The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of new areas of northern Gaza, setting off a fresh wave of civilian displacements on Sunday as intense airstrikes continued across much of the territory.

The Israel Defense Forces said the orders for the Shujaiya neighbourhood were issued after Palestinian militants fired rockets at Israel on Saturday from a location within the densely populated district. Hamas’s armed wing said it had targeted an army base over the border.

The IDF routinely circulates warnings by social media, pamphlets and phone calls, telling people to leave areas that will be attacked. “For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south,” an IDF post on X said.

Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday’s early hours, witnesses and Palestinian media said. Images on social media showed hundreds leaving Shujaiya on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.

Elsewhere in north Gaza, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan hospital, injuring its director, Hussam Abu Safiya.

In a video statement circulated by the health ministry in Gaza on Sunday, Abu Safiya said from his hospital bed: “This will not stop us from completing our humanitarian mission and we will continue to do this job at any cost.

“We are being targeted daily. They targeted me a while ago but this will not deter us.”

Israeli forces say armed militants use civilian buildings including housing blocks, hospitals and schools as shields. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminately targeting populated areas.

Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in north Gaza that are barely operational. Aid agencies and local health officials say the Israeli forces have detained and expelled medical staff and prevented emergency medical, food and fuel supplies from reaching them.

Israel denies the charge, and says it has facilitated the delivery of medical and fuel supplies as well as the transfer of patients from north Gaza hospitals in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.

The humanitarian situation in northern Gaza has been described as apocalyptic by humanitarian officials, with tens of thousands suffering acute lack of water, sanitation, food and medical supplies.

The IDF has blockaded three north Gaza towns – Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun – since launching a major offensive early last month which it says is aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping there.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly said that the principal aim of the military offensive in Gaza is to free hostages seized during the Hamas attacks into Israel in October last year. About 100 hostages are believed to remain in the territory, though half are thought to be dead.

On Saturday, a spokesperson for the armed wing of Hamas said a female Israeli hostage in the group’s custody had been killed in a northern area where the Israeli army had been operating.

Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said contact had been restored with the woman’s captors after a break of several weeks and it was established that the hostage was dead, but did not identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed.

“The life of another female prisoner who used to be with her remains in imminent danger,” Abu Obeida added, saying Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was to blame.

Ten female hostages, including five soldiers, were believed to be alive in custody before Abu Obeida’s statement.

The Israeli government has come under immense public pressure to agree to a deal to bring the remaining hostages home while they are still alive.

The Hostage and Missing Families Forum campaign group did not wish to comment on Saturday’s claim.

“Nothing is known other than what Hamas is saying. Our only reliable source is the Israeli army,” the group said.

An Israeli military spokesperson said it was investigating the Hamas report. “At this point, we are unable to confirm or deny it,” the spokesperson said. “Hamas continues to engage in psychological terrorism and act in a cruel manner.”

During their attack into Israel last year, Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza. About half of those abducted were released in a short-lived ceasefire in November.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, mostly civilians. Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million population have been displaced at least once, and swathes of the narrow coastal territory have been reduced to rubble.

People in northern Gaza say they fear the goal is to permanently depopulate a strip of territory as a buffer zone, which Israel denies, and say Israeli forces had blown up hundreds of houses since beginning the new offensive.

In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli airstrikes on the urban refugee camps of al-Maghazi and al-Bureij since Saturday night.

The new strikes come after a bloody few days, with Palestinian medics saying Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 120 Palestinians on Friday and Saturday. Among the dead were seven members of one family whose house was hit overnight in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City, the health officials said. The rest were killed in separate Israeli strikes in central and southern Gaza.

With negotiations for a ceasefire continuing, hostilities have also intensified across Israel’s contested border with Lebanon. Hezbollah said on Sunday it launched attacks using missiles and drones directed at a naval base in southern Israel and a “military target” in Tel Aviv.

The Lebanon-based militant Islamist organisation said in a statement that it had “launched, for the first time, an aerial attack using a swarm of strike drones on the Ashdod naval base”. In a separate statement, it said it had also carried out an operation against a military target in Tel Aviv using “a barrage of advanced missiles and a swarm of strike drones”.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, will meet his European counterparts in Geneva on Friday after the collapse of a deal last week under which Iran would have limited its uranium enrichment to 60% purity, just below the threshold to make nuclear weapons.

The offer was regarded by Iran as a first step to rebuilding confidence between it and the west over what it insists is its civilian nuclear programme. There are growing fears that wider tensions in the Middle East could result in Tehran redoubling efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon and trying to declare it necessary for its national self-defence.

The talks on Friday, for which the European side has low expectations, will end a two-year hiatus in which there have been no direct detailed talks on the lapsed nuclear deal.

Representatives from the EU, France, Germany and the UK will attend, butChina, Russia and the US – the other original signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal – will not. It appears Iran is placing a greater store by the meeting than the European side.

Late last week the EU, UK and US rejected an Iranian offer to cap enrichment at 60% purity, instead forcing through a motion at a regular meeting of the board of the UN nuclear inspectorate, the IAEA, that again censured Iran for failing to cooperate with the inspectorate in line with its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The motion required IAEA officials to prepare a comprehensive report within three months on Tehran’s compliance with its obligations under the nuclear deal over the past five years. This report is regarded as the first step to a motion at the UN requiring the retention of all UN sanctions on Iran when the 2015 nuclear deal expires next October. The IAEA backed the censure motion by 19 votes to three, with 12 abstentions.

Iran admits it has been steadily withdrawing its cooperation from the IAEA inspectorate since the 2018 decision by Donald Trump to pull the US out of the agreement. Iran had signed up to the original deal in 2015 monitoring its nuclear programme in return for the west lifting economic sanctions.

