah attacks but “was not involved in Israel’s pre-emptive strikes”.

Gallant’s office reported that the minister had talked by phone to the UK defence secretary, John Healey, to brief him on the pre-emptive airstrikes and the thwarted Hezbollah attack.

“Minister Gallant discussed the important cooperation with Britain in ensuring Israel’s security,” the ministry statement said. He also discussed the UK’s important role in maintaining regional stability, and in this regard emphasised the importance of preventing regional escalation.”

Israel has carried out airstrikes in Lebanon in what it described as a pre-emptive action before a planned large-scale Hezbollah attack, and Hezbollah launched a drone and rocket salvo against northern Israel, in a significant escalation of a simmering cross-border conflict.

Two Hezbollah fighters and a militant from an allied group were killed in the strikes on Lebanon. An Israeli navy officer was killed and two other service members injured on a patrol boat off the coast of northern Israel that was hit by shrapnel from an Iron Dome interceptor missile, Israeli media reported.

The Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia group said it had used drones and more than 320 rockets against 11 Israeli military sites as a “first phase” of its response to the death of one of its top commanders, Fuad Shukr, in an Israeli airstrike last month. It did not say when a second phase may come.

Hezbollah said it had completed its operations, which it claimed were successful, and was unaffected by the Israeli airstrikes, but a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Nadav Shoshani, said the Hezbollah rocket and drone assault had been “part of a larger attack that was planned and we were able to thwart a big part of it this morning”.

Shoshani said 100 Israeli fighter jets took part in the pre-dawn strikes, which had destroyed Hezbollah missile launch tubes, some of which had been aimed towards central Israel.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, insisted his country did not want a full-scale war but said it would “act according to developments on the ground”. Any Hezbollah missile attack on Israeli cities would be likely to trigger a massive Israeli response that would bring the prospect of an all-out war much closer.

Even without such a missile attack, Sunday’s hostilities between the IDF and Hezbollah were the most substantial since last October, when Hezbollah fired on northern Israeli settlements in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. More than 80,000 Israelis were evacuated from the border area and the two sides have exchanged almost daily fire in recent weeks.

Israel said it still expected an “extensive” Hezbollah response and declared a 48-hour state of emergency, giving the military special powers. Sirens sounded in towns across northern Israel, Tel Aviv airport was closed for a few hours and incoming flights were diverted.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran should know that the response was “another step towards changing the situation in the north and returning our residents safely to their homes” and that “this is not the end of the story”.

The White House said the US president, Joe Biden, was monitoring events, adding that Israel had the right to self-defence but that the US would “keep working for regional stability”.

The airstrikes and Hezbollah rocket and drone salvo have come at a time when the US and its regional allies are holding talks with Israel and Hamas aimed at agreeing a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Biden administration hopes that a hostage-for-ceasefire deal in Gaza would calm regional tensions and make the conflict less likely to spread. The persistent failure to reach a Gaza deal, however, makes a regional war more likely as the Palestinian death toll climbs. It is already estimated at more than 40,000, while violence is spreading across the West Bank, driven by militant Israeli settlers seeking to seize Palestinian land.

Sean Savett, a spokesperson for the US national security council, said in a written statement: “President Biden is closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon. He has been engaged with his national security team throughout the evening. At his direction, senior US officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts.

“We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will keep working for regional stability,” Savett added.

The Israeli news outlet Ynet cited reports from Lebanon saying the air force struck 40 targets.

“Most of the strikes were in the valleys [away from populated areas], and besides the Syrian, we have no injuries,” a source within a first responder organisation which serves south Lebanon, told the Guardian. Hezbollah fighters are known to use the heavily forested areas of south Lebanon for cover as they carry out attacks against Israel.

Netanyahu and the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, were in an underground IDF situation room in the early hours of Sunday to oversee the airstrikes, and the country’s security cabinet was due to meet at 7am, as Israel braced for the possibility of more cross-border fire.

“Hezbollah will soon fire rockets, and possibly missiles and UAVs [drones], towards Israeli territory,” the IDF spokesperson, Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, said.“From right next to the homes of Lebanese civilians in the south of Lebanon, we can see that Hezbollah is preparing to launch an extensive attack on Israel, while endangering Lebanese civilians.

“Hezbollah’s ongoing aggression risks dragging the people of Lebanon, the people of Israel, and the whole region, into a wider escalation,” Hagari said.

Gallant talked to his US counterpart, the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, to update him on the unfolding situation. ​​“Minister Gallant and Secretary Austin discussed the importance of avoiding regional escalation,” the Israeli defence ministry said in a statement.

The statement added that Gallant had “emphasised that Israel’s defence establishment is determined to defend the citizens of Israel and will use all the means at its disposal to remove imminent threats”.

A Pentagon account of the call said Austin had “reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s defence against any attacks by Iran and its regional partners and proxies”.

If Israel and Hezbollah wanted an all-out war it would have happened a long time ago. Each side would welcome the destruction of the other, but the time has not been right so far for either of them to plunge into a full-scale conflict.

The intense exchange of hostilities across the Israel-Lebanese border on Sunday morning once more took the parties to brink of such a war, but once again they paused and pulled back.

In terms of munitions expended, it was the biggest engagement for many months. Israel put 100 jet fighters in the air, which conducted sorties over seven hours and struck more than 40 sites with missiles, but killed only three people , according to the count as of Sunday evening.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were clearly taking far more care over civilian casualties in Lebanon than they have in Gaza. While Israel insists it will fight until Hamas is completely obliterated, its foreign minister, Israel Katz, stressed on Sunday his government had no interest in such an existential fight with Hezbollah.

According to its own version of events, Hezbollah launched 320 rockets and a large number of drones on Sunday morning, but caused only a small handful of injuries. The only Israeli fatality was caused by debris from an interceptor missile. The Lebanese Shia militia claimed nonetheless to have achieved its aims, to avenge a commander killed by Israel last month. Its spokesperson stretched credulity by claiming its plans had not been affected in any way by the earlier Israeli airstrikes, but the aim of the message was clear, to draw a line under the day’s hostilities and reduce pressure on Hezbollah to keep the battle going.

Both sides have compelling reasons not to go to war now. Israel does not have the stamina for another front while it has not yet managed to eliminate Hamas completely in Gaza and with the West Bank being driven to the brink of a wider explosion of violence by hardline settlers and their backers inside the Israeli state.

