Scores of Palestinians, including many women and children, have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a crowded apartment building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 93 people had been killed and 40 were still missing. Many of the victims were members of the extended Abu Nasr family, as well as Palestinians displaced from elsewhere.

Emergency workers and neighbours scrabbled through concrete wreckage on Tuesday. The remains of victims were wrapped in blankets and lowered by rope from a balcony to be laid on the bloodied ground. Limbs poked out through chunks of dusty masonry and twisted wire.

Northern Gaza has been the focus of renewed heavy attacks by Israel in the past three weeks, targeting what it says are pockets of Hamas militants who have regrouped there.

The violence and Israeli evacuation orders have displaced large numbers of Palestinians, though about 100,000 people have remained.

Marwan Al-Hams, an official at the Gaza health ministry, said 17 people were missing and 150 wounded. Medical staff said 20 children had been killed.

The dead included a mother and her five children, some of them adults, and a second mother with her six children, according to an initial casualty list provided by the emergency services.

Tuesday morning’s strike came hours after Israel’s parliament passed two laws that could prevent the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest aid provider in Gaza, from operating in the Palestinian territories. It marks the culmination of a long-running campaign against Unrwa, which Israel contends has been infiltrated by Hamas, an allegation the agency denies.

Video footage posted on social media showed bodies wrapped in carpets and blankets on the ground outside the building, while the sound of Israeli drones was audible above the site.

“There are tens of martyrs,” said Ismail Ouaida, an eyewitness who was helping to recover bodies. “Tens of displaced people were living in this house. The house was bombed without prior warning. As you can see, martyrs are here and there, with body parts hanging on the walls.”

Rabie al-Shandagly, 30, who had taken refuge in a nearby school, told Agence France-Presse: “The explosion happened at night and I first thought it was shelling, but when I went out after sunrise I saw people pulling bodies, limbs and the wounded from under the rubble. Most of the victims are women and children, and people are trying to save the injured, but there are no hospitals or proper medical care.”

Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, where a number of medics were detained during a raid by Israeli troops last week, said dozens of wounded people had arrived at the overwhelmed facility. He appealed to surgeons who had been ordered to evacuate by Israel to return to treat the injured.

“There is nothing left in the Kamal Adwan hospital except first aid materials,” Safia said in a voice message to journalists on Tuesday. “The healthcare system has completely collapsed.”. He said people who arrive wounded are dying because there is no care for them.

The Israel Defense Forces said they were looking into the reports of what had happened at the building.

The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months, saying it carried out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tried to avoid harming civilians. The strikes have often killed women and children.

The military said it detained scores of suspected Hamas militants in the raid on Kamal Adwan hospital, the latest in a series of raids on hospitals since the start of the war.

Israel has sharply restricted aid to the north this month, prompting a warning from the US that failure to facilitate greater humanitarian efforts could lead to a reduction in military aid.

Palestinians fear Israel is enacting a plan proposed by a group of former generals to order the civilian population of the north to evacuate, cut off aid supplies, and consider anyone who remains a militant. The military has denied it is carrying out such a plan, while the government has not said clearly whether it is carrying out all or part of it.

Many north Gaza Palestinians feel they have been abandoned by the world as attention shifts to the war in Lebanon, where Israel is conducting a military campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah. “The world has forgotten about us, north Gaza is being wiped out by bombs, by starvation and by displacement,” said Ali, a resident of Jabaliya who asked that his full name not be used for fears of reprisals.

“People are being killed without ambulances able to reach them or hospitals to treat them. We don’t have coffins, we use blankets instead, though we are in acute need of blankets as it is getting colder at night,” he told Reuters via a chat app.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. About 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 43,020 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians.

Agencies contributed to this report

Israel’s recent offensive in northern Gaza has killed more than 700 people in a little over three weeks, with nearly 300 of those deaths, mainly in the north, occurring in the past nine days alone. While it has attempted to justify its renewed focus on the north by claiming it is targeting regrouped Hamas fighters, the intensity of the fighting has caused heavy losses on the 100,000 civilians still living there. Many of them are families, exhausted by Israel’s multiple forced displacement orders, who have chosen to stay in the north.

The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people across Gaza, saying it is carrying out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and has tried to avoid harming civilians. The strikes have often killed women and children. These are the reported deaths in the past nine days:

20 October

At least 87 people were killed overnight when an Israeli airstrike hit several multi-storey buildings in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Images suggested two or three big blocks of flats were demolished in the strike.

Graphic footage afterwards showed the bodies of several children among the dead, while footage from the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital showed body bags.

Israel says the casualties figures were exaggerated, despite evidence of civilian deaths.

The UN special coordinator for the peace process in the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, in a statement on the airstrike said: “The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying … Horrifying scenes are unfolding in the northern strip amidconflict, relentless Israeli strikes and an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis.”

