Donald Trump’s campaign publicly claimed victory in the debate against Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, but at least some of his aides privately conceded it was unlikely that he persuaded any undecided voters to break for him, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Will tonight benefit us? No, it will not,” one Trump aide said.

The sentiment summed up the predicament for the Trump campaign that with 55 days until the election, Trump is still casting around for a moment that could allow his attack lines against Harris to break through and overwrite her gains in key battleground state polls.

And it was an acknowledgment that despite their hopes of getting Happy Trump on stage, they got Angry Trump, who seemingly could not shake his fury at being taunted over his supporters leaving his rallies early and being repeatedly fact-checked by the moderators.

The Trump campaign for weeks had viewed the debate as a prime opportunity to get through to a national, primetime television audience of millions, his attacks against Harris on policy that they believed had not been delivered in mainstream news coverage.

As the reasoning went, even if the television networks declined to air Trump’s rallies or remarks at campaign stops, they would be forced to carry him live and uninterrupted when he had the floor during the debate.

But Trump got baited by Harris less than 10 minutes into the debate, and even on his favorite topics such as illegal immigration, Trump missed multiple opportunities to land attacks and ultimately argued with the moderators about whether Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Ohio.

The original plan to manipulate the supposed targeting of pets by immigrants, if disputed by the moderators, was to say it was hearsay – and then pivot to attacking Harris on the ramifications of illegal immigration on crime.

The trouble was that Trump struggled to execute the plan, according to people briefed on the prep work. He got stuck on Harris’s jibe about his rallies and then got tangled in a back and forth over the truth or falsity of the story.

The one high point that several Trump advisers noted was Trump’s closing statement – which were rehearsed remarks – in which he questioned why Harris had not already enacted her proposed policies as part of the Biden administration’s agenda.

In a statement, the Trump campaign chiefs Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita publicly echoed their boss and declared victory. “The choice could not be more clear – President Trump was the clear winner tonight, and he will win for America when he returns to the White House,” they wrote.

Trump’s advisers were also universally critical of the debate moderators, the ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis, and their repeated fact-checks of Trump’s more extreme claims, suggesting it looked like a pile-on with three against one.

Still, their private assessment of the debate was not the victory declaration that Trump made on Fox News as he visited the spin room and then used to justify demurring on whether he would have a second debate against Harris with 55 days until the election.

“I don’t know, I have to think about it, but if you won the debate, I sort of think maybe I shouldn’t do it. Why should I do another debate?” Trump said when pressed by the Fox News host Sean Hannity.

The famed Mexican American singer Linda Ronstadt has condemned Donald Trump for his “hatred” as the Republican presidential nominee prepares to host a rally in her namesake hall in Tuscon, Arizona.

In a Facebook statement released on Wednesday evening, the 78-year old multi-Grammy winner said: “Donald Trump is holding a rally on Thursday in a rented hall in my hometown, Tucson. I would prefer to ignore that sad fact. But since the building has my name on it, I need to say something.

“It saddens me to see the former president bring his hate show to Tucson, a town with deep Mexican-American roots and a joyful, tolerant spirit. I don’t just deplore his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty and ignorance – although there’s that,” Ronstadt added.

She went on to criticize Trump for his border policies, particularly his administration’s family separation policy which “made orphans of thousands of little children and babies, and brutalized their desperate mothers and fathers”.

Ronstadt also called Trump a rapist, saying: “Trump first ran for president warning about rapists coming in from Mexico. I’m worried about keeping the rapist out of the White House.”

E Jean Carroll, a New York writer, alleged Trump raped her in a department store in the city in the 1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim. A jury last year found Trump liable for the sexual assault.

In addition to Trump, the singer took aim at JD Vance, who has repeatedly criticized people without children as “childish cat ladies”, in addition to being “psychotic” and “deranged”.

“I raised two adopted children in Tucson as a single mom. They are both grown and living in their own houses. I live with a cat,” Ronstadt wrote, adding, “Am I half a childless cat lady because I’m unmarried and didn’t give birth to my kids? Call me what you want, but this cat lady will be voting proudly in November for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”

Trump is set to deliver his remarks at 2pm in Tucson and is expected to address the “rising cost of housing”, AZ Family reports.

Republicans are blaming the influence of Laura Loomer, a rightwing conspiracy theorist, for this week’s botched debate performance by Donald Trump, which included the former president repeating a bizarre and unfounded claim that pet cats and dogs were being eaten by Haitian immigrants.

Loomer flew with Trump on his private plane to Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia and has been identified as a key promoter of the pets rumour, which has been dismissed as false by authorities in Springfield, Ohio, where the practice was alleged to have been taking place.

However, Trump amplified it in a moment that has become emblematic of his erratic showing in the debate with Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump claimed during a debate segment on immigration. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

When the ABC debate moderator David Muir informed him that the story had been debunked, Trump stood by the claim, saying he had seen it “on television”.

The rumour had also been disseminated by JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, who in the aftermath of the debate justified doing so.

Nevertheless, following the event scrutiny has turned to the supposed role of Loomer. The Semafor website quoted an unnamed source close to Trump’s campaign as saying they were “100%” concerned about Loomer’s sway over the Republican nominee.

“Regardless of any guardrails the Trump campaign has put on her, I don’t think it’s working,” the source said.

Trump this year proposed giving Loomer an official role on his campaign, but the idea was resisted by staffers.

Loomer, who styles herself as an “investigative journalist”, last year promoted a conspiracy theory alleging that 9/11 was an”inside job”. On Wednesday she posted an unfounded allegation that Harris had worn earphones disguised as earrings during the debate.

In a sign of resentment among Trump loyalists over her supposed influence, the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene attacked her as “racist” on Wednesday over an earlier post in which she had said the White House would smell of curry if Harris – who has Indian heritage – was elected.

“If @KamalaHarris wins, the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand,” Loomer wrote.