IDF commanders are also aware that a war with Hezbollah could not be won without a ground invasion, which would have a heavy cost in Israeli lives. Despite recent upgrades, Israeli tanks are still considered highly vulnerable to ambush.

Benjamin Netanyahu has good reason to keep Israel in a state of conflict, as it helps fend off a reckoning with the electorate and the courts, where he faces corruption charges. The prime minister and his security cabinet may be weighing further sorties after Sunday’s apparent success, but that is a long way from sending young foot soldiers over the border or provoking Hezbollah missile attacks on Tel Aviv or other cities.

For its part, Hezbollah’s leadership has assets to protect in Lebanon, political and economic, that would be devastated in a war with Israel. The group’s regional patron, Iran, is clearly not ready for a conflict either and has deferred for now its own threatened response to Israel’s killing of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month.

Hezbollah and Iran do not share the apocalyptic self-destructive impulses of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commander in Gaza, who launched his surprise 7 October attack on Israel based on the mistaken assumption his allies in Beirut and Tehran would join the battle.

Just because neither Israel nor Hezbollah wants all-out war now, does not mean it is not going to happen, however. Both sides are using very crude tools – high explosives mainly – to send each other messages, and the room for miscalculation is always high.

The IDF was reportedly on the brink of going to war in Lebanon immediately after 7 October, on the strength of faulty intelligence suggesting that Hezbollah was involved in the attack and its fighters were about to pour over the northern border.

The potential for unintended consequences was also high on Sunday. If the IDF account of events was accurate, its warplanes blew up dozens of launch sites and thwarted planned Hezbollah strikes against strategic targets in central Israel. If one of those strikes had caused substantial casualties, the political pressure on the Netanyahu government to clear Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon could easily have become irresistible.

The room for error is likely to be greatest when each of the parties try to guess the other’s internal political dynamics. For example, when Israel killed the Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr in an airstrike on south Beirut last month, there was no way of knowing how many rockets or missiles Hezbollah would deem sufficient to avenge him, or where they should be aimed. If Netanyahu extends the bombing campaign, he runs the risk of triggering Iranian involvement in support of its proxy.

Similarly, while driving more than 80,000 Israelis from their homes with its cross-border bombardment, Hezbollah could not possibly gauge the political pressure it would put on the Netanyahu coalition to take over southern Lebanon so that the displaced residents could return.

In the midst of this mutual recklessness, the US is desperately trying to mitigate the risk. The Biden administration’s principal aim since 7 October – and principal achievement, US officials argue – has been to prevent the Gaza war becoming a regional conflagration.

Washington has urged restraint on its friends, while moving its forces into the region to deter its enemies. The central strategy – or the essential hope at least – is that a hostages-for-peace agreement in Gaza would also defuse the worsening confrontation on Israel’s northern border.

Talks continue this week and American briefers still insist, despite evidence to the contrary from recent experience, that a deal is within reach. But there are serious doubts over whether Netanyahu or Sinwar really want an end to the fighting. War can break out without both sides wanting it, but the same cannot be said about peace.

• Hezbollah has said it hit 11 Israeli military sites, fired more than 320 rockets and sent drones flying into northern Israel on Sunday as part of the “first phase” of its response to Israel’s killing of the movement’s top commander in a strike on Beirut last month. The Iran-backed group had vowed a significant response to the targeted killing of Fuad Shukr, raising fears that months of tit-for-tat strikes could escalate into an all-out war.

• Early on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had launched strikes inside Lebanon after assessing that Hezbollah was preparing to fire rockets and missiles towards Israel. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the top Israeli military spokesperson, said 100 warplanes struck more than 40 Hezbollah launch areas, eliminating thousands of rocket launcher barrels aimed for immediate fire towards Israel.

• A person was killed in an Israeli drone strike on a car in the town of Khiam in south Lebanon on Sunday morning, while at least four others were reported as injured in separate strikes, a medical source told the Guardian.

• Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, declared a state of emergency for the next 48 hours, a declaration which gives the IDF powers to issue restrictions on civilian movement. The Israeli security met at 7am local time with the full cabinet due to meet on Sunday afternoon.

• The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel would take all measures necessary to defend itself and that it would harm “whoever harms us”. He said Israel’s strikes on Sunday are “not the end of the story” in its military campaign against Hezbollah. Foreign minister Israel Katz has said Israel will respond to developments on the ground but does not seek a full-scale war.

• Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels praised attacks by Hezbollah on Israel and renewed threats to launch their own assault in response to Israeli strikes on a port in Yemen last month.

• Gallant spoke to his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, about the airstrikes on Lebanon, assuring the defence secretary they were defensive in nature.

• US National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said “President Biden is closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon.” “At his direction, senior US officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts,” Savett said. “We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will keep working for regional stability.”

• Hezbollah said it targeted an identified “special military target” as well as Israel’s Iron Dome platforms and other sites but that the full response would take “some time”, Reuters reported. Hezbollah said its attack involved more than 320 Katyusha rockets aimed at multiple sites in Israel and a “large number” of drones.

• It later announced the military operation was “completed” for the day. The Lebanese group denied that Israel’s pre-emptive strikes, launched just before its own attack, affected its own operation. “The enemy’s claims about the pre-emptive action it carried out, the targets it struck and its disruption of the resistance’s [Hezbollah’s] attack, are empty,” Hezbollah’s statement read. It added that all drones were launched as scheduled “towards the desired targets”.

• Flights to and from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv were temporarily suspended, and Israel’s cabinet was to meet at 7am (4am GMT), Israeli media reported. Air raid sirens were reported throughout northern Israel. Jordan’s flag carrier Royal Jordanian suspended flights to Beirut on Sunday “due to the current situation”, the state news agency reported, without clarifying the exact timeframe for the suspension. Air France cancelled its flights to Tel Aviv and Beirut until Monday at least.

• The attacks came as Egypt hosts a new round of talks aimed at ending Israel’s war with Hamas, now in its 11th month. Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, warned America’s top general, CQ Brown, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of the dangers of a major conflict in Lebanon.

• At least 40,405 Palestinian people have been killed and 93,468 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday. In the last 24-hours alone, 71 Palestinians were killed and 112 were injured in what the enclave’s health ministry called three “massacres” by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

A British man working for the Reuters news agency has been killed in a strike on a hotel in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, the news agency has said.