23 October

Israeli strikes across Gaza kill 42 people during an intense bombardment; 37 deaths were in northern Gaza.

The Gaza health ministry and the World Health Organization announced they would be unable to start a polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza as planned because of fighting, mass displacements and lack of access.

The Gaza civil emergency service said three of its rescuers were wounded in northern Gaza in a “targeted strike” that aimed to force them out of Jabaliya, hours after the Israeli army ordered some civil emergency staff to leave the camp.

Among the dead was a worker for the UN Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa, which said one of its staff members had been killed when an Unrwa vehicle was hit in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza.

24 October

With Israel’s siege of northern Gaza on its 19th day, at least 31 Palestinians were killed in the Jabaliya refugee camp in a 24-hour period.

27 October

Officials in Gaza said at least 45 Palestinians were killed in a series of Israeli attacks. Many were in Jabaliya, which was hit by an airstrike. Israel said it had targeted militants.

Israeli forces withdrew from one of northern Gaza’s last functioning medical facilities, leaving a trail of destruction after a days-long siege.

29 October

Scores of Palestinians, including many women and children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a crowded block of flats in Beit Lahiya.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 93 people had been killed and 40 were missing, as emergency workers dug through the rubble on Tuesday looking for the dead and injured. Many of those in the block were members of the extended Abu Nasr family.

Hezbollah has elected its deputy secretary general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, as its new head, ending a month-long vacuum after the group’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by Israel.

Since Nasrallah’s death, Qassem has filled in for him, giving a public address earlier this month in which he vowed that Hezbollah would continue fighting Israel in what it described as a war of attrition, despite painful losses.

At the same time, Qassem said he supported the efforts towards achieving a ceasefire in Lebanon, without linking the country’s fate to a ceasefire in Gaza, which Hezbollah had previously said was a precondition to a cessation in hostilities with Israel.

Qassem has been the group’s deputy secretary general since 1991 and one of its most public-facing officials, often speaking on behalf of the group at rallies and in interviews. Beirut-raised though his family is from south Lebanon, Qassem was at first involved with the Lebanese Shia Amal movement before becoming a founding member of Hezbollah in the early 1980s.

His election has ended a succession crisis within Hezbollah and is among the signs that the group is reconstituting itself after a series of blows from Israel. The last presumed successor to Nasrallah, Hashem Safieddine, has been missing for almost a month after Hezbollah declared he was killed in Israeli bombing in the southern suburbs of Beirut on 3 October.

Qassem has inherited a group that is on the back foot from a ferocious Israeli offensive and is diminished from the once mythical status it enjoyed in Lebanon.

Hezbollah has been rocked by explosions that targeted its communication devices, which injured thousands of its members last month, and hundreds of Israeli strikes targeting its weapons caches across the country. Almost all of its senior military leadership has been killed by Israel over the last three months.

The group is engaged in fierce fighting in south Lebanon with Israeli forces, who have been conducting what Israel has described as a “limited” operation along the Lebanese-Israel border since 30 September.

Israel has said it has killed hundreds of Hezbollah members since then, and the group has stopped issuing public funeral notices for its fighters for operational security reasons. Hezbollah has claimed to have killed 90 Israeli soldiers, while Israeli media puts the figure at around 37.

Shortly after his appointment, the Israeli government’s Arabic-language account warned on X that Qassem’s tenure “may be short if he follows in the footsteps” of Nasrallah and Safieddine, and called for Hezbollah to disarm.

While Hezbollah and Israel trade blows in south Lebanon, Israeli warplanes continue to bombard swathes of the country.

Israel carried out more than 37 airstrikes in Baalbek, in the Bekaa valley, on Monday, killing at least 67 people and wounding more than 120, according to the area’s governor. More than two-thirds of the dead and wounded were women and children. It was the bloodiest day for the area since fighting between Hezbollah and Israel began a year earlier.

Videos from the Baalbek town of Brital show a street with collapsed buildings and smoke plumes emanating from areas where bombs fell the night before.

Baalbek is famed for its archaeological sites, chief among them the Baalbek temple complex, designated as a Unesco world heritage site in 1984. Monday night’s bombing damaged one of the historic gates of Baalbek castle, though the interior of the temple complex was unharmed.

The Bekaa valley is historically an area where Hezbollah enjoys support and the group has weapons caches there. However, it is one of the largest geographic areas of Lebanon and is politically and religiously diverse.

Since Israel started its intense aerial campaign in Lebanon on 23 September, the Bekaa valley has been one of the most consistently struck areas, outside of south Lebanon.

The president of the Republican party’s branch in Puerto Rico has said he will not vote for Donald Trump unless he apologises for racist remarks made at his rally referring to the US island territory as a “floating island of garbage”.