“This is appalling and extremely racist,” posted Greene, who herself has faced past accusations of racism. “It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump.”

While Trump continues to claim in the face of widespread counter-opinion to have “won” Tuesday’s debate, strategists are struggling to explain why he ignored advice in preparation sessions to focus on Harris’s policies and record in the Biden administration, while resisting her attempts to bait him.

Dennis Lennox, a Republican consultant, told Semafor that Loomer’s presence was not the only factor affecting Trump’s performance.

“Trump lost the debate because of his performance, or lack thereof,” he said. “That’s what happens when you wing it, live in the Fox News-X bubble, and rely upon Matt Gaetz [the far-right Florida Congress member who helped with debate preparation], let alone Laura Loomer.”

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine’s military incursion into Russia is still going to “plan” after Russian troops recaptured a swathe of villages in the Kursk region, dealing a significant blow to Kyiv.

The Ukrainian president acknowledged that the Kremlin had begun a counteroffensive, following Ukraine’s surprise cross-border attack last month into Russia. He said his armed forces had anticipated Moscow’s assault.

A mechanised raid began on Tuesday, according to Russian military bloggers. Russian forces pushed forward from the village of Korenevo and quickly advanced south into Snagost.

They have regained at least 10 settlements, with two more – Krasnooktyabrskoe and Komarovka – reportedly having been captured on Thursday. One objective was to “bisect” Ukraine’s 1,000 sq km salient within Russia, cutting off its western flank, observers posited.

The next step would be “a more organised and well-equipped effort to push Ukrainian forces” out of Russia completely, the Institute for the Study of War thinktank said. It acknowledged that the situation was fluid, with the size and scale of the counteroffensive unclear.

Zelenskiy told a news conference with the Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda in Kyiv: “The Russians have begun counteroffensive actions. It is going according to our Ukrainian plan.”

Russia’s troops are also making rapid gains in the eastern Donetsk region. They reportedly captured another village on the outskirts of Pokrovsk – a key Ukrainian logistics hub – and were only 8km (5 miles) from the city.

A Russian missile demolished a road bridge connecting Pokrovsk with the neighbouring town of Mrynohrad and the water supply was knocked out. Officials described the situation as very difficult in the area, where thousands of civilians remain despite the bombardment.

Donetsk’s regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, said conditions in and around Pokrovsk would not improve. “I again call on you to evacuate!” he posted on the Telegram messaging app.

In the same province, three Ukrainian employees working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were killed and two injured when an artillery round hit their lorry in the village of Virolyubivka.

The ICRC’s president, Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, said her staff had been distributing wood and coal briquettes to vulnerable households ahead of winter. “I condemn attacks on Red Cross personnel in the strongest terms. It’s unconscionable that shelling would hit an aid distribution site,” she said.

Elsewhere, a Russian missile hit an Egypt-bound cargo ship carrying wheat in the Black Sea. There were no casualties. Ukraine last year resumed the export of grain from the port of Odesa after driving out Russia’s naval fleet.

On Friday the US president, Joe Biden, will discuss the deteriorating military and humanitarian situation in Ukraine with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who is paying a brief visit to Washington. The meeting comes after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, travelled together to Kyiv and held talks with Zelenskiy.

Speaking at a press conference afterwards, Blinken gave his strongest hint yet that the US will soon lift some restrictions on the use of US-supplied long-range weapons on key military targets within Russia. British government sources say approval will be given to allow similar strikes with UK Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

In Moscow, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claimed that a US-UK decision on targeting Russian territory “was taken long ago”. He said Russian forces were successfully pushing the Ukrainian military out of the Kursk area.

Early on Thursday, Russia launched another large-scale drone and missile attack, triggering air-raid sirens across much of Ukraine. The city of Konotop, a rail hub in Sumy region that Kyiv used as a staging ground for its Kursk incursion, reported heavy damage.

Local officials said at least 14 people had been hurt. Rescuers were working to restore power in the town, which had a prewar population of about 83,000. Regional officials said there were 10 explosions during the attack and the mayor, Artem Semenikhin, said the power system was in critical condition.

“At the moment, energy workers are doing everything they can to provide electricity to the hospital and the water supply system,” he said.

More than $30m (£23m) worth of aircraft tyres made by western manufacturers including the French firm Michelin and Britain’s Dunlop were imported into Russia last year via intermediaries despite attempts to ban the trade, according to a Ukrainian government agency.

Russian aviation is critically dependent on foreign-made tyres and, according to the available customs records, the vast majority imported into the country in 2023 were produced by companies headquartered in France, Britain, the US and Japan.

After Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the US and the EU imposed a ban on the sale of aviation tyres to Russia in February and April 2022, respectively. The UK brought in specific restrictions in December 2023 while Japan acted in July of that year, but customs records indicate widespread and successful attempts to circumvent controls.

Tyres from the French manufacturer Michelin accounted for the largest share of imports last year (70%), worth $28m. The products sold included a type of tyre used on the airbus used by the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. But supplies were also said to have been received of products made by the US company Goodyear, the British company Dunlop and Japan’s Bridgestone.

According to an internal report by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, seen by the Guardian, most western supplies that entered Russia last year arrived via China, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and central Asian countries, but there was also evidence of tyres arriving directly from the west.

The direct exports were carried out by companies registered in third countries, which the NACP said “may indicate the use of false transit schemes or change of destination and recipient at transit points after the goods have been shopped [bought] from such countries”.

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Michelin, Goodyear, Dunlop or Bridgestone.

A spokesperson for Michelin said the company had launched an investigation into the findings.

He said: “First, we would like to remind you that Michelin has ceased all exports to Russia since March 15, 2022. The group has also permanently closed all its commercial and industrial activities in the country.

“Furthermore, Michelin is committed to scrupulously complying with applicable economic and financial sanctions and has established a dedicated internal organisation to ensure this compliance.

