South Korea’s spy agency has confirmed Ukrainian reports that an injured North Korean soldier has been captured by Ukrainian forces, in what could be the first capture of its kind since Pyongyang had sent combat forces to bolster Russian forces in the war in Ukraine.

The South Korean National Intelligence Service said in a statement on Friday: “Through real-time information sharing with an allied country’s intelligence agency, it has been confirmed that one injured North Korean soldier has been captured.”

A photo of the North Korean soldier, who looked gaunt and appeared to have been injured, circulated on the Telegram messaging app, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. Details of the soldier’s condition or status are unknown.

The claim emerged after Ukraine outlet Militarnyi reported that special forces had captured the soldier in the Kursk region of Russia, where some territory has been seized and held during an incursion by Ukraine.

The outlet did not say when the incident had taken place, and there has been no confirmation from officials in Ukraine or North Korea, where the state media have not referred to the deployment of the country’s troops.

Militarnyi said that, if confirmed, the soldier would be the first North Korean combatant to have been taken by Ukrainian forces.

As many as 11,000 soldiers from North Korea have been deployed to help their Russian counterparts, months after the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a mutual defence pact that committed each country to come to the other’s aid if attacked.

While the North could gain valuable battlefield experience, its poorly trained soldiers, fighting in unfamiliar territory, have quickly been exposed to the dangers of combat.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, known by it acronym GUR, said on Thursday that North Korean troops were suffering heavy losses in the fighting in Kursk and facing logistical difficulties as a result of Ukrainian attacks.

The GUR said Ukrainian strikes near Novoivanovka had inflicted heavy casualties on North Korean units, and that North Korean troops also faced supply issues, including shortages of drinking water.

This week, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, claimed that more than 3,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in the Kursk region, the

It marked the first significant estimate by Ukraine of North Korean casualties after it was announced that North Korea troops had been sent to bolster Russian forces.

The deployment of North Korean soldiers marked a dramatic escalation in the war, which began almost three years ago, as the Kremlin turned to its ally to boost its forces. It was also seen as an attempt by Putin to broaden the conflict through the direct involvement in fighting of a third country.

• Nato has offered its support to Finland and Estonia as it investigates the possible sabotage of Baltic Sea cables. Mark Rutte, the chief of the alliance, said on Thursday: “Spoke with [Estonian prime minister] Kristen Michal about reported possible sabotage of Baltic Sea cables. Nato stands in solidarity with allies and condemns any attacks on critical infrastructure. We are following investigations by Estonia and Finland, and we stand ready to provide further support.” Finnish authorities have seized a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea amid suspicions it caused the outage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia a day earlier, and that it also damaged or broke four internet lines. A Finnish coastguard crew boarded the Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, on Thursday. Twelve western countries said on 16 December that they had agreed measures to “disrupt and deter” Russia’s shadow fleet to prevent sanctions breaches and increase the cost to Moscow of the war in Ukraine. On Thursday, the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, said on X: “We must be able to prevent the risks posed by ships belonging to the Russian shadow fleet.”

• Russia and Kazakhstan have sought to play down speculation about an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash, as a US official said there were early indications that a Russian anti-aircraft system may have struck the plane. Earlier, a Ukrainian national security official and several sources in Azerbaijan claimed that the crash, which killed 38 people on Christmas Day, was caused by Russian air defence fire. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday the investigation into the cause of the crash was under way, adding that it would be “wrong” to speculate before the inquiry concluded.

• Slovakia has offered to be a “platform” for possible peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. Putin told a televised press conference that Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, “said that if there are any negotiations, they would be happy to provide their country as a platform”. He added that Russia was “not against it”, praising Slovakia’s “neutral position”. Slovakia, an EU and Nato member, has halted military aid to Ukraine for more than a year under Fico’s government, and called for peace talks. Fico, one of the few European leaders to maintain ties with the Kremlin, met the Russian president in Moscow on 22 December despite western efforts to isolate Putin and present a united front in support of Kyiv. Fico has accused Kyiv of jeopardising his country’s supply of Russian natural gas, on which it is heavily dependent. The prospect of peace talks to end the conflict in Ukraine that began in February 2022 has grown since the re-election of Donald Trump to the White House. Trump has vowed to push for a quick deal to halt the fighting when he takes office in January, sparking fears in Kyiv and Europe that Ukraine could be pushed to make concessions to Moscow.