Ryan Evans, who was working as a safety adviser for the agency, was killed after a missile struck the Hotel Sapphire on Saturday where he was staying as part of a six-person team.

Two of the agency’s journalists were being treated in hospital; one of them was seriously injured, it said.

“We are urgently seeking more information about the attack, including by working with the authorities in Kramatorsk, and we are supporting our colleagues and their families,” Reuters said.

Evans, a former British soldier, had been working with Reuters since 2022 and advised its journalists on safety around the world including in Ukraine, Israel and at the Paris Olympics. He was 38.

“We send our deepest condolences and thoughts to Ryan’s family and loved ones. Ryan has helped so many of our journalists cover events around the world; we will miss him terribly,” Reuters said.

The three other members of the Reuters team who were in the hotel at the time of the strike were accounted for and safe, the agency said.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the hotel was hit by a Russian Iskander missile, a ballistic missile that can strike at distances up to 500 km (310 miles).

“An ordinary city hotel was destroyed by the Russian Iskander,” he said in his evening address on Sunday, adding the strike was “absolutely purposeful, thought out … my condolences to family and friends.”

Russia has been bombing hotels in frontline areas for more than a year. A double-tap missile strike on the Druzhba hotel in Pokrovsk, also in the Donetsk region, killed seven people last August. Eleven were injured in a bombing of a hotel in Kharkiv in January.

In the Sumy region, four civilians were reported to have been killed and 13 injured, local police said, on a day in which Russian attacks targeted 50 different sites. The Sumy region borders Russia’s Kursk province, where this month Ukrainian forces launched a surprise cross-border incursion, gaining more than 480 sq miles (1,250 sq km) of territory.

Fighting is still said to be taking place around Korenevo, 15 miles inside the Russian border. Progress north and east of Sudzha, the principal settlement taken by Ukraine, has also been limited in the past week.

On Sunday night, however, Zelenskiy said Kyiv’s forces had advanced up to 3km (1.86 miles) in the Kursk region, taking control of two more settlements there.

Russian officials said five people were killed by Ukrainian shelling in Rakitnoye in the Belgorod region, to the south of Kursk and to the east of the incursion area. The Russian regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said 13 more were injured.

Ukraine and Russia agreed to swap 115 prisoners of war on Saturday after Kyiv had seized hundreds during the Kursk incursion. However, Zelenskiy was criticised by Denys Prokopenko, the commander of the Azov brigade, for not negotiating the return of the estimated 900 fighters from the unit still held by Russia. “Precious opportunity and time have been lost,” he said.

Zelenskiy, speaking at a joint news conference with the leaders of Poland and Lithuania, said the cross-border incursion had in part been a preventive move to stop Russia taking the city of Sumy. Other objectives included capturing Russian prisoners of war, creating a buffer zone, and some that he could not disclose publicly.

The Ukrainian president also promoted his top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, from the rank of colonel general to full general, in a reward for the success of the incursion, whose careful planning had the hallmarks of the chief of staff.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin held a meeting with the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov. The Kremlin said they discussed “countering enemy forces invading the Kursk region and measures being taken to destroy them”.

The bellicose language was more marked than recent Russian statements, which have generally downplayed the significance of the incursion, describing the response as counter-terrorist.

• Ukraine on Sunday called on Belarus to pull back what it described as significant levels of Belarusian forces and equipment deployed at their common border. The Ukrainian foreign ministry warned Belarus against making “tragic mistakes” while under pressure from Moscow. The ministry said Belarus special forces and former Wagner mercenary fighters were among the troops at the border. The statement said their equipment included tanks, artillery, air defence systems and engineering equipment and that Ukraine “has never taken and is not going to take any unfriendly actions against the Belarusian people”. In 2022, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko allowed Russian troops to station in Belarus during what Russia and Belarus called “drills” before they launched their invasion of Ukraine in February of that year.

• A British man working for the Reuters news agency has been killed in a strike on a hotel in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, the news agency has said. Ryan Evans, who was working as a safety adviser for the agency, was killed after a missile struck the Hotel Sapphire on Saturday where he was staying as part of a six-person team. Two of the agency’s journalists were being treated in hospital; one of them was seriously injured, it said. Evans, a former British soldier, had been working with Reuters since 2022 and advised its journalists on safety around the world including in Ukraine, Israel and at the Paris Olympics.

• Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the hotel was hit by a Russian Iskander missile, a ballistic missile that can strike at distances up to 500 km (310 miles). “An ordinary city hotel was destroyed by the Russian Iskander,” he said in his evening address on Sunday, adding the strike was “absolutely purposeful, thought out … my condolences to family and friends.” Russia has been bombing hotels in frontline areas for more than a year.

• Ukraine’s forces advanced up to three kilometres in Russia’s Kursk region, taking control of two more settlements there, Zelenskiy also said in his evening address.

• Russia launched attacks on northern, eastern and southern Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least four people and injuring 37, Ukrainian military and local authorities said. Overnight attacks targeted Ukraine’s frontline regions of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk, Ukraine’s air force said on the Telegram messaging app. “Most of the missiles did not reach their targets,” the air force said.

• Former US president Donald Trump signalled his support for Ukraine in a conversation with Zelenskiy and said he wants to stop the war with Russia, the Ukrainian president told Indian reporters in an interview posted on his social media channel on Sunday.

Ursula von der Leyen is set to miss her target of a gender-balanced top team at the European Commission, after EU governments snubbed her request to propose male and female candidates.

The first female president of the EU executive, who was re-elected for a historic second term last month, is drawing up her team of commissioners. Akin to government ministers, these are senior EU officials who oversee the bloc’s climate, technology and industrial policies, negotiate trade deals, police European law, dole out billions of grants and draw up the budget for the union.

After her re-election, von der Leyen said she was aiming for “an equal share of men and women” at the top table. But her goal is in jeopardy after member states ignored her request to propose two candidates, a man and a woman.

Before a 30 August deadline to submit names to Brussels, 14 men and five women have been proposed as candidates, according to analysis of government announcements and local media reports. Of the seven countries yet to finalise the nomination, two (Lithuania and Romania) are expected to rubber-stamp nominations of male candidates soon, while another two (Belgium, Denmark) are widely expected to propose a male candidate. Men have frontrunner status in two other countries yet to nominate (Italy and Portugal), while women are the favourites in Bulgaria.