“In relation to the report, Michelin is fully committed and takes this information very seriously. The group will naturally investigate all elements brought to its attention and will take all urgent and appropriate measures when necessary.”

Of the nearly $1.2m worth of Dunlop tyres imported to Russia, the agency report claims that 70% arrived directly from the UK. Dunlop, which is based in Birmingham, did not respond to a request for comment.

Around $5.7m worth of Goodyear tyres were imported to Russia in 2023, of which half arrived via China. A spokesman said: “Goodyear suspended tyre shipments to Russia in March 2022. Given the global nature of our business, we have strict import and export controls in place, and we actively monitor our operations to ensure compliance regarding trade restrictions with certain countries, entities and individuals around the world. We will review the information that you have provided as part of our standard compliance process.”

According to the NACP report, 200 aircraft tyres manufactured by Bridgestone were imported to Russia for $800,000 via the UK, India, Maldives and Turkey.

A spokesperson for Bridgestone said: “Given the protections in place and after conducting an internal review, Bridgestone is not aware of any shipment of Bridgestone aircraft tyres to Russia.

“If shipments to Russia were made by Bridgestone customers, this would violate the export restrictions established by Bridgestone and included in BAE’s general terms and conditions. However, Bridgestone will continue to review this matter with its customers and take appropriate action to ensure compliance.”

Russia has been trying to develop its own tyre manufacturing base but its efforts remain at an early stage, with only one such factory in operation, Yaroslavl Tyre Plant, 300 miles north-east of Moscow.

Chinese manufacturers accounted for 10% of Russian imports of aircraft tyres in 2023, the NACP report says.

A UK government spokesperson said Whitehall was working with the industry to close down attempts to circumvent the sanctions.

“We have sanctioned every item that Ukraine has found Russia using on the battlefield and, alongside our allies, we have banned the sale of aircraft tyres to Russia,” he said. “UK businesses must undertake due diligence to ensure Russia is not the end destination of these products, and non-compliance with these tough sanctions is a serious offence and punishable through large financial penalties or criminal prosecution.”

Relief groups have said more than 1 million people in Gaza will not have enough food this month, while trucks loaded with fresh vegetables or meat spoil waiting to cross Israeli checkpoints, and thousands of aid packages of food, medical supplies and even toothbrushes and shampoo remain stuck in a backlog of lorries unable to enter from Egypt.

“We estimate that over a million Gazans will go without food in September,” said Sam Rose, a senior deputy director of UN’s relief agency for Palestinians (Unrwa), in Gaza. “Over half the medicines in our health centres are running low, as is chlorine for water purification and other basic supplies.”

He added that Unrwa had resorted to trying to import single items such as soap, because kits containing a range of items such as washing powder alongside it have been blocked from entering.

“We believe we’re better served by bringing in bars of soap than trying for anything more complicated,” he said. “This shows how desperate the situation has become – we’re reduced to aiming for the absolute bare minimum to improve hygiene conditions, which is an atrocious state of affairs in a situation where there is a growing risk of infectious disease.”

“So little aid is getting in that we can’t meet basic needs,” he said.

Amed Khan, the founder of the Elpida relief organisation, said his group had unsuccessfully attempted to bring medical supplies into the territory for several months.

The amount of aid entering, he said, “is the absolute minimum needed to ensure that people don’t die immediately from starvation. They could die three years from now from extended malnutrition, but this is the minimum amount of trucks needed to ensure people don’t die immediately, and avoid international outrage.”

Khan pointed to UN data that showed a severe lack of aid entering in the four months since Israeli forces took control of the Rafah crossing point. In July, an average of 100 lorries entered each day, largely through the southern Kerem Shalom crossing. This number halved in August, while just 147 trucks have entered so far in September, although the organisation added that there may be gaps in the reporting because of the dangers of staff monitoring aid entry at crossing points.

Data from the Israeli military body Cogat, which oversees the entry of everything from aid to the trickle of imported goods into Gaza, shows a higher number of trucks approaching crossing points from the Israeli side of the border.

Humanitarian workers attribute the discrepancy to a difference in truck sizes, and Cogat’s screening process, which requires lorries to be partly empty, as well as some trucks carrying non-aid goods for sale at local markets, often at prices unaffordable to many.

“As a consequence of the backlog at Kerem Shalom, thousands of trucks are stuck in Egypt, incurring several million dollars in demurrage charges each month,” said Rose.

Inside Gaza, the distribution of aid is complicated by a lack of fuel, Israeli military roads and checkpoints. It is also extremely dangerous: 280 humanitarian workers, most employed by Unrwa, have been killed in Gaza in 11 months of fighting according to the UN’s office of humanitarian affairs, Ocha.

A report published in late August by more than two dozen NGOs, including Mercy Corps, Oxfam and Anera, said that among the most “significant obstacles” were the delays imposed by the Israeli authorities in approving cargo to enter Gaza.

The report described piles of aid – including nappies, clothes and food parcels – in Egypt, unable to enter Gaza since Israeli forces seized the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing in May. It also said Israeli authorities only permitted three convoys of 30 trucks to attempt to cross each week through a crossing known as Gate 96 near Gaza City.

Aid trucks’ ability to enter Gaza “is at the arbitrary discretion of Israeli forces” the report said, adding that often, at most 15 trucks are allowed access to Gate 96 each week. As a result, organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières say that 4,000 packages containing items such as soap and toothbrushes have been blocked by Israeli authorities for three months. Mercy Corps said it took them four months to deliver 1,000 food parcels and 1,000 kits of hygiene products to northern Gaza, after Israeli authorities introduced new customs requirements.

Khan despaired at what he regards as the lack of a system for distributing humanitarian aid, particularly after the US military ended its $230m (£176m) project to construct a floating aid pier off Gaza in July.

“There’s a bunch of people trying to do the best they can in an ad hoc manner, with roadblocks all over the place, but no one can say we have a system,” he said. “There’s a system in place to block everything, but little else.”