Outrage even among fellow Republicans is continuing to mount after the racist insult at the Republican nominee’s rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, with the podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe coming under fire for his inflammatory comments made about Puerto Rico in the opening speech.

The rally featured nearly 30 speakers, with some of them making a series of racially offensive remarks about Latinos, Black Americans and Jewish citizens.

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said, among other controversial remarks, including singling out a Black man for a remark about watermelons.

In the hours following, Democrats, celebrities and Hispanic groups on both sides of the political aisle condemned the comments as “offensive” and “derogatory”.

But on Monday, Angel M Cintrón, a former member of Puerto Rico’s state legislature and the Republican party’s current chair on the island, also said he would withhold his support from Trump unless he personally apologised for the racist remarks.

“Right now we have no business and no relationship with Trump,” Cintrón said during a Puerto Rican talkshow. “If Donald Trump doesn’t apologise, we won’t vote for him.”

“Puerto Rico is always first,” he added.

Cintrón’s demand comes after the archbishop of San Juan, Roberto O González Nieves, wrote to the former president also urging him to apologise.

“I enjoy a good joke,” the archbishop wrote. “However, humor has its limits. It should not insult or denigrate the dignity and sacredness of people. Hinchcliffe’s remarks do not only provoke sinister laughter but hatred.”

He added: “It is not sufficient for your campaign to apologise. It is important that you, personally, apologise for these comments.”

Trump has not yet apologised or commented on the comedian’s racist comments.

However, the swift reaction from prominent Puerto Rican figures in the entertainment industry on social media prompted his campaign to issue a rare defensive statement, with Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the campaign, claiming that the comment about Puerto Rico “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign”.

Other members of the Republican party have attempted to distance themselves from the comments.

“This joke bombed for a reason. It’s not funny and it’s not true. Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans!” Rick Scott, a Republican senator from Florida wrote in a post on X.

Republican congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents parts of Miami and has participated in recent Trump events, said: “Disgusted by @TonyHinchcliffe’s racist comment calling Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’

‘‘This rhetoric does not reflect GOP values’’, she wrote on X. ‘‘Puerto Rico sent 48,000+ soldiers to Vietnam, with over 345 Purple Hearts awarded. This bravery deserves respect. Educate yourself!”

While Puerto Ricans residing on the island are not able to vote for the president, two-thirds of Puerto Ricans residing in the US can cast their ballots in the states where they currently live. In 2021, an estimated 5.8 million people of Puerto Rican origin lived in the US.

According to sources inside Trump’s campaign, his associates are increasingly concerned about the impact on the vote of their political adversaries labelling him as a racist and fascist.

This is not the first time that some of Hinchcliffe’s remarks have ignited controversy because of their offensive nature.

In 2021, Hinchcliffe, a standup comedian from Austin, Texas, whose podcast Kill Tony has 1.89 million subscribers on YouTube, sparked outrage by using a racial slur in reference to the American-Chinese comedian Peng Deng during a comedy performance and declined to offer an apology.

When questioned by Variety regarding the racist remarks, Hinchcliffe said: “I knew that what I had done was not wrong. It was so dumbfounding to me because it was a joke, and my stance is that comedians should never apologise for a joke.”

On Monday, Matt Muehling, the house guitarist for the Kill Tony band, posted a statement on Instagram by Puerto Rico’s Democratic chair, Luis Dávila Pernas, denouncing Hinchcliffe’s comments at the Trump rally.

After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have stumbled on a lost Maya city of temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir, all of which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.

The discovery in the south-eastern Mexican state of Campeche came about after Luke Auld-Thomas, an anthropologist at Northern Arizona University, began wondering whether non-archaeological uses of the state-of-the-art laser mapping known as lidar could help shed light on the Maya world.

“For the longest time, our sample of the Maya civilisation was a couple of hundred square kilometres total,” Auld-Thomas said. “That sample was hard won by archaeologists who painstakingly walked over every square metre, hacking away at the vegetation with machetes, to see if they were standing on a pile of rocks that might have been someone’s home 1,500 years ago.”

Lidar is a remote sensing technique that uses a pulsed laser and other data obtained by flying over a site to generate three-dimensional information about the shape of surface characteristics.

Although Auld-Thomas knew that it could help, he also knew it was not a cheap tool. Funders are reluctant to pay for lidar surveys in areas without obvious traces of the Maya civilisation, which reached its height between AD250 and AD900.

It occurred to the anthropologist that others may already have mapped the area for different reasons. “Scientists in ecology, forestry and civil engineering have been using lidar surveys to study some of these areas for totally separate purposes,” Auld-Thomas said. “So what if a lidar survey of this area already existed?”

He was in luck. In 2013, a forest monitoring project had undertaken a detailed lidar survey of 122 square kilometres of the area. Together with researchers from Tulane University, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, and the University of Houston’s National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, Auld-Thomas began analysing the survey’s data to explore 50 square miles of Campeche that had never been investigated by archaeologists.