In the worst-case scenarios, the next commission – expected to take office in December – could have only 22% or 26% women (including von der Leyen herself), a worse gender balance than the previous commission when it took office in 2019 with 44% female representation.

The chair of the European parliament’s gender equality committee, Lina Gálvez, urged von der Leyen to insist that EU governments offer her female candidates. “We never achieve anything without moving boundaries, without making pressure,” she told the Guardian. “Especially now, when anti-gender movements are the core of fascist, anti-democratic movements … we cannot show that our commitment to gender equality is weak.”

Complicating von der Leyen’s task is an exemption from providing female candidates for governments renominating their serving commissioner. Most returnees are men, such as Thierry Breton of France, who recently sparred with the tech mogul Elon Musk, and Maroš Šefčovič, a commission vice-president with a sprawling portfolio including EU-UK relations. Latvia’s Valdis Dombrovskis, the Netherlands’ Wopke Hoekstra and Hungary’s Oliver Várhelyi have also been tapped to return to Brussels. Dubravka Šuica, a Croatian former mayor in charge of demography policy, is the only woman nominated to return.

This exemption has stoked resentment. “Why should we have a woman again when [our] ideal candidate is a man and Slovakia can nominate Šefčovič for a fifth time,” said one EU diplomat with mild exaggeration for comic effect. Slovakia, which has never had a female commissioner, has renominated Šefčovič for a fourth term.

Several EU leaders have said they have no intention of nominating a woman, as there is no legal requirement to do so. “Respectfully and in accordance with the treaties we have taken the decision to send one name,” Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, said in June, as he confirmed his intention to propose finance minister Michael McGrath.

The request for two candidates was not welcomed by many EU capitals, as the prized job of EU commissioner is also part of complex negotiations between governing parties and/or prime ministers and presidents. Lithuania’s prime minister, Ingrida Šimonytė, this week described her country’s process as “baroquely complex”, as her government announced its intention to send to Brussels one of her predecessors, Andrius Kubilius, following a bruising tug of war over the job.

Governments that spurned von der Leyen’s call for gender balance could see their candidates assigned weaker portfolios, rather than the “big economic job” many governments are angling for. In previous years, governments that disappointed the commission had their candidates put in charge of multilingualism, or education and culture.

“Every commissioner wants resources, money [to spend on policies], power, competence and it’s not possible for all of them,” said Sophia Russack at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “There are not 27 or 26 important portfolios,” Russack added, suggesting this could be a form of leverage –“‘either you send me a woman or you get one of those portfolios that nobody wants’.”

A male-dominated top team would be an embarrassing setback for the EU’s gender-equality strategy, which in 2020 called for “gender balance of 50% at all levels of [Commission] management by the end of 2024”.

Insiders suggest that a less gender-balanced commission increases the chances of commissioner candidates being rejected by the European parliament. All nominees must appear before MEP committees, before the assembly votes on whether to approve the entire commission. “One or another will be targeted on their suitability and the fact that their government didn’t bother to propose a woman,” a second EU diplomat said.

A European Commission spokesperson declined to comment on the candidates and gender balance.

Ursula von der Leyen is set to miss her target of a gender-balanced top team at the European Commission, after EU governments snubbed her request to propose male and female candidates.

The first female president of the EU executive, who was re-elected for a historic second term last month, is drawing up her team of commissioners. Akin to government ministers, these are senior EU officials who oversee the bloc’s climate, technology and industrial policies, negotiate trade deals, police European law, dole out billions of grants and draw up the budget for the union.

After her re-election, von der Leyen said she was aiming for “an equal share of men and women” at the top table. But her goal is in jeopardy after member states ignored her request to propose two candidates, a man and a woman.

Before a 30 August deadline to submit names to Brussels, 14 men and five women have been proposed as candidates, according to analysis of government announcements and local media reports. Of the seven countries yet to finalise the nomination, two (Lithuania and Romania) are expected to rubber-stamp nominations of male candidates soon, while another two (Belgium, Denmark) are widely expected to propose a male candidate. Men have frontrunner status in two other countries yet to nominate (Italy and Portugal), while women are the favourites in Bulgaria.

In the worst-case scenarios, the next commission – expected to take office in December – could have only 22% or 26% women (including von der Leyen herself), a worse gender balance than the previous commission when it took office in 2019 with 44% female representation.

The chair of the European parliament’s gender equality committee, Lina Gálvez, urged von der Leyen to insist that EU governments offer her female candidates. “We never achieve anything without moving boundaries, without making pressure,” she told the Guardian. “Especially now, when anti-gender movements are the core of fascist, anti-democratic movements … we cannot show that our commitment to gender equality is weak.”

Complicating von der Leyen’s task is an exemption from providing female candidates for governments renominating their serving commissioner. Most returnees are men, such as Thierry Breton of France, who recently sparred with the tech mogul Elon Musk, and Maroš Šefčovič, a commission vice-president with a sprawling portfolio including EU-UK relations. Latvia’s Valdis Dombrovskis, the Netherlands’ Wopke Hoekstra and Hungary’s Oliver Várhelyi have also been tapped to return to Brussels. Dubravka Šuica, a Croatian former mayor in charge of demography policy, is the only woman nominated to return.

This exemption has stoked resentment. “Why should we have a woman again when [our] ideal candidate is a man and Slovakia can nominate Šefčovič for a fifth time,” said one EU diplomat with mild exaggeration for comic effect. Slovakia, which has never had a female commissioner, has renominated Šefčovič for a fourth term.

Several EU leaders have said they have no intention of nominating a woman, as there is no legal requirement to do so. “Respectfully and in accordance with the treaties we have taken the decision to send one name,” Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, said in June, as he confirmed his intention to propose finance minister Michael McGrath.

The request for two candidates was not welcomed by many EU capitals, as the prized job of EU commissioner is also part of complex negotiations between governing parties and/or prime ministers and presidents. Lithuania’s prime minister, Ingrida Šimonytė, this week described her country’s process as “baroquely complex”, as her government announced its intention to send to Brussels one of her predecessors, Andrius Kubilius, following a bruising tug of war over the job.

Governments that spurned von der Leyen’s call for gender balance could see their candidates assigned weaker portfolios, rather than the “big economic job” many governments are angling for. In previous years, governments that disappointed the commission had their candidates put in charge of multilingualism, or education and culture.