“If I want to send a million dollars worth of medical equipment tomorrow, where do I send it? There’s no answer,” he said. “The options are working with Cogat or importing via Jordan, but this is a very slow process.”

Khan, a former aide to Bill Clinton with experience delivering aid into Afghanistan, Ukraine and Rwanda, blamed what he described as politicians’ lack of care towards ensuring relief reaches Gaza.

“Not one decision-maker on the planet cares about this issue, although everyone on the ground is ready to act. But for anyone in a position of power, humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza is just not a priority,” he said.

He added: “This is the worst situation I have ever dealt with. There is never a situation where you’re trying to help people inside a border controlled by an ally, but one that doesn’t want aid to get to the people you’re trying to help.”

Humanitarian workers were further alarmed by unconfirmed reports that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, instructed the Israeli military to examine whether it could take over aid distribution inside Gaza. They fear this would further stymie relief efforts. The Israeli military referred questions about this to Cogat, who did not respond when approached for comment about this or the data showing a reduced amount of aid into Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces have launched an investigation into claims in the Israeli media that the London-based Jewish Chronicle published stories based on “fabricated intelligence” relating to Hamas, amid claims that they may have been planted as part of a disinformation campaign.

Among the most controversial claims published by the Jewish Chronicle, the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper, was the suggestion last week that the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, might be preparing to flee to Iran with Israeli hostages, a suggestion that has also been made by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Jewish Chronicle article is one of several sensational reports that have been written in recent months by a writer bylined as Elon Perry, whose résumé claiming he has worked as a journalist, academic and served as an elite undercover soldier has also been questioned.

Checks by the Guardian have found no evidence of any record of significant stories published by Perry as a reporter in English or Hebrew, except for the recent series of articles in the Jewish Chronicle now alleged to be fabrications.

Perry’s articles for the paper in recent months have included what was claimed to be a detailed depiction of the killing of the Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, the veracity of which has now been questioned.

Commenting on the claims on Thursday, the Jewish Chronicle, which still has the stories on its website, said in a statement: “The Jewish Chronicle is aware of allegations concerning a freelance journalist, which we take very seriously.

“The Jewish Chronicle is the oldest Jewish newspaper in the world and has always maintained the highest standards of reporting and integrity. An investigation is under way and there will be an update in due course.”

Most controversial was the story citing Israeli “intelligence sources” claiming that Sinwar, Hamas’s fugitive leader, intended to smuggle surviving hostages out of Gaza to Iran and accompany them, a story at first picked up by a number of Israeli outlets.

Asked about the claim, the IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said he was unaware of any intelligence that Sinwar planned to flee with the hostages.

The Jewish Chronicle’s report suggested that Netanyahu’s claim was based on the interrogation of a captured senior Hamas official as well as documents found at the same time as the discovery of the bodies of six Israeli hostages killed by Hamas in Gaza, claims denied by Israel officials.

Within days a number of publications including the Israeli outlets Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth, and the Israeli-Palestinian website +972 were quoting their own security sources suggesting that the claims – and previous stories by Perry – appeared to be made up.

Israeli reporters and commentators have also pointed to the fact that the story in the Jewish Chronicle appeared to put flesh on the bones of claims made by Netanyahu only a day earlier to justify Israeli troops remaining in the Philadelphi corridor on the border with Egypt. He told a press conference that a military withdrawal meant Israel would not be able to stop Hamas smuggling hostages out of Gaza. “They disappear in the Sinai and then they end up in Iran or in Yemen. They’re gone for ever,” he said.

That in turn has led some in Israel to suggest that the story – and others – may have been planted to influence the domestic debate in Israel around the hostage negotiations.

Prominent in questioning the Jewish Chronicle account has been Ronen Bergman, Israel’s best-known reporter covering intelligence and security. He was part of the New York Times’s Pulitzer prize-winning team for its coverage of the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October last year.

Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, Bergman said his own sources had described the Jewish Chronicle’s claims about Sinwar and the hostages as a “wild fabrication”.

Bergman also quoted a high-ranking IDF official in the hostages and missing persons department, who described a “malicious, vicious and diabolical” campaign to “disseminate to the international media documents that either are fabricated or which were severely distorted”.

The official was quoted as saying: “It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to understand what a report like that does to the heart of every hostage’s father, mother and wife. That is downright abuse, and only supposedly to validate narrow and selfish political calculations.”

While it remains unclear who has been briefing the stories to the Jewish Chronicle, the row over the stories has also focused attention on Elon Perry.

He is described in his online biography for the paper as “a former commando soldier of the elite Golani Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, which he served in for 28 years”.

He is also described as having been “a journalist for 25 years covering wars and terrorist attacks”, who since 2010 “has been lecturing in the UK and USA about the 100 years of terror in the Middle East”.

The Guardian has emailed Perry for comment.

However, when he was confronted this week in a recorded phone call by a journalist from the HaTzinor current affairs programme, Perry appeared to concede in an angry exchange that, contrary to his claims, he had never worked as a political science professor at Tel Aviv University, which had no record of him.

HaTzinor also said it had debunked his claim elsewhere to have participated in the Israeli hostage rescue mission to Entebbe in 1976, and questioned his assertion that he served in an elite undercover unit at a time when he would have been 58.

The Jewish Chronicle report was amplified on social media by Netanyahu’s son Yair, while several days after it first appeared Netanyahu’s wife repeated the claim that hostages could be taken to Iran, in a meeting with hostage relatives.

Israel has bombed a UN school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza, killing at least 18 people, including the shelter manager and five other Unrwa staff.

The al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat is home to about 12,000 displaced people, mostly women and children, the UN said. It has been hit five times since the start of the war in Gaza.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called the attack “totally unacceptable” and said it broke international laws that protect civilians in war. “These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”

The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said he was “outraged” by the bombing. “The disregard of the basic principles of international humanitarian law, especially protection of civilians, cannot and should not be accepted by the international community.”