Their analysis turned up a dense and diverse range of unstudied Maya settlements, including an entire city they named Valeriana, after a nearby freshwater lagoon.

“The larger of Valeriana’s two monumental precincts has all the hallmarks of a Classic Maya political capital: multiple enclosed plazas connected by a broad causeway, temple pyramids, a ballcourt, a reservoir formed by damming an arroyo (a seasonal watercourse), and a probable … architectural arrangement that generally indicates a founding date prior to AD150,” the researchers write in their study, which is published in the journal Antiquity.

According to Auld-Thomas, the team’s findings show just how many undiscovered treasures the area could yet yield.

“We didn’t just find rural areas and smaller settlements,” he said. “We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the area’s only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years. The government never knew about it, the scientific community never knew about it. That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that no, we have not found everything, and yes, there’s a lot more to be discovered.”

The team are planning to follow up on their lidar analysis with fieldwork at the newly discovered sites, which they say could offer valuable lessons as parts of the planet deal with the demands of mass urbanisation.

“The ancient world is full of examples of cities that are completely different than the cities we have today,” Auld-Thomas said. “There were cities that were sprawling agricultural patchworks and hyper-dense; there were cities that were highly egalitarian and extremely unequal. Given the environmental and social challenges we’re facing from rapid population growth, it can only help to study ancient cities and expand our view of what urban living can look like.”

Six years ago, some of the same researchers used lidar to uncover tens of thousands of previously undetected Maya houses, buildings, defence works and pyramids in the dense jungle of Guatemala’s Petén region, suggesting that millions more people lived there than was previously thought.

The discoveries, which included industrial-sized agricultural fields and irrigation canals, were announced in 2018 by an alliance of US, European and Guatemalan archaeologists working with Guatemala’s Maya Heritage and Nature Foundation.

The study estimated that 10 million people may have lived within the Maya lowlands, meaning that huge-scale food production may have been needed.

A photographer was killed in the line of duty after inadvertently walking into a spinning airplane propeller while taking pictures in Kansas.

Amanda Gallagher, 37, was on a work assignment on Saturday capturing pictures of skydivers getting on and off planes in the town of Derby – less than 15 miles from Wichita – when she stepped back into the propeller of a plane that was stationary yet still running.

First responders took Gallagher to a local hospital, but she died there from her injuries, officials said.

The Air Capital Drop Zone, the skydiving center that operated the plane involved in the photographer’s death, said Gallagher violated “basic safety procedures”. “For unknown reasons … she moved in front of the wing” of the plane, aiming her camera upward to shoot photos, the statement said.

A GoFundMe user identifying herself as Gallagher’s sister-in-law launched a campaign on the site to raise donations meant to cover funeral expenses. The fundraiser had drawn more than $15,000 in contributions.

“Amanda Gallagher was kind, adventurous, creative and beautiful inside and out,” a message on the site says. “She was a loving daughter, sister, aunt and friend and will be greatly missed.”

That message also said Gallagher died “doing what she loved, skydiving and taking pictures”.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating Gallagher’s death.

Scores of apparently fake social media accounts are boosting Azerbaijan’s hosting of the Cop29 climate summit, an investigation has revealed.

The accounts were mostly set up after July, at which time seven of the top 10 most engaged posts using the hashtags #COP29 and #COP29Azerbaijan were critical of Azerbaijan’s role in the conflict with Armenia, using hashtags such as #stopgreenwashgenocide. By September this had changed, with all of the top 10 most engaged posts coming from the official Cop29 Azerbaijan account.

Global Witness, which conducted the analysis, said artificially inflating the reach of government posts was drowning out independent criticism of the country’s record on the climate crisis and repression of human rights.

Azerbaijan’s government will oversee the UN climate summit, which starts on 11 November, and where nations will attempt to deliver the urgent cuts in fossil fuel burning that scientists say are imperative to avoid the most destructive impacts of climate breakdown.

Azerbaijan has significant fossil fuel reserves and intends to increase gas production by 50% in the next decade.

The last climate summit, Cop28, was also held in a petrostate, the United Arab Emirates. In the runup to that conference, an army of fake social media accounts promoted and defended the UAE. Countries failed to agree to “phase out” fossil fuels at Cop28, as many wanted, instead choosing the weaker ambition of “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

“Azerbaijan is days away from hosting the most important climate event of the year,” said Ava Lee of Global Witness. “It’s vitally important that there is space for a real discussion about what governments must do to address the climate emergency. Yet a network of seemingly inauthentic accounts are replacing rightful criticism with flowery positivity.”

Lee added: “The ease at which these accounts were able to influence the online conversation is concerning, especially as X has deliberately reduced the capacity of its trust and safety teams. We urgently call on X to allow a healthy and authentic debate to flourish around a key global moment.”