On Saturday Iran responded to the IAEA censure motion by saying it was pressing ahead with its nuclear programme at a faster pace. The speaker of its parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, confirmed on Sunday that Iran had activated new and advanced centrifuges in response to the IAEA vote. Iran said it would fire up about 5,000 new generation centrifuges and increase the enrichment capacity.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused European powers of trying to politicise the IAEA and its director general, Rafael Grossi, who had travelled to Iran before the board meeting.

Araghchi suggested the diplomatic path with Europe had not reached a dead end, saying talks towards a revival of the nuclear deal could resume. He said a complete restoration of the 2015 deal was not on the cards, and instead he provided an outline pointing to a future agreement.

Iran has previously voiced disappointment that Europe has not broken with the US and pressed ahead with lifting economic sanctions. It seems unlikely that even an outline deal could be reached before Trump’s inauguration, even though substantial progress was made in talks between Europe and Iran in Vienna in 2022.

Iranian cooperation with Russia in Ukraine, and its support for the so-called axis of resistance across the Middle East, also damages the efforts of any European diplomat that argues the nuclear file can be kept separate from Iran’s wider destabilising behaviour.

In a joint statement on Saturday, the UK France, Germany and the US welcomed the passage of the IAEA motion, adding that it noted with serious concern Iran’s announcement that instead of responding to the resolution with cooperation, it planned further expansion of its nuclear programme “in ways that have no credible peaceful rationale”.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, will meet his European counterparts in Geneva on Friday after the collapse of a deal last week under which Iran would have limited its uranium enrichment to 60% purity, just below the threshold to make nuclear weapons.

The offer was regarded by Iran as a first step to rebuilding confidence between it and the west over what it insists is its civilian nuclear programme. There are growing fears that wider tensions in the Middle East could result in Tehran redoubling efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon and trying to declare it necessary for its national self-defence.

The talks on Friday, for which the European side has low expectations, will end a two-year hiatus in which there have been no direct detailed talks on the lapsed nuclear deal.

Representatives from the EU, France, Germany and the UK will attend, butChina, Russia and the US – the other original signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal – will not. It appears Iran is placing a greater store by the meeting than the European side.

Late last week the EU, UK and US rejected an Iranian offer to cap enrichment at 60% purity, instead forcing through a motion at a regular meeting of the board of the UN nuclear inspectorate, the IAEA, that again censured Iran for failing to cooperate with the inspectorate in line with its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The motion required IAEA officials to prepare a comprehensive report within three months on Tehran’s compliance with its obligations under the nuclear deal over the past five years. This report is regarded as the first step to a motion at the UN requiring the retention of all UN sanctions on Iran when the 2015 nuclear deal expires next October. The IAEA backed the censure motion by 19 votes to three, with 12 abstentions.

Iran admits it has been steadily withdrawing its cooperation from the IAEA inspectorate since the 2018 decision by Donald Trump to pull the US out of the agreement. Iran had signed up to the original deal in 2015 monitoring its nuclear programme in return for the west lifting economic sanctions.

On Saturday Iran responded to the IAEA censure motion by saying it was pressing ahead with its nuclear programme at a faster pace. The speaker of its parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, confirmed on Sunday that Iran had activated new and advanced centrifuges in response to the IAEA vote. Iran said it would fire up about 5,000 new generation centrifuges and increase the enrichment capacity.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused European powers of trying to politicise the IAEA and its director general, Rafael Grossi, who had travelled to Iran before the board meeting.

Araghchi suggested the diplomatic path with Europe had not reached a dead end, saying talks towards a revival of the nuclear deal could resume. He said a complete restoration of the 2015 deal was not on the cards, and instead he provided an outline pointing to a future agreement.

Iran has previously voiced disappointment that Europe has not broken with the US and pressed ahead with lifting economic sanctions. It seems unlikely that even an outline deal could be reached before Trump’s inauguration, even though substantial progress was made in talks between Europe and Iran in Vienna in 2022.

Iranian cooperation with Russia in Ukraine, and its support for the so-called axis of resistance across the Middle East, also damages the efforts of any European diplomat that argues the nuclear file can be kept separate from Iran’s wider destabilising behaviour.

In a joint statement on Saturday, the UK France, Germany and the US welcomed the passage of the IAEA motion, adding that it noted with serious concern Iran’s announcement that instead of responding to the resolution with cooperation, it planned further expansion of its nuclear programme “in ways that have no credible peaceful rationale”.

Ukraine’s president said the country had been targeted by nearly 500 drones in the past week as well as more than 20 missiles and complained that Russia was using the country as “a testing ground” for its munitions.

Though Russia’s first ever use of the Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile on Dnipro on Thursday captured global attention, on Sunday Volodymyr Zelenskyy highlighted the increased level of Shahed drone attacks.

Fifty drones were shot down on Sunday night, out of 73, the Ukrainian president said. Over the previous week a total of 460 of the Iranian-designed drones were launched by Russia into Ukraine’s airspace, he added.

“Ukraine is not a testing ground for weapons. Ukraine is a sovereign and independent state. But Russia still continues its efforts to kill our people, spread fear and panic, and weaken us,” Zelenskyy said in a statement on Sunday morning.

Ukraine says Russia has set up two factories to make the distinctive delta-winged Shahed 136 drones, called Geran-2 by Moscow, in Tatarstan, about 800 – miles from the border in Ukraine. Production amounts to “hundreds per week” said a government source in Kyiv.

The drones are often fired into Ukraine as soon as they are ready, and while they remain easier to shoot down or neutralise compared to high-speed missiles, they tie up the country’s air defence and can cause serious damage with a 50kg warhead when they reach their targets.