German’s foreign ministry also condemned the attack and called on Israel to protect UN staff and aid workers.

The UN Palestinian relief agency, Unwra, has turned its schools across Gaza into shelters as Israeli airstrikes and ground operations forced most residents to flee their homes. An estimated 90% of people in Gaza are displaced, many moving to try to stay alive.

Israel said the strike targeted a Hamas “command and control centre” inside the school, but did not provide evidence or details. It has repeatedly bombed schools used as shelters for displaced people, claiming that militants used the sites and their residents as human shields.

The airstrikes on Wednesday night were the deadliest for Unwra staff since the start of the war, although previous attacks have killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians in other schools.

“This is the highest death toll among our staff in a single incident,” the agency said. “Among those killed was the manager of the Unwra shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people.”

It brings the total number of Unwra staff killed in Gaza to 220, the agency head, Philippe Lazzarin, said on X. “Humanitarian staff, premises and operations have been blatantly and unabatedly disregarded since the beginning of the war.”

More than four in five schools in Gaza have been directly hit or badly damaged and will need reconstruction or substantial renovation, a UN survey found in July. The 650,000 children in Gaza have not been able to study for nearly a year.

Many families have stayed in the school shelters despite the repeated attacks because they have nowhere else to go; swathes of the Gaza Strip have been reduced to rubble and tent encampments are overcrowded.

“Most of the people took refuge in schools and the schools were bombed,” Basil Amarneh from Gaza’s Al-Aqsa hospital told the AFP news agency, as children injured in the bombing were carried in by medics. “Where will people go?”

Earlier on Wednesday, six siblings, aged 21 months to 21 years, were killed in a strike on a home in southern Khan Younis, along with five other people, according to the European hospital, which received the casualties.

After more than 11 months of war, the death toll in Gaza is more than 41,000, according to health authorities in the territory. Most are civilians, including women, children and older people.

More than 95,000 people have been wounded, with a quarter suffering “life-changing injuries” including amputations that will require years of support, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

At least 22,500 people will need “rehabilitation services now and for years to come”, the WHO said, adding that Gaza had little capacity to offer that care as most hospitals and healthcare facilities had been damaged or destroyed. “The huge surge in rehabilitation needs occurs in parallel with the ongoing decimation of the health system,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the Palestinian territories, said.

The war began after Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October when about 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and 250 taken hostage.

Efforts to broker a second ceasefire and hostage release deal, after a one-week pause in fighting last year, have repeatedly stalled, with both sides accusing the other of sabotage.

Hamas said on Wednesday it was ready to implement an “immediate” ceasefire with Israel in Gaza, based on a US proposal put forward in June, without new conditions from any party.

The United States has issued new sanctions on 16 allies of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, accusing them of obstructing the 28 July election and of aiding the crackdown that followed a vote widely seen to have been stolen.

Those targeted include members of the supreme court and the country’s electoral council – including their respective chiefs, Caryslia Rodríguez and Antonio Jose Meneses – “who impeded a transparent electoral process and the release of accurate election results”, the US treasury said on Thursday.

Others on the new sanctions list are military leaders, intelligence officials and government officers “responsible for intensifying repression through intimidation, indiscriminate detentions and censorship”, according to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Hours after polls closed on 28 July, Venezuela’s electoral authorities declared Maduro the victor, though they never released detailed vote tallies to back up their claim, while the opposition compiled concrete proof that the opposition candidate Edmundo González had won. Amid global condemnation over the lack of transparency Venezuela’s high court, stacked with ruling party loyalists, reaffirmed Maduro’s victory.

In the ensuing crackdown, at least 2,000 people have been arrested, and González himself fled to Spain.

Announcing the new sanctions, the deputy secretary of the treasury, Wally Adeyemo said: “Today, the United States is taking decisive action against Maduro and his representatives for their repression of the Venezuelan people and denial of their citizens’ rights to a free and fair election.”

Maduro himself has been under US sanctions since 2017.

Adeyemo added that the treasury department was “targeting key officials involved in Maduro’s fraudulent and illegitimate claims of victory and his brutal crackdown on free expression following the election, as the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans call for change”.

The new sanctions come just days after González was forced to leave Venezuela under the threat of arrest by the regime.

In a statement on Thursday, González wrote: “My commitment to the mandate I received from the sovereign people of Venezuela is irrevocable … The struggle continues until the end.”

The United States has issued new sanctions on 16 allies of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, accusing them of obstructing the 28 July election and of aiding the crackdown that followed a vote widely seen to have been stolen.

Those targeted include members of the supreme court and the country’s electoral council – including their respective chiefs, Caryslia Rodríguez and Antonio Jose Meneses – “who impeded a transparent electoral process and the release of accurate election results”, the US treasury said on Thursday.

Others on the new sanctions list are military leaders, intelligence officials and government officers “responsible for intensifying repression through intimidation, indiscriminate detentions and censorship”, according to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Hours after polls closed on 28 July, Venezuela’s electoral authorities declared Maduro the victor, though they never released detailed vote tallies to back up their claim, while the opposition compiled concrete proof that the opposition candidate Edmundo González had won. Amid global condemnation over the lack of transparency Venezuela’s high court, stacked with ruling party loyalists, reaffirmed Maduro’s victory.

In the ensuing crackdown, at least 2,000 people have been arrested, and González himself fled to Spain.

Announcing the new sanctions, the deputy secretary of the treasury, Wally Adeyemo said: “Today, the United States is taking decisive action against Maduro and his representatives for their repression of the Venezuelan people and denial of their citizens’ rights to a free and fair election.”

Maduro himself has been under US sanctions since 2017.

Adeyemo added that the treasury department was “targeting key officials involved in Maduro’s fraudulent and illegitimate claims of victory and his brutal crackdown on free expression following the election, as the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans call for change”.