Azerbaijan’s ministry of foreign affairs and the Cop29 press office failed to respond to requests for comment from the Guardian.

The Global Witness analysis uncovered 71 suspicious accounts on X. All but six were set up since May, often in bursts. All share nature-related banner and profile images, often flowers or trees, and some accounts used exactly the same images.

More than half of their posts in September used the #COP29 or #COP29Azerbaijan tags and 70% of their retweets were of the official Azerbaijan Cop29 posts or other official Azerbaijan government, party or politician posts. The accounts were also part of a network, with most connected to at least six other suspicious accounts.

An analysis of posts from the first 16 accounts identified showed that on 1 October, 12 of the accounts posted one after the other in a sequence, suggesting the accounts were controlled by one person who logged on to each account in turn. All of this evidence suggests the accounts are fake, though it remains possible that a few are authentic.

Another 111 accounts were identified as posting in support of Azerbaijan Cop29 officials in the same way, but did not share the nature-themed imagery.

At the time of publication, some of the accounts had been suspended, with posts replaced by a message stating: “X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.” Others accounts were “temporarily restricted” due to “some unusual activity from this account”.

A spokesperson for X said: “We have actioned a majority of the accounts that are flagged in this report. Our safety teams are constantly working to thwart coordinated inauthentic behaviour.”

Azerbaijan has a record of using inauthentic social media accounts, which was highlighted by Facebook owner Meta in April 2022. Meta reported: “We disrupted a complex network in Azerbaijan that engaged in both cyber-espionage and coordinated inauthentic behaviour. It primarily targeted people from Azerbaijan, including democracy activists, opposition, journalists, and government critics abroad. This campaign was prolific but low in sophistication, and was run by the Azeri ministry of internal affairs.”

Scores of apparently fake social media accounts are boosting Azerbaijan’s hosting of the Cop29 climate summit, an investigation has revealed.

The accounts were mostly set up after July, at which time seven of the top 10 most engaged posts using the hashtags #COP29 and #COP29Azerbaijan were critical of Azerbaijan’s role in the conflict with Armenia, using hashtags such as #stopgreenwashgenocide. By September this had changed, with all of the top 10 most engaged posts coming from the official Cop29 Azerbaijan account.

Global Witness, which conducted the analysis, said artificially inflating the reach of government posts was drowning out independent criticism of the country’s record on the climate crisis and repression of human rights.

Azerbaijan’s government will oversee the UN climate summit, which starts on 11 November, and where nations will attempt to deliver the urgent cuts in fossil fuel burning that scientists say are imperative to avoid the most destructive impacts of climate breakdown.

Azerbaijan has significant fossil fuel reserves and intends to increase gas production by 50% in the next decade.

The last climate summit, Cop28, was also held in a petrostate, the United Arab Emirates. In the runup to that conference, an army of fake social media accounts promoted and defended the UAE. Countries failed to agree to “phase out” fossil fuels at Cop28, as many wanted, instead choosing the weaker ambition of “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

“Azerbaijan is days away from hosting the most important climate event of the year,” said Ava Lee of Global Witness. “It’s vitally important that there is space for a real discussion about what governments must do to address the climate emergency. Yet a network of seemingly inauthentic accounts are replacing rightful criticism with flowery positivity.”

Lee added: “The ease at which these accounts were able to influence the online conversation is concerning, especially as X has deliberately reduced the capacity of its trust and safety teams. We urgently call on X to allow a healthy and authentic debate to flourish around a key global moment.”

Azerbaijan’s ministry of foreign affairs and the Cop29 press office failed to respond to requests for comment from the Guardian.

The Global Witness analysis uncovered 71 suspicious accounts on X. All but six were set up since May, often in bursts. All share nature-related banner and profile images, often flowers or trees, and some accounts used exactly the same images.

More than half of their posts in September used the #COP29 or #COP29Azerbaijan tags and 70% of their retweets were of the official Azerbaijan Cop29 posts or other official Azerbaijan government, party or politician posts. The accounts were also part of a network, with most connected to at least six other suspicious accounts.

An analysis of posts from the first 16 accounts identified showed that on 1 October, 12 of the accounts posted one after the other in a sequence, suggesting the accounts were controlled by one person who logged on to each account in turn. All of this evidence suggests the accounts are fake, though it remains possible that a few are authentic.

Another 111 accounts were identified as posting in support of Azerbaijan Cop29 officials in the same way, but did not share the nature-themed imagery.

At the time of publication, some of the accounts had been suspended, with posts replaced by a message stating: “X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.” Others accounts were “temporarily restricted” due to “some unusual activity from this account”.

A spokesperson for X said: “We have actioned a majority of the accounts that are flagged in this report. Our safety teams are constantly working to thwart coordinated inauthentic behaviour.”