• Putin also claimed that in 2021, US President Joe Biden offered to “push back” Ukraine’s entry into Nato. “In 2021, the current president Biden offered exactly that: push back Ukraine’s Nato membership by 10 to 15 years, because it was not yet ready,” he claimed at a press conference on Thursday. “I answered reasonably that ‘Yes, today it is not ready. But you will prepare it for it and you will accept it.’” But for Russia, “What is the difference – today, tomorrow or in 10 years?” Ukraine has been urgently seeking a Nato invitation before the end of the Biden administration, however Putin considers Nato membership for Ukraine an unacceptable threat.

• Russian drones struck a multi-storey apartment building in the frontline town of Chasiv Yar, killing two people and injuring two in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Thursday, regional prosecutors said. Chasiv Yar has been under attack by Russian forces for many months as part of Russia’s drive westward to capture the Donbas region. The town lies west of Bakhmut, a regional centre which fell to Russian forces in May 2023 after months of heavy fighting.

• Moldova’s parliament has approved a 10-year defence strategy calling for increased defence spending as part of a plan to join the European Union. The chamber’s pro-Russian opposition ridiculed the document – which aims to boost defence spending by 2030 to 1% of gross domestic product – as pointlessly directed against Moscow in view of Moldova’s small land mass and armed forces. The document cites risks of the Ukraine conflict spreading, particularly around the Black Sea port of Odesa close to Moldova’s border. Pro-western president Maia Sandu, re-elected to a second term last month, has accused Russia of trying to unseat her government. The former Soviet state is one of Europe’s poorest countries, lying between Ukraine and EU member Romania.

• Nato has offered its support to Finland and Estonia as it investigates the possible sabotage of Baltic Sea cables. Mark Rutte, the chief of the alliance, said on Thursday: “Spoke with [Estonian prime minister] Kristen Michal about reported possible sabotage of Baltic Sea cables. Nato stands in solidarity with allies and condemns any attacks on critical infrastructure. We are following investigations by Estonia and Finland, and we stand ready to provide further support.” Finnish authorities have seized a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea amid suspicions it caused the outage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia a day earlier, and that it also damaged or broke four internet lines. A Finnish coastguard crew boarded the Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, on Thursday. Twelve western countries said on 16 December that they had agreed measures to “disrupt and deter” Russia’s shadow fleet to prevent sanctions breaches and increase the cost to Moscow of the war in Ukraine. On Thursday, the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, said on X: “We must be able to prevent the risks posed by ships belonging to the Russian shadow fleet.”

• Russia and Kazakhstan have sought to play down speculation about an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash, as a US official said there were early indications that a Russian anti-aircraft system may have struck the plane. Earlier, a Ukrainian national security official and several sources in Azerbaijan claimed that the crash, which killed 38 people on Christmas Day, was caused by Russian air defence fire. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday the investigation into the cause of the crash was under way, adding that it would be “wrong” to speculate before the inquiry concluded.

• Slovakia has offered to be a “platform” for possible peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. Putin told a televised press conference that Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, “said that if there are any negotiations, they would be happy to provide their country as a platform”. He added that Russia was “not against it”, praising Slovakia’s “neutral position”. Slovakia, an EU and Nato member, has halted military aid to Ukraine for more than a year under Fico’s government, and called for peace talks. Fico, one of the few European leaders to maintain ties with the Kremlin, met the Russian president in Moscow on 22 December despite western efforts to isolate Putin and present a united front in support of Kyiv. Fico has accused Kyiv of jeopardising his country’s supply of Russian natural gas, on which it is heavily dependent. The prospect of peace talks to end the conflict in Ukraine that began in February 2022 has grown since the re-election of Donald Trump to the White House. Trump has vowed to push for a quick deal to halt the fighting when he takes office in January, sparking fears in Kyiv and Europe that Ukraine could be pushed to make concessions to Moscow.