In October, 2,023 Shahed drones were launched into Ukraine, a record according to Kyiv’s military. Last week’s figures suggest the rate of attacks continues to be similar with attacks on Kyiv and major cities a near nightly feature, tiring out civilian populations woken up by air raid alerts.

Russia is continually modifying the drones to try to make them more deadly. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s military posted a video of a thermobaric warhead, which creates a fire cloud of about 2,000C when detonated, and is considered particularly lethal if it explodes inside buildings.

Efforts are also under way, Ukrainian military sources said, to implement artificial intelligence to try to create “drone swarms” whereby Shaheds communicate and coordinate attacks in such a way as to overwhelm air defences. However, it is unclear how effective this technology may be.

Zelenskyy said “Ukraine needs more air defence systems” to help counter the aerial threats. “We are working with our partners to do so. It is crucial to strengthen the defence of our skies,” he added.

Because Shahed 136 drones are relatively inexpensive, costing a few tens of thousands of dollars a time, it is not practical to use Patriot missiles to shoot them down as they cost about $4m (£3.2m) each. Instead, specialist Ukrainian forces often use truck mounted machine guns to knock them out with small arms fire.

Ukrainian specialists are also trying to develop cheap first person view (FPV) drones, costing less than $1,000, that are capable of knocking out Shaheds, although the task is made difficult because the turbulent airflow caused by Shahed in flight significantly affects the piloting of a smaller FPV drone.

The most serious attack this month took place a week ago, when 120 missiles and 90 drones were unleashed against Ukraine’s energy grid. Nationwide electricity rationing was introduced the next day, as Ukrainian officials tried to repair a grid that Greenpeace warned was at risk of catastrophic failure if the attacks continued.

Hostilities escalated last week when first the US, followed by the UK and France, agreed to allow Atacms and Storm Shadow missiles to be used against targets inside Russia for the first time. That prompted Russia to respond by launching the Oreshnik missile at Ukraine, a nuclear-capable weapon, able to strike anywhere in Europe.

The Oreshnik is not thought to have caused much damage, but its intention was demonstrative. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said on Friday that his country would use the missile again in “combat conditions” – while a day before he had said Moscow “had the right” to use it against countries who have supplied Ukraine with weapons.

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, told the BBC on Sunday that Ukraine could fire French long-range missiles into Russia “in the logics of self-defence” and indicated that France was open to extending an invitation to Ukraine to join Nato. That, however, has been resisted by the outgoing president Joe Biden and is not thought likely to be supported by the incoming Donald Trump.

The climate finance deal agreed at Cop29 is a “travesty of justice” that should not have been adopted, some countries’ negotiators have said.

The climate conference came to a dramatic close early on Sunday morning when negotiators struck an agreement to triple the flow of climate finance to poorer countries.

Developing nations had called on rich countries to provide them with $1.3tn (£1.08tn) a year to help them decarbonise their economies and cope with the effects of the climate crisis. But the final deal sets a pledge of just $300bn annually, with $1.3tn only a target.

The number is an increase from a previous $100bn promise, but Chandni Raina, a negotiator for India, said it was “abysmally poor” compared with what was needed.

“This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face,” she said on the negotiation floor moments after the deal was gavelled through.

For Raina, who is an adviser to India’s department of economic affairs, it was not only the goal itself that caused anger but also the process by which it was finalised.

Hours before the conclusion of Cop29, when a deal seemed elusive, delegates from the US, Colombia and several African nations were seen poring over documents in a huddle. Drafts were circulated before they were shared with the public, and throughout the conference centre rumours circulated about last-minute backroom deals being made.

Raina said the UN’s framework convention on climate change, which convenes the annual Cop summits, was meant to make decisions by consensus. India had been planning to make a dissenting statement before the decision was adopted but was not given the opportunity to do so, she said.

Rain said the $300bn pledge was “stage-managed”. “This document is little more than an optical illusion,” she said.

In an interview with the Guardian shortly after her statement, Raina called the goal’s adoption “outrageous”. “This was completely a travesty of justice,” she said.

The Cop29 presidency did not adopt another key negotiating item, known as the UAE dialogue, Raina said. The document – a follow-on from a commitment to “transitioning away from fossil fuels” made last year at Cop28 – was rejected when countries said it was too weak.

Raina said the climate finance item should have been treated the same way. “It’s unclear what the legalities here are,” she said.

Catherine Pettengell, an advocate with the NGO Climate Action Network UK, said the procedural choices could erode trust in UN climate processes.

“Developing countries have been forced to accept half-measures, Cop after Cop, but at Cop29 these half-measures push the costs of climate change on to the people least responsible but suffering the worst consequences,” she said.

The goal left a bitter taste in other negotiators’ mouths. “That the developed countries are saying that they are taking the lead with $300bn by 2035 is a joke,” a delegate from Nigeria said after the document’s adoption. “We do not accept this.”

She said developing countries such as Nigeria, which is a major oil producer, would need far more assistance to cut their emissions.

Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s special representative for climate change, also questioned the process of the goal’s adoption.

“The gavel was hit way too fast and our heart goes out to all those nations that feel like they were walked over,” he said. “Developed nations always throw text at us at the last minute, shove it down our throat, and then, for the sake of multilateralism, we always have to accept it, otherwise the climate mechanisms will go into a horrible downward spiral, and no one needs that.”

Hours before the text was adopted, delegations from small island states and the least developed nations walked out of one meeting, saying their climate finance interests were being ignored.

The least developed countries (LDC) negotiating bloc, which represents 45 nations and 1.1 billion people, said Sunday’s deal destroyed three years of negotiations on the climate finance goal.