Azerbaijan has a record of using inauthentic social media accounts, which was highlighted by Facebook owner Meta in April 2022. Meta reported: “We disrupted a complex network in Azerbaijan that engaged in both cyber-espionage and coordinated inauthentic behaviour. It primarily targeted people from Azerbaijan, including democracy activists, opposition, journalists, and government critics abroad. This campaign was prolific but low in sophistication, and was run by the Azeri ministry of internal affairs.”

The golden sands of Sri Lanka’s Arugam Bay are usually carefree, a place for tourists to surf the famous break and relax on the beach.

But last week, the slow rhythm of the bay was dealt a shock. The US embassy, followed up by Sri Lankan police and Israel’s national security council, warned of a serious terrorist threat in the area. Israeli travellers were believed to be the intended target of a planned attack and were told to evacuate immediately. Hundreds of police and senior intelligence officials descended on the small coastal town, setting up patrols and road blocks.

While Sri Lankan police officials and government ministers kept the nature of the threat vague, one thing was made clear; it was seen as directly linked to the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Officials who spoke off the record said investigations indicated the threat had originated in Iran and was intended as “revenge” for Israel’s regional attacks. A Sri Lankan national based in Iraq was among three people arrested by anti-terrorism police.

“From last October there were parties who were at war against each other,” said Priyantha Weerasooriya, Sri Lanka’s acting inspector general of police, at a press conference. “That has now spread to other parts of the world.”

In Arugam Bay, there was surprise that the fallout from the Middle East had reached their coastal idyll. The area’s popularity with Israeli travellers, many whom visit after mandatory military service, has soared in recent years. While some pass through as surfers and tourists, others have taken advantage of long-term visas to set up their own restaurants, bars and tourism companies often catering to other Israelis, with Hebrew signage evident across the town. A local official said there were often more than 1,000 Israelis staying in the area in high season.

Police spokesperson Nihal Thalduwa said one of the targets of the recent threat was the Chabad House, a Jewish community centre.

Zulfi Faizer, 39, a tour guide, said that locals in the area, who are predominately Muslim, largely had no issues with the Israeli presence, which had brought in lucrative tourist dollars. “This area is mostly run by Israeli tourists,” said Faizer. “Majority of Muslims live in this area and there was no problem with them. We did business with them. Good Islam people are not against them.”

He emphasised that the establishment of the Jewish community centre had not caused issues and Muslim locals freely mingled with Israeli tourists, but said there had been friction after some Israelis were accused of trying to buy up swathes of land and undercutting locals. Local politician Rehan Jayawickreme last week accused Israelis in the area of “illegal business practices” and fuelling instability. There have also been accusations that cultural norms around modest dressing were not being respected.

Faizer said he was among those locals, who in the wake of the apparent security threat, were now in favour of a ban on tourists from Israel. However, Israelis make up just 1.5% of the 1.5 million tourists who visited Sri Lanka in the first nine months of this year.

“Them coming here used to be good for us, but now we have a problem,” he said. “If an attack is carried out on them our people will also die.”

Sri Lanka has in the past been hit by terrorist attacks.

In April 2019, the biggest luxury hotels, as well as churches, were hit in Islamist suicide bombings that killed 270 people, 45 of them foreigners. It was found that intelligence about the attack had been ignored by the government and security services. Combined with the Covid pandemic, it took years for Sri Lanka’s tourism industry to recover as it has also grappled with the worst economic crisis in its history, which has left the country bankrupt and even more reliant on dollars brought in by tourism.

Vijitha Herath, minister of public security, said all the at-risk areas had ongoing special police protection and a security council meeting had been convened.

“A special situation arose because Israeli nationals are in the country as tourists. This month marks a year since the war started in the Middle East. Therefore, Israeli nationals hold religious ceremonies during this time. The suspicion was that some disturbance would be made at these places,” he told reporters.

By the end of last week, almost every Israeli had been evacuated from Arugam Bay. One of the few remaining was Miller Maoz, 59, who retired to Arugam Bay in 2019 after first falling in love with the area as a surfer back in 1991.

He said he had always been welcomed by the local Muslim population. “They don’t mind politics and they appreciate Israelis,” he said. “Israelis are not welcome all over the world, especially after the war started, but the hospitality here is amazing.”

He expressed scepticism at the threats in the area. “I don’t see any real proof of what people are saying is going on,” said Maoz. “They say that a terrorist group is coming around here to target us. But why come to Arugam Bay to kill Israelis?”

CNN has apologised to its viewers after a panellist on its NewsNight programme made derogatory remarks implying that a fellow guest on the show, the broadcaster Mehdi Hasan, was a terrorist.

Ryan James Girdusky, a conservative commentator, told Hasan, a Guardian US columnist and former host on MSNBC, who is Muslim, that he hoped his “beeper doesn’t go off”, in an apparent reference to Israel’s targeting of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon with exploding pagers last month. The wave of coordinated explosions killed 12 and injured thousands.