“Every commissioner wants resources, money [to spend on policies], power, competence and it’s not possible for all of them,” said Sophia Russack at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “There are not 27 or 26 important portfolios,” Russack added, suggesting this could be a form of leverage –“‘either you send me a woman or you get one of those portfolios that nobody wants’.”

A male-dominated top team would be an embarrassing setback for the EU’s gender-equality strategy, which in 2020 called for “gender balance of 50% at all levels of [Commission] management by the end of 2024”.

Insiders suggest that a less gender-balanced commission increases the chances of commissioner candidates being rejected by the European parliament. All nominees must appear before MEP committees, before the assembly votes on whether to approve the entire commission. “One or another will be targeted on their suitability and the fact that their government didn’t bother to propose a woman,” a second EU diplomat said.

A European Commission spokesperson declined to comment on the candidates and gender balance.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, will attend a Pacific leaders’ summit this week in Tonga with a focus on climate change in the region, one of the world’s most vulnerable to rising sea levels and temperature changes.

The annual meeting of leaders is the top political decision-making body of the region. The week-long summit culminates in the leaders’ retreat, where key decisions are made, which may include an endorsement of a regional policing initiative promoted by Australia. The future for New Caledonia is among other big issues to be addressed at the Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) which began in Tonga on Monday.

“We gather at a pivotal time in our region’s history,” said forum secretary Baron Waqa, a former president of Nauru.

“We are at the centre of global geopolitical interest. We are at the forefront of a battle against climate change.”

Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon – leaders of the forum’s two largest economies – will attend along with most heads of government of the 18-member regional bloc.

As geopolitical tensions rise and competition for influence in the Pacific increases, more outside attention has been focused on some of the smallest countries in the world. The threats posed by climate change and sea level rise will be a central part of the summit, which Guterres will address. Pacific leadership will be looking for more financial support for its climate and disaster initiatives.

“The fate of the Pacific depends on limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” the UN secretary general said at a press conference in Samoa on Friday, ahead of the meeting in Tonga.

“This region, the Pacific, contributes 0.02% of global emissions. Yet you are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, dealing with extreme weather events from raging tropical cyclones to record ocean heatwaves.”

The situation in New Caledonia is also likely to be a focus of the meeting, after the French territory was rattled by deadly violence this year over plans from Paris to expand voting rights. This week, a much anticipated high-level visit to New Caledonia by Pacific leaders was postponed, at the request of Louis Mapou, president of the New Caledonia government.

“We must reach consensus on our vision for a region of peace and security,” Tongan prime minister Siaosi Sovaleni said on Monday.

“We must honour the vision of our forefathers regarding self determination, including in New Caledonia.”

The Cook Islands prime minister, Mark Brown, who is the outgoing Pif chair, said at a recent press conference it is challenging for Pif to navigate the impacts of New Caledonia’s dual status as both a full member of the forum and a territory of France. The unrest has seen the territory added as a “standing item” to the leaders’ agenda which reflects its importance to regional leaders.

In recent years the meeting has drawn increasing interest amid a geopolitical battle for influence in the region between the US and China. As Beijing has expanded its influence in the Pacific and increased its economic and security relationships, the US has boosted its engagement on numerous fronts. Washington has promised more aid, struck security partnerships and opened new embassies. Pacific countries have seen a series of ministerial visits from the US and China, as well as new initiatives across different sectors, and a rise in defence diplomacy.

Fiji’s prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, will travel to the Pif on the heels of a visit to Beijing, where he discussed economic development and other ways to deepen ties. The leaders of Vanuatu and Solomon Islands visited China in July.

While Pif members agree on many key priorities, maintaining regional solidarity can be challenging. Last year in Cook Islands, the political divide on deep-sea mining became clear. Since then, Vanuatu has led a charge at the most recent meeting of the International Seabed Authority to prevent licences for exploitation of seabed resources being issued before environmental regulations are in place. Last year, Pacific leaders asked the forum secretariat to convening a regional talanoa (discussion) on this issue. It has yet to take place.

Agence-France Presse contributed to this report

Prosecutors have said the suspect arrested over a stabbing rampage in the western German city of Solingen shares the ideology of the Islamic State group and was acting on those beliefs when he attacked.

The 26-year-old Syrian, who had turned himself in, was identified by federal prosecutors as Issa Al H, with his last name omitted in line with German privacy laws.

A judge at the federal court of justice in Karlsruhe ordered that he be held on suspicion of murder and membership of a terrorist organisation in connection with the knife attack on Friday, which left three dead and eight wounded at a festival marking the city’s 650th anniversary.

In a statement the Office of the Federal Prosecutor said the suspect decided “to kill the largest possible number of those he considers unbelievers” at the festival on the basis of his “radical Islamic convictions”.

Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attack without providing any evidence.

Wearing handcuffs and leg shackles, the suspect was taken on Sunday from the police station in Solingen to a first appearance before in court. He had applied for asylum in Germany, police told the Associated Press.

The frenzied attack unfolded over a few minutes on Friday evening at a festival of diversity in Solingen, a city of 160,000 people near Cologne and Düsseldorf. Three people from the region – one woman and two men – were killed and eight were injured, four of them seriously.

Citing officials, the Associated Press reported that a 15-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion that he knew about the planned attack and failed to inform authorities, but that he was not the attacker. Two female witnesses told police they overheard the boy and an unknown person before the attack speaking about intentions that corresponded to the bloodshed.

The attack is already stirring debate about Germany’s asylum policy ahead of regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia on 1 September, where the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland is expected to do well.

The leader of the centre-right CDU opposition party Friedrich Merz said Germany should stop admitting further refugees from Syria and Afghanistan in a letter on his website entitled “enough is enough”.

Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who has been under pressure to tackle a rise in knife violence in cities, said on Saturday he was “shocked” by the “terrible event” and stood with the terrorised city in mourning the victims.

The festival , which was supposed to run through to Sunday, drawing up to 25,000 people, was cancelled, as were weekend festivities in nearby towns.

The German DJ Topic, who is from Solingen, said in a post on Instagram he was performing on the stage when security personnel approached him and informed him of the attack.

He was asked to continue his set “to avoid causing a mass panic”, he said. “So I kept playing even though it was incredibly hard.” He said he was told to stop 10-15 minutes later, and “since the attacker was still on the run, we hid in a nearby store while police helicopters circled above us”, he wrote.