“This has been casually dismissed,” an LDC statement said. “Despite exhaustive efforts to collaborate with key players, our pleas were met with indifference. This outright dismissal erodes the fragile trust that underpins these negotiations and mocks the spirit of global solidarity.”

Sunday’s deal does not allocate specific sums to “particularly vulnerable” LDCs or low-lying islands. But the groups did win a mention in the text.

Avinash Persaud, an expert on climate finance at the Inter-American Development Bank, who has served as an adviser to Barbados prime minister, Mia Mottley, said: “It was hard fought over, but at $300bn per year led by developed to developing countries, we have arrived at the boundary between what is politically achievable today in developed countries and what would make a difference in developing countries.

Raina said the text did not include adequate protections for other developing nations. “All developing countries need finance,” she said, adding that India’s per-capita emissions were far lower than those of developed nations.

Prof Ottmar Edenhofer, a climate economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said the most important part of the Cop29 finance deal was that it existed at all. The multilateral system of international cooperation had not collapsed as had seemed possible at times, he said.

“The climate summit in Baku was not a success but at best the avoidance of a diplomatic disaster,” he said. But different ways to tackle the climate crisis were now needed, he added, such as cooperation between smaller groups of nations.

Others took a less rosy view. Tracy Carty, of Greenpeace International, said fossil fuel companies – which have made $1tn a year in profit annually for half a century – should have been forced to pay into the finance pool.

Nafkote Dabi, the climate policy lead at Oxfam International, called the agreement a “global Ponzi scheme”. “The destruction of our planet is avoidable, but not with this shabby and dishonourable deal,” she said.

Rich and poor countries concluded a trillion-dollar deal on the climate crisis in the early hours of Sunday morning, after marathon talks and days of bitter recriminations ended in what campaigners said was a “betrayal”.

Under the target the developing world should receive at least $1.3tn (£1tn) a year in funds to help them shift to a low-carbon economy and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, by 2035.

But only $300bn of that will come primarily in the form they are most in need of – grants and low-interest loans from the developed world. The rest will have to come from private investors and a range of potential new sources of money, such as possible levies on fossil fuels and frequent flyers, which have yet to be agreed.

Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, said: “This [summit] has been a disaster for the developing world. It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries who claim to take climate change seriously. Rich countries have promised to ‘mobilise’ some funds in the future, rather than provide them now. The cheque is in the mail. But lives and livelihoods in vulnerable countries are being lost now.”

Some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries fought hard during two weeks of fraught negotiations at the Cop29 UN summit in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku for a bigger slice of the money to come directly from developed countries. They also wanted more of the available finance to go to the countries most in need, instead of being shared with bigger emerging economies, such as India.

Two groups of particularly vulnerable nations, the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries, walked out of one meeting in protest late on Saturday afternoon, but later returned.

The talks were high-stakes from the start, as they opened just days after Donald Trump won re-election as US president. Trump intends to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement when he takes office in January and is likely to be hostile to providing any climate finance to the developing world.

Faced with the prospect of reconvening next year with a Trump White House in place, many countries decided that failure to agree on a new financial settlement in Baku was too much of a risk.

Developed countries insisted they could not offer any more, owing to their own budgetary constraints. “We will shoulder all the risk” if the US fails to contribute to climate finance in future, pointed out one negotiator.

Many developing world countries, including India, Bolivia, Cuba and Nigeria, reacted furiously to the deal.

Green campaigners also slammed the deal. Claudio Angelo, of the Observatorio do Clima in Brazil, said: “Rich countries spent 150 years appropriating the world’s atmospheric space, 33 years loitering on climate action, and three years negotiating [a financial settlement] without putting numbers on the table. Now, with the help of an incompetent Cop presidency and using the forthcoming Trump administration as a threat, they force developing countries to accept a deal that not only doesn’t represent any actual new money but also may increase their debt.”

India raised last-minute objections but failed to prevent it from being gavelled through by the Cop president, Azerbaijan’s environment minister Mukhtar Babayev. The country said it “could not accept” the settlement.

The host country was strongly criticised for its running of the Cop. Oil and gas make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports and fossil fuel interests were highly visible at the talks.

Saudi Arabia also played a highly obstructive role, according to many insiders. In one extraordinary development, a Saudi official attempted to alter one key text without full consultation. The petro-state also tried repeatedly to remove references to the “transition away from fossil fuels” which was agreed at last year’s Cop28 summit.

“It was clear from day one that Saudi Arabia and other fossil fuel-producing countries were going to do everything in their power to weaken the landmark Cop28 agreement on fossil fuels. At Cop29 they have deployed obstructionist tactics to dilute action on the energy transition,” said Romain Ioualalen, of the pressure group Oil Change International.

The US and China – the world’s two biggest economies, and biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – are normally key nations at the annual “conference of the parties” (Cop) under the UN framework convention on climate change. But neither played much of a public role in Baku, allowing other countries to drive the talks. The US delegation is still made up of officials from Joe Biden’s administration, but the looming presidency of Donald Trump cast a pall over their participation.

The deal will mean China will contribute to climate finance for the poor world voluntarily, unlike rich countries which are obliged to provide cash.

Ani Dasgupta, chief executive of the US-based World Resources Institute thinktank, said: “Despite major headwinds, negotiators in Baku eked out a deal that at least triples climate finance flowing to developing countries [from a previous longstanding goal of $100bn a year]. The $300bn goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future. The agreement recognises how critical it is for vulnerable countries to have better access to finance that does not burden them with unsustainable debt.”

Angela Merkel has said she was “tormented” over the result of the Brexit referendum and viewed it as a “humiliation, a disgrace” for the EU that Britain was leaving.

In her autobiography, Freedom, due to be published on Tuesday, the former German chancellor says she was dismayed by the notion that she might have done more to help the then British prime minister, David Cameron, who was keen for the UK to stay in the EU, but that ultimately, she concluded, he only had himself to blame.