• Putin also claimed that in 2021, US President Joe Biden offered to “push back” Ukraine’s entry into Nato. “In 2021, the current president Biden offered exactly that: push back Ukraine’s Nato membership by 10 to 15 years, because it was not yet ready,” he claimed at a press conference on Thursday. “I answered reasonably that ‘Yes, today it is not ready. But you will prepare it for it and you will accept it.’” But for Russia, “What is the difference – today, tomorrow or in 10 years?” Ukraine has been urgently seeking a Nato invitation before the end of the Biden administration, however Putin considers Nato membership for Ukraine an unacceptable threat.

• Russian drones struck a multi-storey apartment building in the frontline town of Chasiv Yar, killing two people and injuring two in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Thursday, regional prosecutors said. Chasiv Yar has been under attack by Russian forces for many months as part of Russia’s drive westward to capture the Donbas region. The town lies west of Bakhmut, a regional centre which fell to Russian forces in May 2023 after months of heavy fighting.

• Moldova’s parliament has approved a 10-year defence strategy calling for increased defence spending as part of a plan to join the European Union. The chamber’s pro-Russian opposition ridiculed the document – which aims to boost defence spending by 2030 to 1% of gross domestic product – as pointlessly directed against Moscow in view of Moldova’s small land mass and armed forces. The document cites risks of the Ukraine conflict spreading, particularly around the Black Sea port of Odesa close to Moldova’s border. Pro-western president Maia Sandu, re-elected to a second term last month, has accused Russia of trying to unseat her government. The former Soviet state is one of Europe’s poorest countries, lying between Ukraine and EU member Romania.

Panamanian president, José Raúl Mulino, on Thursday ruled out negotiations with US president-elect Donald Trump over control of the Panama Canal, denying that China was interfering in its operation.

Mulino also rejected the possibility of reducing tolls for US vessels in response to Trump’s threat to demand control of the vital waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans be returned to Washington.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Mulino told a press conference.

“The canal is Panamanian and belongs to Panamanians. There’s no possibility of opening any kind of conversation around this reality, which has cost the country blood, sweat and tears,” he added.

The canal, inaugurated in 1914, was built by the United States but handed to Panama on 31 December 1999, under treaties signed two decades earlier by then-US president Jimmy Carter and Panamanian nationalist leader Omar Torrijos.

Trump on Saturday slammed what he called “ridiculous” fees for US ships passing through the canal and hinted at China’s growing influence.

“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!”

If Panama could not ensure “the secure, efficient and reliable operation” of the channel, “then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” he said.

Trump on Wednesday nominated the Miami-Dade county commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera to serve as ambassador to Panama.

Trump described Cabrera as “a fierce fighter for America First principles” who he said has been instrumental in driving economic growth and fostering international partnerships.

An estimated 5% of global maritime traffic passes through the Panama Canal, which allows ships traveling between Asia and the US east coast to avoid the long, hazardous route around the southern tip of South America.

The United States is its main user, accounting for 74% of cargo, followed by China with 21%.

Mulino said the canal’s usage fees were “not set at the whim of the president or the administrator” of the interoceanic waterway, but under a long-established “public and open process.”

“There is absolutely no Chinese interference or participation in anything to do with the Panama Canal,” Mulino said.

On Wednesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social, without evidence, that Chinese soldiers were “lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal.”

Mulino denied that allegation, too.

“There are no Chinese soldiers in the canal, for the love of God,” he added.