The new sanctions come just days after González was forced to leave Venezuela under the threat of arrest by the regime.

In a statement on Thursday, González wrote: “My commitment to the mandate I received from the sovereign people of Venezuela is irrevocable … The struggle continues until the end.”

Two astronauts have completed the first commercial spacewalk and tested slimmed-down spacesuits designed by SpaceX, in one of the boldest attempts yet to push the boundaries of privately funded spaceflight.

Hundreds of miles above Earth and orbiting at close to 30,000km/h (18,600mph), the billionaire Jared Isaacman, 41, who chartered the Polaris Dawn mission, exited the space capsule at 11.52am BST on Thursday.

“Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” said the 41-year-old space enthusiast as he stood on a ladder looking down at Earth’s surface.

Isaacman was followed by Sarah Gillis, a senior engineer at SpaceX who has spent years working on missions from the ground. Gillis, 30, conducted movement tests to assess how the new SpaceX suit – a much less bulky equivalent of the Nasa equipment – operates in the vacuum of space.

To prepare for the test, conducted at an altitude of 435 miles (700km), the Crew Dragon capsule was completely depressurised, meaning the whole crew – including the two who remained inside – relied on their spacesuits for oxygen and pressure.

Only well-funded government agencies had so far managed to carry out spacewalks, known as EVAs (extravehicular activities), and they are a notoriously difficult feat. Most have been done from the International Space Station (ISS) and the Chinese Tiangong space station.

Private companies are gradually taking the lead in spaceflight as governments, in particular the US government, seek to spend tax revenues elsewhere. Nasa has contracted SpaceX to land astronauts, including the first woman, on the moon this decade.

The Nasa chief, Bill Nelson, said Thursday’s successful EVA represented “a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and Nasa’s long-term goal to build a vibrant US space economy”.

The Polaris Dawn mission is the second that Isaacman has funded. He has declined to give the price but the missions are estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2021 the private pilot and now trained astronaut, who made millions from his electronic payment company Shift4, flew on the Inspiration4 mission, the first orbital spaceflight by an all-civilian crew. That mission included a cancer survivor as well as a data engineer who won his seat in a raffle draw.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has operated both missions and sees them as major milestones in making access to space easier and cheaper.

Musk plans to take astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars. His company is developing the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, called Starship, and has carried out four test flights of the 120-metre-tall system. The next is due in November.

Ian Whittaker, a space physics expert at Nottingham Trent University, said the success of the “first non-space agency astronaut spacewalk” was “extremely exciting for the private space industry as it is the first step on a longer road towards space tourism”.

“The high cost will mean that only the ultra-rich get to experience this for now but putting this cost in the hands of businesses means that taxpayer money can be used for other purposes,” he said.

The spacewalk lasted about 30 minutes, and Isaacman and Gillis always remained on the ladder. While walking is impossible in microgravity, Nasa defines a spacewalk as “any time an astronaut gets out of a vehicle while in space”.

The first person to “walk” in space, the Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, spent 12 minutes outside his spacecraft on 18 March 1965. His mission showed some of the risks associate with designing spacesuits: by the end of the spacewalk, Leonov’s suit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could no longer fit back in the airlock. He had to manually release air to get inside.

Tim Peake, the last British astronaut to go into space, said on X that it would be very interesting to hear the crew’s full feedback on the new EVA suit mobility, something he said was “incredibly important yet hard to achieve – especially fingertip fidelity”. He added: “Elbow mobility looks great though.”

Peake, 52, has announced he has been chosen to lead a planned first all-British crewed mission into space. The UK Space Agency is undertaking it in a deal with Axiom, an American company that organises visits to the ISS.

During their five-day mission, the Polaris Dawn’s crew will act as test subjects for future deep space travel by travelling through portions of the Van Allen radiation belt and then analysing the effects of space radiation on their bodies. The mission also includes a retired US air force lieutenant colonel, Scott Poteet, 50, and another SpaceX engineer, Anna Menon, 38.

Polaris Dawn’s spacewalk happened at the same time as a record 19 astronauts orbited Earth, after Russia’s Soyuz rocket ferried two cosmonauts and a US astronaut to the ISS.

Celta Vigo’s former captain Hugo Mallo has been found guilty of the sexual assault of a woman who was working as the Espanyol mascot in the final moments before a game in La Liga.

A judge in Barcelona fined him €6,000 (£5,100) with a further €1,000 with interest to be paid in compensation after ruling that Mallo put his hand inside the victim’s parakeet costume and touched her chest as she and another mascot waited at the end of the line of players shaking hands with opponents. He will also have to pay costs. Mallo, who was then with Celta and now plays in Greece for Aris, has announced he will appeal.

The judge, Salvador Roig, said Mallo had acted on his sexual desire and had undermined the victim’s sexual intimacy at the RCDE stadium in April 2019. Two Espanyol mascots waited at the end of the line of players greeting Celta’s players: one in a “male” parakeet costume, the other in a “female” costume. As captain, Mallo was the first to reach the end of the line and has been ruled to have put his hands inside the costume, causing the victim to take a step back.

The judge noted that Mallo had offered no alternative explanation, such as having accidentally touched the victim. Instead, he had denied the accusation. Mallo said he had greeted the players and the mascots in a normal manner and did not know the gender of the person in the costume. He said that he was aware that the game was being broadcast, that his actions would be caught on camera and argued that the video of the greeting shows nothing unusual, and that he immediately began his final warm-up.

In a statement published on Instagram, Mallo said he “totally disagrees” with the court’s ruling and “completely denies” the charges. His post included the video of the two teams shaking hands and him reaching the end of the line where the two mascots are.

“I would like to underline that the sentence noted that my statement to the court was firm and without contradiction, in which I recognised that at the end of the greetings and as I turned towards the middle of the pitch my hand could have touched the parakeet’s waist, [and] absolutely that there was not any touching of the parakeet’s chest.”