In extracts from the book, Merkel, who left office three years ago, said looking back she recognised that Brexit was on the cards once Cameron proposed in 2005 that Conservative party MEPs should leave the European People’s party, which they subsequently did, over the parliamentary alliance’s backing of the Lisbon treaty in 2009.

The treaty introduced significant changes to the EU that anti-European critics considered undemocratic.

In her 700-page memoir, about five pages are dedicated to Brexit and to her role in the pre-referendum negotiations with Cameron in an attempt to help him keep Britain inside the bloc. She also writes about the subsequent exit deal drawn out over several years once Britain had decided to leave, and refers to how deflated she felt over the result.

“To me, the result felt like a humiliation, a disgrace for us, the other members of the European Union – the United Kingdom was leaving us in the lurch. This changed the European Union in the view of the world; we were weakened.”

Merkel writes about how she had reached out to Cameron as he struggled to try to secure changes over freedom of movement and trade that might have won over Eurosceptics and allowed him to keep the UK in a reformed EU.

She says she “tried wherever possible to help David Cameron”, despite risking the ire of other EU leaders who had distanced themselves from him.

Referring to various stages in her attempts to help him and ensure he was not isolated, most crucially at a summit of EU leaders in February 2016 during which an agreement was expected to be reached over Britain’s renegotiation demands to stay in the EU, she says: “My support of him rendered me an outsider with my other colleagues … The impact of the euro crisis was still lingering, and I was also being repeatedly accused of stinginess.

“And yet, during the summit, I steadfastly remained by David Cameron’s side for an entire evening. In this way I was able to prevent his complete isolation in the council and eventually move the others to back down. I did this because I knew from various discussions with Cameron that where domestic policy was concerned, he had no room for manoeuvre whatsoever.”

But she writes that there came a point when she could no longer help him.

The UK, she says, had not helped itself by making the mistake of not introducing restrictions on eastern European workers once 10 new countries joined the bloc in May 2004, the then Labour government having grossly underestimated the number of people who would arrive. This gave Eurosceptics the chance to put freedom of movement in a negative light.

By contrast, France and Germany introduced a gradual phase-in of eastern Europeans’ rights to work, not giving them full access to their labour markets until 2011.

Merkel says she thought Cameron’s pledge in 2005 for the Conservatives to leave the EPP was the initial nail in the coffin of any attempts to keep Britain in the EU. “He therefore, from the very beginning, put himself in the hands of those who were sceptical about the European Union, and was never able to escape this dependency,” she writes.

Brexit, she concludes, “demonstrated in textbook fashion the consequences that can arise when there’s a miscalculation from the very start”.

Subsequently she was pained by the idea that she might have been able to have done more to keep the UK in the fold, she says.

“After the referendum, I was tormented by whether I should have made even more concessions toward the UK to make it possible for them to remain in the community. I came to the conclusion that, in the face of the political developments taking place at the time within the country, there wouldn’t have been any reasonable way of my preventing the UK’s path out of the European Union as an outsider. Even with the best political will, mistakes of the past could not be undone.”

Israel has said that an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi who went missing in the United Arab Emirates was killed in what it described as a “heinous antisemitic terror incident”.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement about the death of Zvi Kogan, who worked in the UAE for an Orthodox Jewish group called Chabad and had not been seen since Thursday.

“The state of Israel will use all means at its disposal to bring the criminals responsible for his death to justice,” the Israeli prime minister’s statement said.

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the killing, and thanked Emirati authorities for “their swift action”.

Early on Sunday, the UAE’s state-run news agency acknowledged Kogan’s disappearance but did not mention his reported Israeli citizenship, referring to him only as Moldovan. It is unclear exactly when and where the 28-year-old’s body was found.

Israeli authorities repeated their warning against all non-essential travel by Israelis to the UAE and said visitors currently there should minimise movement and remain in secure areas.

The UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020, alongside other countries including Bahrain and Morocco. The agreement has held through more than a year of acute regional tensions since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, after months of tit-for-tat exchanges with the Hezbollah militant group, have stoked anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals and others living in the UAE.

Tensions have risen elsewhere in the region. In Jordan, a man was killed on Sunday after opening fire on and wounding three members of the security forces near the Israeli embassy in the capital, Amman, state media said, in an incident described by the government spokesperson as a “terrorist attack”.

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a prominent branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism based in the US, said on Saturday that Kogan was last seen in Dubai. The UAE now has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering for kosher diners.

“With great pain we share that Rabbi Zvi Kogan, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Abu Dhabi, UAE, was murdered by terrorists after being abducted on Thursday. His body was recovered early Sunday morning, and his family has been notified,” a statement from the movement said.

The Rimon Market, a small kosher supermarket that Kogan managed on Dubai’s busy Al Wasl Road, was shut on Sunday. The store has been the target of online protests by supporters of Palestinians over the last year. Mezuzahs – small parchment scrolls in containers placed on doorposts by observant Jews – on the front and the back doors of the market appeared to have been ripped off when an Associated Press reporter visited on Sunday.

Ynet, an Israeli news website, reported that Kogan’s car was found abandoned in Al Ain, a town 80 miles (130km) from Dubai, and that investigators believed he was followed by “three Uzbek operatives”.

Other Israeli media suggested a cell indirectly operated by Iran was responsible for the abduction and killing of Kogan. The Haaretz newspaper reported that Israeli security sources had said members of the cell responsible for Kogan’s killing were citizens of Uzbekistan, who fled to Turkey to divert attention from Iran.

Tehran’s intelligence services have carried out past kidnappings in the UAE and western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations there, monitoring hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.