“I still can’t believe it … this was supposed to be a free festival for everyone. Really close friends of mine were there with their small kids,” he said in a video recorded in his childhood bedroom. “What’s happening to this world … my thoughts are with all the victims.”

Germany’s federal criminal police office has said there have been about a dozen Islamist-motivated attacks since 2000. One of the biggest was in 2016, when a Tunisian man drove a lorry into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring dozens.

French judicial authorities on Sunday extended the detention of the Russian-born founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, after his arrest at a Paris airport over alleged offences related to the messaging app.

His arrest at the Le Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday was the latest extraordinary twist in the career of one of the world’s most influential tech icons.

The detention of Durov, 39, was extended beyond Sunday night by the investigating magistrate who is handling the case, according to a source close to the investigation. This initial period of detention for questioning can last up to a maximum of 96 hours.

When this phase of detention ends, the judge can decide to free him or press charges and remand in further custody.

French investigators had issued a warrant for Durov’s arrest as part of an inquiry into allegations of fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, promotion of terrorism and cyberbullying.

Durov is accused of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform and was stopped after arriving in Paris from Baku on his private jet on Saturday night. “Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” said one investigator who expressed surprise that Durov flew to Paris knowing he was a wanted man.

In a statement on Sunday evening, Telegram said: “Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act – its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving.

“Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe. It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform. We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation.”

Russian authorities have accused France of “refusing to cooperate”. The Russian embassy in Paris has asked for access to Durov and said France had so far “avoided engagement” on the situation.

Durov left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with Kremlin demands to shut down opposition groups on the VK social network that he founded when he was 22. He left VK after a dispute with its Kremlin-linked owners and turned his focus to Telegram, the app he founded with his brother Nikolai in 2013.

Initially, Telegram was similar to other messaging apps, but has since diverged to become more of a social network in its own right. As well as communicating one-to-one, users can join groups of up to 200,000 people and create broadcast “channels” that others can follow and leave comments on.

With 950 million active monthly users, Telegram has become a major source of information – and disinformation – about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Durov lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He recently said he had tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before choosing Dubai, which he praised for its business environment and “neutrality”.

In the UAE, Telegram faces little pressure to moderate its content, while western governments are trying to crack down on hate speech, disinformation, sharing of images of child abuse and other illegal content.

Telegram offers end-to-end encrypted messaging and allows users to create channels to disseminate information to followers. Especially popular in the former Soviet Union, the app is widely used by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and his circle, as well as politicians throughout Ukraine, to release information about the war. It is also one of the few places where Russians can get unfiltered information about the conflict, after the Kremlin tightened media controls in the wake of the full-scale invasion.

Its apparently unbreakable encryption has made Telegram a haven for extremists and conspiracy theorists. Investigative journalists at the central European news site VSquare said it had become the “‘go-to’ tool for Russian propagandists, both leftwing and rightwing radicals, American QAnon and conspiracy theorists,” concluding it was an “ecosystem for the radicalisation of opinion”.

The app was also used widely by far-right agitators plotting anti-immigration rallies in England and Northern Ireland in the wake of the stabbing of three children at a Southport dance class last month.

The anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate concluded that Telegram had become the “app of choice” for racists and violent extremists and “a cesspit of antisemitic content” with minimal moderation or effort from the app to curb extremist content.

The former Russian president turned hawkish deputy head of Russia’s security council, Dmitry Medvedev, claimed that Durov had made a mistake by fleeing Russia and thinking he would never have to cooperate with security services abroad. “He miscalculated,” Medvedev said. “For all our common enemies now, he is Russian – and therefore unpredictable and dangerous.”

Writing on X after the arrest, the rightwing US commentator and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson described Durov as “a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies”.

In an interview with Carlson earlier this year, Durov said the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not “a player in geopolitics”.

In the interview, Durov said users “love the independence” of the Telegram app. “They also love the privacy, the freedom, [there are] a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram.”

The billionaire social media tycoon Elon Musk reposted a clip from that interview where Durov praised Musk’s takeover of X as “a great development” with the hashtag “FreePavel”. He followed up with a second tweet: “Liberté! Liberté! Liberté?”

French judicial authorities on Sunday extended the detention of the Russian-born founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, after his arrest at a Paris airport over alleged offences related to the messaging app.

His arrest at the Le Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday was the latest extraordinary twist in the career of one of the world’s most influential tech icons.

The detention of Durov, 39, was extended beyond Sunday night by the investigating magistrate who is handling the case, according to a source close to the investigation. This initial period of detention for questioning can last up to a maximum of 96 hours.

When this phase of detention ends, the judge can decide to free him or press charges and remand in further custody.

French investigators had issued a warrant for Durov’s arrest as part of an inquiry into allegations of fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, promotion of terrorism and cyberbullying.

Durov is accused of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform and was stopped after arriving in Paris from Baku on his private jet on Saturday night. “Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” said one investigator who expressed surprise that Durov flew to Paris knowing he was a wanted man.

In a statement on Sunday evening, Telegram said: “Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act – its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving.

“Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe. It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform. We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation.”

Russian authorities have accused France of “refusing to cooperate”. The Russian embassy in Paris has asked for access to Durov and said France had so far “avoided engagement” on the situation.

Durov left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with Kremlin demands to shut down opposition groups on the VK social network that he founded when he was 22. He left VK after a dispute with its Kremlin-linked owners and turned his focus to Telegram, the app he founded with his brother Nikolai in 2013.

Initially, Telegram was similar to other messaging apps, but has since diverged to become more of a social network in its own right. As well as communicating one-to-one, users can join groups of up to 200,000 people and create broadcast “channels” that others can follow and leave comments on.

With 950 million active monthly users, Telegram has become a major source of information – and disinformation – about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Durov lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He recently said he had tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco before choosing Dubai, which he praised for its business environment and “neutrality”.

In the UAE, Telegram faces little pressure to moderate its content, while western governments are trying to crack down on hate speech, disinformation, sharing of images of child abuse and other illegal content.

Telegram offers end-to-end encrypted messaging and allows users to create channels to disseminate information to followers. Especially popular in the former Soviet Union, the app is widely used by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and his circle, as well as politicians throughout Ukraine, to release information about the war. It is also one of the few places where Russians can get unfiltered information about the conflict, after the Kremlin tightened media controls in the wake of the full-scale invasion.