Panama established diplomatic relations with China in 2017, after breaking off ties with Taiwan – a decision criticised by Trump’s first administration. On Tuesday, dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the US embassy in Panama City chanting “Trump, animal, leave the canal alone” and burning an image of the incoming US president.

The United Nations chief has denounced the “escalation” in hostilities between Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Israel, calling IDF strikes on targets including at the airport in Sana’a “especially alarming” after it came under attack while the head of the World Health Organization was about to board a plane.

Israel struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen on Thursday, including the international airport in the capital, Sana’a. Houthi media said at least six people were killed.

A spokesperson for UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in a statement: “The secretary general condemns the escalation between Yemen and Israel. Israeli airstrikes today on Sana’a international airport, the Red Sea ports and power stations in Yemen are especially alarming …

“Today’s airstrikes follow around a year of escalatory actions by the Houthis in the Red Sea and the region that threaten civilians, regional stability and freedom of maritime navigation.”

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a social media post on Thursday that he was about to board a plane at the airport when it came under aerial attack. A crew member on the plane was injured, he said, and at least two people were reported killed at the airport.

“The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge – just a few meters from where we were – and the runway were damaged. We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave. My UN and @WHO colleagues and I are safe. Our heartfelt condolences to the families whose loved ones lost their lives in the attack.”

Tedros said he had been in Yemen to negotiate the release of UN staff detained by the Houthis and assess the humanitarian situation.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Agence France-Presse on whether they were aware of Tedros’ presence at the time.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Thursday afternoon that Israel’s air force attacked Houthi targets on the coastline and in Sanaa, adding: “We are determined to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran’s evil axis. We will persist in this until we complete the task.”

Netanyahu said in an interview with Channel 14 that Israel was only at the beginning of its campaign against the Houthis. “We are just getting started with them,” he said.

Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The Israeli military said that in addition to striking the airport, it also hit military infrastructure at the ports of Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib on Yemen’s west coast. It also attacked the country’s Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations.

The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said that three people were killed in the strikes on the airport and three were killed in Hodeidah, while 40 others were wounded in the attacks.

Later on Thursday, the Houthis said they were ready to respond quickly to the attack and meet “escalation with escalation”, Houthi-run Al Masirah TV reported.

The Houthi transport minister told Saba that both the airport and Hodeidah port would resume normal operations from Friday.

More than a year of Houthi attacks has disrupted international shipping routes, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys that have in turn stoked fears over global inflation.

The UN security council is due to meet on Monday over the Houthi attacks on Israel, Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon said on Wednesday.

On Saturday, Israel’s military failed to intercept a missile from Yemen that fell in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, injuring 14 people.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Five Palestinian journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their vehicle in central Gaza, their employer has said, while Israel has also struck several areas in Houthi rebel-controlled Yemen in air raids.

Faisal Abu al-Qumsan, Ayman al-Jadi, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed al-Lada’a were sleeping in their broadcasting truck, marked as press, when it was targeted in a direct strike by the Israeli military, witnesses told Palestinian media. Another 32 people were killed in other Israeli pre-dawn strikes across the territory, the local health ministry said.

The five men, who worked at Al-Quds Today, a television channel affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group that fights alongside Hamas, were buried on Thursday morning.

Israel’s military said in a statement it had conducted “a precise strike on a vehicle with an Islamic Jihad terrorist cell inside in the area of Nuseirat … Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”

It also claimed responsibility for at least five airstrikes that hit what it said were military targets in Yemen, most of which is controlled by the Houthi movement, also known Ansar Allah, which is backed by Iran. Ports, power stations and Sana’a international airpot were among the targets struck on Thursday afternoon.

The Houthi-run Al Masirah TV said three people were killed, two in the strikes on the airport and one in the port hits, and 11 were wounded in the attacks.

The head of the World Health Organization, who was at Sana’a airport in Yemen amid an Israeli bombardment on Thursday, said there was damage to infrastructure but that he was safe.

“One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X, adding that other UN staff were also safe but their departure had been delayed until repairs could be made.