“Did your guest just say I should be killed on live TV?” Hasan asked the show’s anchor, Abby Phillip.

After a commercial break, Phillip issued an on-air apology to Hasan and viewers and said Girdusky had been removed from the show.

“I want to apologise to Mehdi Hasan for what was said at this table. It was completely unacceptable,” she said. “I want to apologise to the viewers at home.”

In a subsequent statement, CNN said there was “zero room for racism or bigotry at CNN or on our air” and that Girdusky “will not be welcomed back at our network”. Hasan retweeted the statement on X.

Earlier in their heated exchange, Hasan had said that if people on the far right “don’t want to be called Nazis, stop doing, stop saying”. Girdusky interjected by saying Hasan was called an “antisemite more than anyone at this table”.

After Hasan said he was used to being labelled an antisemite due to his support for the Palestinian people, Girdusky said, “Well, I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.” He attempted to apologise amid crosstalk and sought to justify his comment by indicating he thought Hasan said he supported Hamas.

In a later post on X, however, Girdusky appeared to double down on a more antagonistic approach. “You can stay on CNN if you falsely call every Republican a Nazi and have taken money from Qatar-funded media,” he said. “Apparently you can’t go on CNN if you make a joke. I’m glad America gets to see what CNN stands for.”

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Justin Trudeau, who promised “sunny ways” as he won an election on a wave of public fatigue with an incumbent Conservative government, is now facing his darkest and most uncertain political moment as he attempts to defy the odds – and a bitter public – to win a rare fourth term.

The Canadian prime minister appears to have ignored both the demands of a handful of his own MPs calling for him to resign and threats from a separatist party looking to unravel his party’s tenuous hold on power.

Nearly two dozen backbench Liberal MPs signed a letter last week calling for the prime minister to step down amid fears within the party that his unpopularity could lead to a crushing electoral defeat in the coming months. The letter was separate from a “code red” petition to grassroots party supporters calling for a secret ballot vote on Trudeau’s leadership.

Trudeau, in his ninth year as prime minister, appeared unmoved, telling reporters last week he had the support of the vast majority of the 153 Liberal party members of the House of Commons and that any “robust conversations” about a path forward “will happen as me as leader going into the next election”.

But analysts say the revolt in the party, which has deepened in recent months, will have left a mark on the prime minister, who was forced to stare down the most pointed criticism of his leadership to date from his own colleagues.

“The prime minister and his operation are likely shaken and must know that for every member calling on Trudeau to leave, there are two or three others who lack the courage to say it,” said Scott Reid, a political adviser and former director of communications to the Liberal former prime minister Paul Martin.

“This is an iceberg revolt. What lurks beneath the waves could be vast, and that has got to be intimidating the prime minister, whether he admits it in public – or even in private.”

For those within the party seeking to topple Trudeau, however, there is little historical precedent in the country to give comfort.

Canada has “exactly zero tradition” of prime ministers leaving their job voluntarily, said Reid, with virtually all either suffering electoral defeat or “jumping at the very last moment when they’ve exhausted every possibility” of winning.

And as in the US, where frustration grew over Joe Biden’s place atop the Democratic ticket, there is no mechanism to force party leaders from their perch. Instead, they must chose to leave the country’s top job on their own.

“The kind of person that believes in themselves enough to be the prime minister is exactly the kind of person who does not have any intention of leaving,” said Reid. “That’s true of them all, and that is true of Justin Trudeau.”

There is also no clear replacement for the prime minister.

Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney has hinted he might be interested in running for leadership of the party. Foreign minister Mélanie Joly has invaluable credentials in the province of Quebec – a must-win region for the Liberals – and public safety minister Dominic LeBlanc is seen as a savvy politician with sharp instincts.

But none of them have publicly expressed an interest in the top job.

Even a wide-open leadership race would face the hurdle of selling the public an image of vigour and enthusiasm from an incumbent Liberal party nearing a decade in power.

Virtually any contender, however, would appear to be in a better position than Trudeau.

“Polling shows that a sizable portion of the public animus toward the government has become deeply, inextricably – and quite possibly very unfairly – rooted in the prime minister himself,” said Reid.

“He is a lightning rod for discontent across the country. Coupled with an almost defiant refusal on his part to signal or pursue any kind of change to the status quo, you can understand why caucus members are nervous.”

The CBC poll tracker shows the Liberals trailing nearly 20 points behind the opposition Conservatives, a showing so poor it has little historical precedent for the party.

“In the past, even unpopular governments aren’t polling this poorly,” said political analyst Éric Grenier at the Writ. “The trouble for the Liberals is that has been a longstanding trend; it’s not the result of one scandal or big issue, but rather the drip, drip, drip of being in power for nearly 10 years.