Its apparently unbreakable encryption has made Telegram a haven for extremists and conspiracy theorists. Investigative journalists at the central European news site VSquare said it had become the “‘go-to’ tool for Russian propagandists, both leftwing and rightwing radicals, American QAnon and conspiracy theorists,” concluding it was an “ecosystem for the radicalisation of opinion”.

The app was also used widely by far-right agitators plotting anti-immigration rallies in England and Northern Ireland in the wake of the stabbing of three children at a Southport dance class last month.

The anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate concluded that Telegram had become the “app of choice” for racists and violent extremists and “a cesspit of antisemitic content” with minimal moderation or effort from the app to curb extremist content.

The former Russian president turned hawkish deputy head of Russia’s security council, Dmitry Medvedev, claimed that Durov had made a mistake by fleeing Russia and thinking he would never have to cooperate with security services abroad. “He miscalculated,” Medvedev said. “For all our common enemies now, he is Russian – and therefore unpredictable and dangerous.”

Writing on X after the arrest, the rightwing US commentator and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson described Durov as “a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies”.

In an interview with Carlson earlier this year, Durov said the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not “a player in geopolitics”.

In the interview, Durov said users “love the independence” of the Telegram app. “They also love the privacy, the freedom, [there are] a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram.”

The billionaire social media tycoon Elon Musk reposted a clip from that interview where Durov praised Musk’s takeover of X as “a great development” with the hashtag “FreePavel”. He followed up with a second tweet: “Liberté! Liberté! Liberté?”

Keir Starmer’s most senior legal adviser has intervened in the contentious decision over whether to ban UK arms sales to Israel, the Guardian has learned, as officials struggle to distinguish between “offensive” and “defensive” weapons.

Sources say Richard Hermer, the attorney general, has told Foreign Office officials he will not approve a decision to ban some weapons sales until they can say for sure which could be used to break international humanitarian law.

The legal wrangling at the top of government is understood to be the principal cause of the delay to the decision, which has become even more sensitive in recent weeks as the crisis in the Middle East escalates.

A Foreign Office spokesperson would not comment on Hermer’s role but said: “This government is committed to upholding international law. We have made clear that we will not export items if they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.

“There is an ongoing review process to assess whether Israel is complying with international humanitarian law, which the foreign secretary initiated on day one in office. We will provide an update as soon as that review process has been completed.”

David Lammy has launched a review into whether the UK should continue selling weapons to Israel as the country continues its assault on Gaza. The foreign secretary has talked about banning the sale of “offensive” weapons but allowing arms manufacturers to keep supplying “defensive” ones, saying that such a move would enable Israel to defend itself.

Although the UK only exports about £18m worth of military equipment to Israel each year, the Israeli government is sensitive to any suggestion that Britain believes it to have breached international humanitarian law.

Benjamin Netanyahu is already said to be upset by Lammy’s decision to drop the UK’s objection to the international criminal court issuing an arrest warrant against him. Now the Israeli prime minister is closely watching the outcome of Britain’s arms review.

The decision has become even more significant in recent days after Israel launched airstrikes on Lebanon while Hezbollah carried out a drone and rocket attack against northern Israel, triggering fears of a broader Middle East conflict.

Lammy was expected to announce the results of his review before MPs went away for their summer break. But the decision has been held up because senior members of the government are not certain they will be able to defend the distinction between offensive and defensive in court.

Officials are going through each individual type of weapons system in an attempt to determine what purpose each has been used for. Hermer, an ally of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, since they were in legal practice, has told officials they need to be certain that any weapon that continues to be sold has not been used to breach international humanitarian law.

Starmer is also understood to be taking an active role in the decision-making process, despite the review officially being carried out by the Foreign Office.

Officials are keen to avoid a repeat of 2019, when the court of appeal ruled that British arms sales to Saudi Arabia were unlawful and that ministers had not given due consideration to whether they had been used to break human rights law in Yemen.

Last week a group of human rights lawyers submitted a case to the high court accusing the government of acting irrationally by refusing to ban arms sales. As part of their claim they submitted more than 100 pages of witness testimony containing allegations that Palestinians had been tortured, left untreated in hospital and were unable to escape heavy bombardment.

“International humanitarian law is vague but it does say we need to show we have considered every possibility,” said one person aware of the process. “That’s why the main hold-up here is legal, not diplomatic.”

While the review goes on, the government appears to have stopped issuing new licences for weapons sales to Israel. Exporters applying for new licences are reportedly receiving messages from the Department for Business and Trade saying that applications are suspended until the review is complete.

Despite this, the delay to the review has caused upset in some parts of the British government. Earlier this month a British diplomat in Dublin quit his job because ministers had not yet banned weapons sales to Israel. Mark Smith told the BBC he believed Israel was “perpetrating war crimes in plain sight”.

Former T​-Mobile chief executive John Legere is expected to be deposed in a $100m defamation suit brought by Florida businessman Grant Cardone after he rejected an offer to settle with an apology from the ex​-telecoms chief​, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

The prospect of a deposition raises the stakes for Legere​, since it would involve lengthy questioning under oath about his past inflammatory comments now at the heart of the case.

Legere had sought to avoid the defamation suit​ filed in state court in Florida from advancing in recent weeks​, and proposed a settlement that involved him making a public apology to Cardone, the people said. Legere also asked for a protective order to seal public access to the discovery in the case.

But Cardone, the ​billionaire private equity fund manager ​and vocal supporter of Donald Trump, ​t​old his lawyers that he felt the offer was inadequate and wanted Legere to reimburse him for what he has described as more than $100m in damages, the people said.

​A deposition would mark the next major legal juncture after the presiding Florida judge William Thomas in May denied a motion by Legere to dismiss the suit. Reached by phone, Cardone declined to comment on reporting on his deliberations. Legere could not immediately be reached for comment.

The case has become a cause célèbre among some of the former president’s advisers and allies, in part because of Cardone’s links to Trump.

Cardone ​filed the $100m defamation suit against Legere​ in January, complaining that Legere, who departed T-Mobile in 2020, made allegedly false and inflammatory statements in heated public exchanges on the Clubhouse app and on Twitter/X in 2023​.

The suit allege​d Legere made a series of defamatory statements​, ​including accusing Cardone of engaging in fraud. In one exchange, according to court filings, Legere called Cardone a ​“bullshit artist and sales and marketing guy who is always selling something​”.

Cardone could face hurdles over some of Legre’s allegedly defamatory statements. At least one comment was couched by Legere as being protected opinionated speech – “my opinion is you’re a fraud,” Legre said – which has been a typical defense to defamation claims.