Israel has said that an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi who went missing in the United Arab Emirates was killed in what it described as a “heinous antisemitic terror incident”.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement about the death of Zvi Kogan, who worked in the UAE for an Orthodox Jewish group called Chabad and had not been seen since Thursday.

“The state of Israel will use all means at its disposal to bring the criminals responsible for his death to justice,” the Israeli prime minister’s statement said.

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the killing, and thanked Emirati authorities for “their swift action”.

Early on Sunday, the UAE’s state-run news agency acknowledged Kogan’s disappearance but did not mention his reported Israeli citizenship, referring to him only as Moldovan. It is unclear exactly when and where the 28-year-old’s body was found.

Israeli authorities repeated their warning against all non-essential travel by Israelis to the UAE and said visitors currently there should minimise movement and remain in secure areas.

The UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020, alongside other countries including Bahrain and Morocco. The agreement has held through more than a year of acute regional tensions since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, after months of tit-for-tat exchanges with the Hezbollah militant group, have stoked anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals and others living in the UAE.

Tensions have risen elsewhere in the region. In Jordan, a man was killed on Sunday after opening fire on and wounding three members of the security forces near the Israeli embassy in the capital, Amman, state media said, in an incident described by the government spokesperson as a “terrorist attack”.

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a prominent branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism based in the US, said on Saturday that Kogan was last seen in Dubai. The UAE now has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering for kosher diners.

“With great pain we share that Rabbi Zvi Kogan, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Abu Dhabi, UAE, was murdered by terrorists after being abducted on Thursday. His body was recovered early Sunday morning, and his family has been notified,” a statement from the movement said.

The Rimon Market, a small kosher supermarket that Kogan managed on Dubai’s busy Al Wasl Road, was shut on Sunday. The store has been the target of online protests by supporters of Palestinians over the last year. Mezuzahs – small parchment scrolls in containers placed on doorposts by observant Jews – on the front and the back doors of the market appeared to have been ripped off when an Associated Press reporter visited on Sunday.

Ynet, an Israeli news website, reported that Kogan’s car was found abandoned in Al Ain, a town 80 miles (130km) from Dubai, and that investigators believed he was followed by “three Uzbek operatives”.

Other Israeli media suggested a cell indirectly operated by Iran was responsible for the abduction and killing of Kogan. The Haaretz newspaper reported that Israeli security sources had said members of the cell responsible for Kogan’s killing were citizens of Uzbekistan, who fled to Turkey to divert attention from Iran.

Tehran’s intelligence services have carried out past kidnappings in the UAE and western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations there, monitoring hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.

A 69-year-old Lithuanian man has been praised for his “extraordinary resilience” after emergency service workers were forced to amputate his leg during a 20-hour rescue operation in remote south-west Tasmania.

The man, who remained in a critical condition in Royal Hobart hospital on Sunday evening, had been travelling with a group of 11 tourists on a multi-day rafting trip on the remote Franklin River.

He slipped on a rock while walking beside the river and became trapped, partially submerged, in a crevice for close to 20 hours.

Mitch Parkinson, an intensive care flight paramedic with Ambulance Tasmania, was among the first people on the scene. He said it was “the most challenging case that I have ever taken part in”.

“This was an exceptionally strong and resilient man and he maintained that throughout the night,” Parkinson said. “Our efforts were to keep him warm as best as possible, to keep him fed and watered as much as we could.”

Meanwhile, rescuers continued in their attempts to free him.

One of the two surf lifesavers who worked to free the man, Ace Petrie, said when he first reached the man, he was submerged from chest down in fast moving water.

“He had a little bit of broken English,” Petrie said. “When we tried to pull his leg out, he would say ‘oh, my leg is broken’. Apart from that, we couldn’t take his mind off the situation and talk to him about his family. That was really hard.

“He was wedged like an hourglass. He had his knee trapped in rocks in a deep section of that rapid. There were a number of hazards that we had to work around to gain access to the patient.”

The water level dropped as the operation continued, but not nearly as much as emergency services personnel hoped for.

Petrie said he did everything he possibly could to free the man.

This included using ropes and pulleys. Eventually, the team used airbags and hydraulic tools to try to shift the submerged rocks that were pinning him.

“These machines have a capacity of 50 tonnes, but we were not budging these rocks at all,” Petrie said. “This went on for about 10-12 hours of different scenarios.”

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Const Callum Herbert from Tasmania police said: “This rescue was the worst case scenario of the worst case scenario.

“He could not be physically removed and every available angle to try and manipulate him out, and every resource possible was used before the amputation,” Herman said.

Radio signal was so poor in the region that the Maritime Safety Authority needed to dispatch a jet from Canberra, which acted as an intermediary between the rescue staff on the ground and helicopters in the region.

“The focus of the entire evening was ensuring that [amputation] was the absolute last resort,” Parkinson said. “There was an understanding that every conceivable single effort had been made. This was not a discussion or decision that was made lightly.”

Parkinson said the man’s Lithuanian friends helped to supply him with hot drinks and meals during the entire time he was stuck.

One of the ten people who were rafting with the patient was a doctor in Lithuania, who was able to communicate with him as a translator. Through him, the trapped man was informed that amputation was the only option.

Petrie said those conducting the rescue, including himself, had put their own lives at risk during the rescue operation.

“We do train for these type of scenarios, but this one was out of the box,” Petrie said.

Emergency personnel have worked with diplomats to reach his family overseas, to keep them informed.

On Sunday evening the man remained in a critical condition in hospital.

Russia is “exceptionally aggressive and reckless in the cyber realm” and “no one should underestimate” the threat to Nato, a senior UK minister will warn in a speech on Monday.