“And the reality is that people already know what they think of Justin Trudeau, and they’re not going to change their minds about him.”

In addition to internal strife, the Liberals also face another deadline from the Bloc Québécois, which threatened to topple Trudeau’s minority government unless Trudeau’s party passed legislation to boost pensions and put more protections in place for dairy farmers – in a political gambit that prompted incredulity from pundits.

With a deal unlikely, the Bloc can now begin planning with opposition parties for when they might team up to force an election.

“Trying to get re-elected three times in a row as the same leader is not easy. Trying to do it four times – that’s historically difficult to do,” said Grenier, pointing out that the last politician to pull off the feat was Wilfrid Laurier in 1908.

“If the only thing you knew about Trudeau was that he was trying to win a fourth term, you would think it would be uphill battle to begin with.”

A tram has careered into a store in central Oslo after coming off its rails, in an incident that left at least four people injured and caused panic among passersby.

The accident happened in the late morning in a bustling commercial neighbourhood of the Norwegian capital.

The tram, which should have made a left turn at a crossing, jumped the rails and continued straight ahead, its front section crashing deep into an electronics retailer on the corner selling Apple products.

“Three people onboard the tram were injured and another person outside,” said Anders Ronning, the head of police operations at the scene.

“No one is described as being seriously injured,” he said, adding that “one or two other people” had gone to the emergency room on their own.

He said there were “a lot of people onboard” the tram.

Police had initially said there were 20 people onboard, but some passengers had already left the scene by the time emergency services arrived.

At least one passerby had to jump out of the way when the tram came speeding towards him.

Several hours later, the blue tram was still stuck in the store, surrounded by shattered glass and debris.

“Thankfully, a derailment makes a lot of noise and several [people in the store] had time to turn around and get out of the way,” Ronning said.

Julie Hogmo Madsen, 24, was seated in the back of the tram. “It started to shake more than usual in the turn and I understood we had derailed – and then it went ’bang’,” she told the Norwegian the news agency NTB.

“People became a little hysterical and began screaming all around. I ran to the front of the tram and found someone who needed help and I helped them get out,” she said.

“It’s just surrealistic,” Andre Norheim told the daily Verdens Gang. “If everyone came out of this unharmed it means there’s someone watching over us, because it was a powerful crash, to put it mildly.”

The block was cordoned off, disrupting traffic in the city centre, with many police cars and ambulances at the scene.

The driver of the tram was among the injured and police have formally declared him a suspect, amid suspicions that excessive speed caused the accident.

“I don’t want to speculate,” Ronning said. “We are working on the technical aspects to determine the cause of the accident,” he added.

The damaged building, which also houses offices, was evacuated. The tram will not be removed until experts determine the stability of the building’s bearing walls and measures have been taken to prevent it from collapse.

Ticketmaster will cancel about 50,000 tickets for the UK and Ireland dates of Oasis’s reunion tour for violating the company’s terms and conditions in the coming weeks, the BBC reports.

The tickets concerned are listed for sale on unofficial secondary websites such as Viagogo – as opposed to the official resale partner, Twickets, where tickets can only be resold at face value. Promoters Live Nation – which is part of Ticketmaster – and SJM told the BBC that 4% of tickets sold – close to 50,000 – ended up on resale sites.

Billboard reported that the promoters said that the affected tickets were bought using prohibited techniques, including acquiring more than four tickets per household, per show, and using multiple identities to buy tickets, as well as relying on VPN services and multiple credit cards.

All invalidated tickets will be made available for resale on Ticketmaster at face value, offering a sliver of hope to the 10 million fans from 158 countries who vied for the 1.4m tickets originally on sale for the dates next summer.

A spokesperson for the promoters did not confirm whether the resale would be subject to dynamic pricing, the practice of inflating prices based on demand that caused controversy around the original sale – and was later scrapped for the international sales for dates in North and South America and Australia.

In a statement, Ticketmaster said that the terms and conditions put in place to protect the tour from illegitimate resale had largely been successful considering that some major tours can see up to 20% of tickets appearing on unauthorised secondary ticketing sites.

“The examination of ticket sales is ongoing and the results will be passed to relevant law enforcement where appropriate,” it said, urging fans not to buy tickets from unauthorised websites, as they may be fraudulent or subject to cancellation. Any fans who believe their tickets have been cancelled in error should appeal to the relevant agent.

Viagogo told the BBC that it would nonetheless continue to sell tickets for the tour. Matt Drew, from Viagogo’s business development, told BBC Radio’s File on 4: “2% of Oasis tickets are on Viagogo and StubHub. We will continue to sell them in the way the regulator says we can. We are serving a clear consumer need, we will continue doing it on that basis.”

Cast and Richard Ashcroft were recently confirmed to support Oasis on their UK and Ireland dates.