But the suit claimed that Legere’s comments about his character and business record caused his companies to lose about $100m in business​. They also scared off some people Cardone was trying to recruit to withdraw from deals, the people said.

Cardone, a best selling New York Times bestselling author who appeared on the show Undercover Billionaire, has ​for years been a major Trump supporter​ with ties to people in Trump’s orbit.

In February, Cardone and his wife set up a GoFundMe crowdfunding effort to help defray some of Trump’s legal costs after he was found liable for fraudulently inflating his assets and ordered to pay a judgment that ultimately totaled approximately $500m​.

The fundraiser, which has raised just over $2m, came after Trump was the headline speaker at Cardone’s 10X Growth conference in Hollywood in March 2022. Trump appeared for a one-hour fireside chat with Cardone​ where he re-upped the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

Macklemore has cancelled an upcoming October concert in Dubai over the United Arab Emirates’ role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” in Sudan through its reported support of the paramilitary force that has been fighting government troops there.

The announcement by the US rapper reignited attention to the UAE’s role in the war gripping the African nation. While the UAE repeatedly has denied arming the Rapid Support Forces and supporting its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, UN experts reported “credible” evidence in January that the Emirates sent weapons to the RSF several times a week from northern Chad.

Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions including Darfur. Estimates suggest more than 18,800 people have been killed in the fighting, while more than 10 million have fled their homes. Hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.

At a contentious UN security council meeting in June, Sudan’s embattled government directly accused the UAE of arming the RSF, and an Emirati diplomat angrily told his counterpart to stop “grandstanding”. The UAE has been a part of ongoing peace talks to end the fighting.

The Emirati foreign ministry offered no immediate comment on Macklemore’s public statement on Sunday, nor did the city-state’s Dubai Media Office. Organisers last week announced the show had been cancelled and refunds would be issued, without offering an explanation for the cancellation.

In a post on Saturday on Instagram, Grammy-winner Macklemore said he had a series of people “asking me to cancel the show in solidarity with the people of Sudan and to boycott doing business in the UAE for the role they are playing in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis”.

Macklemore said he reconsidered the show in part over his recent, public support of Palestinians amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip. He recently has begun performing a song called Hind’s Hall, in honour of a young girl named Hind Rajab, who was killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, along with her four cousins, her aunt and uncle and two paramedics. All streaming proceeds generated from Hind’s Hall go to UN relief agency Unrwa.

“I know that this will probably jeopardise my future shows in the area, and I truly hate letting any of my fans down,” he wrote. “I was really excited too. But until the UAE stops arming and funding the RSF I will not perform there.”

He added: “I have no judgment against other artists performing in the UAE. But I do ask the question to my peers scheduled to play in Dubai: If we used our platforms to mobilize collective liberation, what could we accomplish?”

The RSF formed out of the Janjaweed fighters under the then Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades before being overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the international criminal court on charges of genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Darfur in the 2000s.

Dubai has tried to draw A-list performers in the city-state at a brand-new arena and other venues. However, performers in the past have acknowledged the difficulties in performing in the UAE, a hereditarily ruled federation of seven sheikhdoms in which speech is tightly controlled.

That includes the US comedian Dave Chappelle, who drew attention in May in Abu Dhabi when he referred to the Israel-Hamas war as a “genocide” and joked about the UAE’s vast surveillance apparatus.

The armed guard assigned to Mike Lynch while he faced fraud charges has described how close he became to the “loving” tech entrepreneur and his family.

Appointed by the court, Rolo Igno, said he was supposed to stay distant but that the professional relationship “quickly dissolved” when Lynch invited him to spend time with his family.

Lynch and six others were killed when his luxury superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily early on Monday after it was struck by a powerful storm wind called a downburst.

Lynch had been celebrating his acquittal from fraud charges relating to the £8.6bn sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. He was cleared in June after a trial at a federal court in San Francisco, California.

Igno said he had the “privilege” of spending “almost every waking moment” with Lynch while he was in custody in San Francisco. He said the job had been unlike any other and had been “life changing”.

“As an executive protection agent, the number one rule is simple, don’t ever get close to the principal,” he said. “They aren’t your friends, they’re a client and the relationship is strictly professional. But with Mike, that didn’t fly with him and for me that rule quickly dissolved.”

Igno described how when he had first escorted Lynch and his daughters, Hannah and Esme, to lunch, they did not hesitate to include him.

“I opened the door for them and told Mike: ‘If you need anything at all sir, I’ll be right at this table by the entrance’,” Igno told PA. “He chuckled and in his confident way, Mike replied: ‘No, no, no, you’ll be sitting with us.’

“When I hesitated, not wanting to disrupt their family time, he insisted, saying: ‘Rolo, do you want me to tell my beautiful daughters that the tough and handsome security guy, who was a former marine, didn’t want to sit with us because he was intimidated by them?’ How could I possibly say no to that?

“So, I joined them, sitting at the far end of the table, feeling out of my element but gradually realising how genuine and loving they all were.”

Igno said he enjoyed the job so much that he was excited to return to San Francisco after time off “just to be around Mike”.

He said the year he spent living with Lynch “allowed me to experience first-hand his loving and caring heart,” adding that the security team “became less of a detail and more like a family”.

Italian prosecutors announced on Saturday that they had opened a manslaughter and negligent shipwreck investigation into the deaths of seven people in the sinking of the Bayesian. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was one of 15 passengers and crew rescued after the Bayesian sank.

Describing being with the family in Ravello, Italy, earlier this month, Igno said it was one of his “most cherished memories”, adding: “Overlooking the stunning Amalfi coast, Mike came up to me and said: ‘Rolo, I feel so much better knowing you will always have my family’s back.’

“He was right, and Mike, if you’re listening, I will always have your back. I will forever be here for Angela and Esme.”

Igno added: “My family will miss your masterful storytelling, and we will forever regret not seeing you do the robot dance that night, we were so close. Hannah, my family and I will miss your beautiful smile, your loving soul and your calming presence. My daughter Emma will never forget the time you two shared.”

There were five others killed in the incident. The yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, Morgan Stanley International’s bank chair, Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy Bloomer, the Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo all died in the disaster.

According to the prosecutor in charge of the case, Raffaele Cammarano, some passengers may not have been able to escape from the yacht because they were asleep.