Pat McFadden, whose portfolio includes national security, will tell a Nato cybersecurity conference in London that Moscow “won’t think twice about targeting British businesses”, according to excerpts of his address released on Sunday by his ministry.

He will also note that “unofficial hacktivists” given “impunity” by the Kremlin are committing “increasingly frequent, and in some cases, increasingly sophisticated” attacks around the world.

That includes the recent targeting of South Korea “in response to its monitoring of the deployment of North Korean troops” to Russia.

The accusations come as tensions between Russia and the west have escalated dramatically, with Vladimir Putin warning that the war in Ukraine had the characteristics of a “global” conflict.

The growing frictions have sparked fresh unease in London and other western capitals that Putin may step up cyber-attacks and other non-military measures.

“Given the scale of that hostility, my message to members today is clear: no one should underestimate the Russian cyber threat to Nato,” McFadden will say in a speech to the Nato Cyber Defence Conference at Lancaster House, noting “the threat is real”.

“In the last year, both the Russian military and its unofficial army of cybercriminals and hacktivists have not just stepped up their attacks, but widened their targets to a number of Nato members and partners.”

McFadden will warn that Russia has previously targeted the UK’s “media, our telecoms, our political and democratic institutions and our energy infrastructure”.

He is set to say that “Russian state-aligned groups” have taken responsibility for “at least nine separate cyber-attacks of varying severity against Nato states”.

They include “unprovoked attacks against our critical national infrastructure”.

“These groups are unpredictable, they act with disregard for the potential geopolitical consequences, and with just one miscalculation could wreak havoc on our networks.”

The UK minister will “call out” a Russian military unit – dubbed Unit 29155 – that allegedly carried out cyber-attacks in the UK and Europe, according to the Cabinet Office.

Highlighting Russia’s use of cyber-attacks over the course of its nearly three-year war on Ukraine, he will note that the tactics “can turn the lights off for millions of people”.

“It can shut down the power grids. This is the hidden war Russia is waging with Ukraine.”

But he will insist that Britain and western allies are “countering their attacks both publicly and behind the scenes”.

“Be in no doubt: the United Kingdom and others in this room are watching Russia. We know exactly what they are doing.”

Dozens of Italian police officers and social workers deployed by Italy’s far-right government in migrant centres in Albania have returned home, after it emerged that the facilities, praised as a model to reduce refugee arrivals, have been empty for weeks.

Just over a month after the much-publicised opening of the multimillion-euro detention centres for asylum seekers in Albania, which were supposed to receive up to 3,000 men a month, more than 50 police officers were moved back to Italy two weeks ago while dozens of social workers have left over the weekend, with their presence in Albania considered “needless”.

Since their opening on 11 October, only 24 asylum seekers have been sent to the centres in Albania, with the goal of repatriating them to their countries of origin. Five spent fewer than 12 hours in a detention centre, while the rest stayed for just over 48 hours.

All were transferred to Italy after Italian judges deemed it unlawful to detain them in Albania before repatriation to countries, such as Bangladesh and Egypt, considered “safe” by Rome. In doing so the judges were upholding a 4 October ruling by the EU’s court of justice (ECJ) that a country outside the bloc could not be declared safe unless its entire territory was deemed safe.

As a result, the centres, presented by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, as a new model for how to establish processing and detention centres for asylum seekers outside the EU, have been empty for more than a month.

At a time when the government is struggling to balance the budget – cutting funds for education, health and social security – opposition parties have described the deal, that will cost about €1bn (£830m) over five years, as a “financial disaster”.

“Mission accomplished!” said Riccardo Magi, the president of the leftwing opposition party Più Europa (More Europe). “The government has succeeded in the effort to repatriate. Migrants? No, Italian operators sent to Albania, who will be returning home by the weekend. The government first wasted a huge sum of public funds, then with the centres emptied, brought back some police personnel to Italy, and now even social workers are returning home. This is an epochal failure.”

The scheme has led to a row between the government and judges, who have been accused by far-right parties of obstructing the project.

Nicola Gratteri, the chief prosecutor of Naples and one of the most authoritative magistrates in Italy, said in a TV interview this week: “We must stop attacking magistrates just because we don’t like a decision.

“I don’t want to give a political judgment, but I say that at this moment in Albania there are 250 law enforcement officers who are hardly doing anything. It’s a waste to keep 250 police officers on a mission in Albania, so I think they should be brought back to Italy where we are struggling with staffing shortages for thousands of policemen.”

The government has said the centres in Albania “will remain open and operational” and that the transfers to Italy have been made according to staffing needs. However, the credibility of Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is at stake after she made immigration a central campaigning issue. In the past she has criticised predecessors for spending public money on managing the migration crisis. The transport by sea on an Italian military ship of just eight men who arrived in Albania over a weekend in mid November cost €250,000 (£205,000) – more than €31,000 per asylum seeker onboard.

Elisabetta Piccolotti, an MP for the Green and Left Alliance party, said: “The government has failed knowing it would fail. They have spent a mountain of money and played with people’s rights. This will remain in history as a shameful page for our country.”

The world will be “unable to cope” with the sheer volume of plastic waste a decade from now unless countries agree to curbs on production, the co-chair of a coalition of key countries has warned ahead of crunch talks on curbing global plastic pollution.

Speaking before the final, critical round of UN talks on the first global treaty to end plastic waste, in Busan, South Korea, this week, Norway’s minister for international development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, acknowledged the split that had developed between plastic-producing countries and others. She represents more than 60 “high ambition” nations, led by Rwanda and Norway, who want plastic pollution tackled over its full life cycle. Crucially, this means clamping down heavily on production.

While a “perfect treaty” may not be possible due to the strength of opposition, mainly from oil-producing countries, she hoped a deal could be reached that could be strengthened over time.