The European Central Bank has warned that economic growth in the eurozone will be weaker than it had hoped, as it lowered interest rates for the second time this year.

The ECB’s governing council decided to lower its deposit rate – paid to banks who make overnight deposits with the Eurosystem – by a quarter of one per cent, from 3.75% to 3.5% on Thursday.

The move was expected, as inflation in the eurozone fell to 2.2% in August – down from 2.6% in July and near the ECB’s 2% target.

In a sign that Europe’s economic recovery is faltering, the ECB lowered its forecast for GDP growth this year from 0.9% to 0.8%. For 2025, growth expectations were trimmed from 1.4% to 1.3%, and from 1.6% to 1.5% in 2026.

The ECB said it eased borrowing costs because “inflation is gradually coming down and has been developing as we expected”.

The central bank’s economists expect inflation will increase in the latter part of this year, pointing out that “wages are still rising at an elevated pace”, before dropping in 2025 and 2026.

Thursday’s cut follows a quarter-point cut to the deposit rate in June, which the ECB had raised to a record high of 4% after inflation soared across Europe in 2022 and 2023.

The ECB was coy about whether it might lower rates again at its next meeting in October. Its president, Christine Lagarde, told reporters in Frankfurt that “we are not pre-committing to a particular rate path”.

“We are going to decide meeting by meeting. I’m not giving you any commitment of any kind as far as that particular date is concerned and our path is not predetermined at all,” Lagarde added.

Lagarde also explained that the slowdown in Germany’s economy – currently on the brink of recession – had been included in the ECB’s latest growth forecasts.

Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, said the financial markets expect more cuts from the ECB this year.

Brooks said: “The problem for the ECB is that financial markets do not seem to believe that they are still undecided about the future of monetary policy.

“The interest rate futures market is still pricing in 60bps of rate cuts for the rest of this year, with rate cuts expected in October and in December.”

Investors are expecting the US Federal Reserve to start easing policy next week, with a quarter-point cut to its benchmark interest rate. The Bank of England also meets next week, but is expected to delay a second cut to UK Bank rate until November.

The European Central Bank has warned that economic growth in the eurozone will be weaker than it had hoped, as it lowered interest rates for the second time this year.

The ECB’s governing council decided to lower its deposit rate – paid to banks who make overnight deposits with the Eurosystem – by a quarter of one per cent, from 3.75% to 3.5% on Thursday.

The move was expected, as inflation in the eurozone fell to 2.2% in August – down from 2.6% in July and near the ECB’s 2% target.

In a sign that Europe’s economic recovery is faltering, the ECB lowered its forecast for GDP growth this year from 0.9% to 0.8%. For 2025, growth expectations were trimmed from 1.4% to 1.3%, and from 1.6% to 1.5% in 2026.

The ECB said it eased borrowing costs because “inflation is gradually coming down and has been developing as we expected”.

The central bank’s economists expect inflation will increase in the latter part of this year, pointing out that “wages are still rising at an elevated pace”, before dropping in 2025 and 2026.

Thursday’s cut follows a quarter-point cut to the deposit rate in June, which the ECB had raised to a record high of 4% after inflation soared across Europe in 2022 and 2023.

The ECB was coy about whether it might lower rates again at its next meeting in October. Its president, Christine Lagarde, told reporters in Frankfurt that “we are not pre-committing to a particular rate path”.

“We are going to decide meeting by meeting. I’m not giving you any commitment of any kind as far as that particular date is concerned and our path is not predetermined at all,” Lagarde added.

Lagarde also explained that the slowdown in Germany’s economy – currently on the brink of recession – had been included in the ECB’s latest growth forecasts.

Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, said the financial markets expect more cuts from the ECB this year.

Brooks said: “The problem for the ECB is that financial markets do not seem to believe that they are still undecided about the future of monetary policy.

“The interest rate futures market is still pricing in 60bps of rate cuts for the rest of this year, with rate cuts expected in October and in December.”

Investors are expecting the US Federal Reserve to start easing policy next week, with a quarter-point cut to its benchmark interest rate. The Bank of England also meets next week, but is expected to delay a second cut to UK Bank rate until November.

Stellantis is to halt production of the electric Fiat 500 model for four weeks because of a lack of orders in Europe.

The Franco-Italian company, which also owns the Citroën, Vauxhall and Peugeot brands, said production would be suspended from Friday.

A global slowdown in sales of electric vehicles (EVs), which has been partly due to differing policies on green incentives, has pushed carmakers around the world to adapt their EV plans.

Stellantis said: “The measure is necessary due to the current lack of orders linked to the profound difficulties experienced in the European electric [car] market by all producers, particularly the European ones.”

The fully electric Fiat 500, a small distinctive car, is made at the Mirafiori factory in Turin in north-west Italy, the birthplace of the brand.

Stellantis said it was “working hard to manage at its best this hard phase of transition”.

The company is investing €100m (£84m) in Mirafiori, which opened in 1939, to adopt a higher performance battery and will produce a hybrid version of the 500 model, starting between 2025 and 2026.

Unions have long urged Stellantis to revamp the site, where output has slumped in recent years, by building a new high-volume, cheap car there.

“The Mirafiori complex is undergoing a deep transformation, with the aim of making it a true global innovation and development site, a key choice if we are to meet the challenge of the transition to sustainable mobility to which we are called,” the company said.

Italy launched a $1bn plan to help drivers switch to cleaner vehicles this year, including subsidies for purchases of fully-electric cars. However, Rome and Stellantis have been at odds over the government’s approach to incentives.

There are fears of a tit-for-tat trade war with China, after the EU imposed provisional tariffs on the import of Chinese EVs, ranging from 17.4% to 37.6%, in June. The two sides had failed to reach an agreement on what the European Commission called “unfair” subsidies from Beijing.