“We are not going to land a perfect treaty. But we need to get further. And I think we will. I choose to be hopeful,” Tvinnereim said. “With high-ambition coalition countries, we will continue to demonstrate that there is a big group of countries that sticks to its ambitions. The world desperately needs some leadership now, and some good news.”

This year, various researchers found microplastics in every sample of placenta they tested; in human arteries, where plastics are linked to heart attacks and strokes; in human testes and semen, adding to evidence of the ubiquity of plastics and concern over health risks. The plastics crisis is widely recognised as a threat to human health, biodiversity and the climate.

Two years after a historic agreement by 175 countries to adopt a mandate on negotiations for a global, legally binding treaty to address the whole life cycle of plastics, delegates remain widely divided on what to do – and a deadline is looming. Progress has stalled over a row about the need for cuts to the $712bn plastics industry. The last talks, in April, failed to get an agreement to put production targets – seen as key to curbing plastic waste – at the treaty’s centre.

The final round of talks, which starts on Monday and is due to end on 1 December, is critical.

“We need increased recycling and waste management, of course, but if we don’t reduce production and consumption we will be unable to cope with the volume of plastic in the system 10 years from now,” said Tvinnereim.

Use of plastic could triple globally by 2060, with the largest increases expected in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Plastic waste is also projected to triple by 2060, with half ending up in landfill and less than a fifth recycled.

An agreement on a “phase out” of a list of single use plastic products globally, as well as bans on poisonous chemicals in plastic – including for food contact plastic and children’s toys – was a “no-brainer”, said Tvinnereim. Many countries already have unilateral single-use plastics bans.

Fractious negotiations have seen divergent views, and countries with large fossil fuel industries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, dubbed the “like-minded” group, have eschewed production cuts and emphasised waste management as the main solution to the crisis. Developing nations, which bear the consequences of plastic overproduction overwhelming their inadequate waste systems, are calling for global cuts.

The uncertainty dogging the talks has been exacerbated by the US position. One of the largest plastic producers, the US recently signalled it would support a treaty calling for curbs on production. But the impending return of Donald Trump, a fossil fuel advocate, as US president in January, has led to doubts.

The US would be “very welcome” to join the coalition, Tvinnereim said. There was also opportunity for China and others to show leadership.

A negotiator for one of the “high ambition” countries said: “If we can see China stepping up, as we have seen them do elsewhere and domestically, we have a good chance of creating an effective instrument. If we don’t, it is going to be very difficult.”

Catholic women whose hopes of ordination were dashed at a recent worldwide synod in Rome are being urged to go on strike from church duties in protest at inertia on a reform that many now see as not only just but also inevitable.

Catholic Women Strike: Global Witness for Equality was launched this month and is calling on women who are regular churchgoers, who work for the church on a voluntary basis or who have paid jobs with Catholic organisations to withhold their labour through Lent next year (5 March to 20 April). “We believe the time is ripe to demand what is right … Instead of waiting for a papal ‘yes’, we issue forth our ‘no’ to the systems of misogyny, sexism and patriarchy,” says the campaign’s website.

For the last three years the Catholic church has been engaged in a worldwide synod on synodality, with people encouraged to take part in meetings at parish and diocesan level to focus on the future of the church. Women’s issues, especially the need to allow women greater leadership roles and give them more of a voice in the running of the church, topped the agenda across the world.

Pope Francis has twice, in 2016 and 2020, commissioned reports to study the history of women deacons. The findings were not publicised, but it is widely acknowledged that women have performed this role. Many believe that, once women are ordained as deacons, it will only be a question of time before they are also ordained as priests.

The issue is urgent because fewer men, in Europe especially, are coming forward for ordination.

Matters came to a head as the synod in Rome ended last month. Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, charged with heading a group on women’s ministry, failed to attend an important meeting on the subject. Then the final synod document appeared to sideline the project, saying: “The question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.”

Kate McElwee of the Women’s Ordination Conference, the body behind the strike plan, said the Vatican’s decision sparked a widespread belief among Catholic women that action is required. “We were founded in 1975, and at that time there was a sense, on the back of the Second Vatican Council, that change would soon happen,” she said. “Over the decades since, there have been many setbacks – but then the synod came along, and we felt inspired, excited and hopeful. Women’s ministry was clearly high on the agenda.”

For the first time in its history, the Women’s Ordination Conference was mentioned by name on the Vatican website. McElwee said: “That seemed to signal change, and that there was room for more.” But over time, hopes of reform have been dashed by a pope and cardinals who turned out to be unwilling to make it central, she said. “It’s felt like a betrayal … it has been heartbreaking. The final document [of the Synod] was disappointing and insufficient and deeply theological, which may not resonate with people in the parishes. It felt hollow. It has all been extremely frustrating … we want to make visible the huge contribution women make to the church,” she said. “If enough women join us, this will make an enormous difference – and we’re working with many organisations across the world.”

Miriam Duignan, of the UK-based Catholic Women’s Ordination, said the church was full of women who did its hard work while male priests took the credit. “It’s not good enough,” she said. “There are women who prepare people for the sacraments, such as baptism and marriage, and they do a whole host of other work.Women are already doing priestly work but by virtue of their gender they are never recognised.”

Duignan said she believed “the vast majority” of Catholics now realised the injustice of the current set-up, and were in support of change: “The church hierarchy says this is a white, western agenda but it isn’t: the whole world is saying: we want women to be recognised.”

Pat Brown, a Leeds-based member of Catholic Women’s Ordination, said the church would “fall apart” without women. “The Synod has left many of us feeling angry. They kept saying they would look at the issue of women’s role, but how many hundreds of years do they need to do what is right?”