In a sign of growing divisions within Europe, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called on the EU to reconsider tariffs on Chinese EVs, saying it was important to find a “compromise” between the bloc and China.

“I have to be blunt and frank … I think we need to reconsider, all of us, not only member states, but also the [European] Commission, our position towards this movement. We don’t need another war, in this case a trade war,” Sánchez said during a visit to Kunshan near Shanghai on Wednesday.

China is a leading producer of electric cars, and take-up in the country has soared. Between 2021 and 2022, electric vehicle sales in China increased from 1.3m to 6.8m, accounting for more than one-third of the world’s EV sales in 2022. China is also the world’s biggest single carbon emitter.

The disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on additional sex crimes charges ahead of his retrial in New York, Manhattan prosecutors said at a hearing on Thursday.

The indictment, handed down by a New York grand jury, is under seal until Weinstein’s arraignment, which is scheduled for 18 September.

Weinstein, 72, is recovering from emergency heart surgery on Monday at a Manhattan hospital and was not at Thursday’s hearing. Weinstein has been held at Rikers Island jail in New York since April.

At a recent court hearing, the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, disclosed that prosecutors had started presenting to a grand jury evidence of up to three additional allegations against Weinstein, dating as far back as the mid-2000s.

Prosecutors had been seeking to retry Weinstein after his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges was tossed by an appeals court earlier this year.

Weinstein was indicted in 2018 in New York on charges of rape and committing a criminal sex act and was convicted in 2020 after a jury found him guilty of a criminal sex act in the first degree and rape in the third degree. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Then in 2022, in a separate case, a Los Angeles jury found Weinstein guilty on three counts of rape and sexual assault. He was he was sentenced in Los Angeles in 2023 to an additional 16 years behind bars.

In April of this year, a New York appeals court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 New York conviction, ruling that the judge overseeing that case prejudiced Weinstein with improper rulings and should not have allowed other women whose accusations were not part of the case to testify.

In May, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said that it would retry the disgraced move mogul, and this summer a judge tentatively scheduled Weinstein’s retrial for the New York case to begin on 12 November.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the new indictment, as of now, would be a separate case from the retrial of the 2020 case.

Weinstein is also appealing his Los Angeles conviction.

The announcement of the new charges against Weinstein on Thursday comes just one week after prosecutors in Britain announced that they would no longer pursue charges of indecent assault against Weinstein, after a review of evidence found “there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”.

In all, more than 80 women have accused the former movie mogul of various acts of sexual assault and harassment. In 2017, the stories detailing alleged experiences with Weinstein kicked off the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

A court has ordered two women to pay €8,000 in damages to France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, after making false claims she was transgender, sparking online rumour-mongering by conspiracy theorists and the far right.

The women had posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging the French president’s wife had once been a man named Jean-Michel, an untruth that went viral just weeks before the 2022 presidential election and prompted Macron to file a libel complaint.

Posts spread on social media claiming the first lady, formerly Brigitte Trogneux, had never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed gender and assumed that identity.

A Paris court sentenced Amandine Roy and Natacha Rey on Thursday to pay a total of €8,000 (£6,750) in damages to the president’s wife, and €5,000 to her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux.

They were also given a suspended fine of €500.

Macron, 71, did not attend the trial in June and was not present for the ruling.

Roy, a self-proclaimed spiritual medium, interviewed Rey, a self-described independent journalist, for four hours on her YouTube channel. Rey spoke about the “state lie” and “scam” that she claimed to have uncovered.

The disinformation even spread to the US where Macron was derided in a now deleted YouTube video before the November midterm elections.

Rey was ill during the trial, but did not manage to have it postponed.

The former US first lady Michelle Obama, the US vice-president and presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, and the New Zealand former prime minister Jacinda Ardern have also been the target of disinformation about their gender or sexuality in efforts to mock or humiliate them.

As news of the ruling came though on Thursday, Macron made her Netflix debut playing herself in the hit series Emily in Paris.

The show’s star, Lily Collins, told Elle magazine the idea came to her and the programme creator Darren Star when they met the first lady at the Elysée Palace in December 2022.

A granddaughter of Italy’s wartime dictator Benito Mussolini said on Thursday she was leaving prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party because it was too rightwing.

Rachele Mussolini, a city councillor in Rome, said she was moving to the group of Forza Italia, which is part of Meloni’s ruling coalition but seen as more liberal on civil rights.

“It is time to turn the page and join a party that I feel is closer to my moderate and centrist sensibilities,” the 50-year-old told ANSA news agency.

Mussolini, who won the most votes of any candidate at the last council elections in Rome in 2021, recently took issue with the Brothers of Italy’s stance on minority rights. She is known for her support for LGBTQ+ rights and has said that she “never liked” the fascist salute, which some party members and supporters still perform during commemorative events.

Last month she took issue with Meloni in a dispute over the gender of Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer who fought against Italian Angela Carini at the Olympic Games.

After Carini gave up during her bout against Khelif – who later won the gold medal – Meloni said it had not been a match between equals because the Algerian had failed a gender eligibility test at the World Championships last year. “Until proven otherwise Imane Khelif is a woman. And she has suffered an unworthy witch-hunt,” Mussolini said.

She took her name from her grandmother, Rachele Guidi, Benito Mussolini’s second wife. Guidi and Benito Mussolini had five children together, including Rachele Mussolini’s father Romano, a jazz pianist who died in 2006.

The Brothers of Italy traces its roots to the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party formed in 1946 by supporters of Mussolini’s regime and former high-ranking members of his fascist party. Meloni’s party still shares its party logo with MSI, an Italian tricolour in the form of a flame.

Meloni has tried to present her party as a mainstream conservative group and declared in 2022 that the Italian right had “handed fascism over to history”. Since taking office that year, her government has pursued hardline policies on immigration, abortion and same-sex parenting.

Ansa and Reuters contributed to this report