The Houthis began attacking Israel shortly after the war in Gaza began in October 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel. A Houthi missile strike injured 16 people in the Tel Aviv area last week, prompting warnings of retaliation from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a Channel 14 interview on Thursday evening Netanyahu said Israel was only at the beginning of its campaign against the Houthis. “We are just getting started with them,” he said.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said 195 journalists had been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, including those who died in this latest attack, and at least 400 have been injured over the past 14 months.

The Israel Defense Forces denies targeting media workers. However, a Guardian investigation found that amid a loosening of the IDF’s interpretation of the laws of war in the conflict, some in the military appeared to view journalists working in the territory for outlets controlled by or affiliated with Palestinian militant groups to be legitimate military targets.

Since foreign media are blocked by Israel from freely entering Gaza, the task of documenting the war on the ground is carried out only by Palestinian journalists, many of whom have continued to work despite the risks to their safety.

Under the Geneva conventions, a journalist can lose their civilian status if they engage in planning or carrying out combat operations. Working for an organisation such as Al-Quds Today does not make someone a target.

The Middle East branch of the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Thursday that the organisation was “devastated by the reports that five journalists and media workers were killed inside their broadcasting vehicle by an Israeli strike”.

“Journalists are civilians and must always be protected,” it said on social media.

About 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed during Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, and 250 taken hostage. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.

More than 45,000 people have been killed, more than half of whom are women and children, in Israel’s ensuing war on the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which the UN relies on for data on deaths.

The war has triggered a humanitarian crisis amid allegations that Israel has blocked the entry of aid and medicine, and is seeking to depopulate the northern third of the strip. It denies the allegations.

Israel’s Kan Radio reported on Thursday that renewed ceasefire and hostage deal negotiations are at an impasse as Hamas and Israel traded blame for reneging on understandings that had already been reached. Hamas has allegedly walked back a pledge to submit a list of hostages to be released in a first stage of a deal, and Arabic-language media reported that Hamas has accused Israel of introducing new conditions related to its withdrawal from the strip.

Both sides say discussions are continuing, although the Israeli negotiating team returned from a week of talks hosted by mediator Qatar earlier this week.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem on Thursday, Israel’s extremist national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visited the contested holy site of Temple Mount, known to Palestinians as al-Aqsa.

The visit was to mark the beginning of the Hanukkah holiday, his office said. “The minister recited a prayer for our soldiers’ safety, the return of the hostages, the living and the dead, and total victory in the war.”

Ben-Gvir has made several controversial trips to the contested holy site since entering government at the end of 2022, and has been accused of attempting to stir up unrest by unilaterally announcing that Jews are free to worship there. Netanyahu’s office said again on Thursday that “the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed”.

Fourteen security personnel from Syria’s new authorities and three armed men were killed in clashes in Tartus province after forces tried to arrest an officer linked to the notorious Sednaya prison, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The UK-based monitoring group said the clash broke out in Tartus, a stronghold of the ousted president, Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority, on Wednesday, and was sparked by the attempted arrest of the former prison official.

Syria’s new interior minister confirmed the deaths in a message on Telegram, and said 10 police officers were also wounded by what he called “remnants” of the Assad government. The minister vowed to punish anyone who dared “to undermine Syria’s security or endanger the lives of its citizens”.

On Thursday, the new Syrian military leadership said it had launched an operation to pursue the last pockets of support for Assad’s regime in the countryside of Tartus, the state news service Sana reported.

The operation had already succeeded in “neutralising a certain number” of armed men loyal to the toppled president, Sana said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported several arrests in connection with Wednesday’s clashes.

Wednesday’s deadly incident came as demonstrations and an overnight curfew elsewhere marked the most widespread unrest since Assad fled Syria more than two weeks ago, raising fears of the sectarian violence that dominated the 13-year-long civil war.

The demonstrations occurred around the same time that an undated video was circulated on social media that showed a fire inside an Alawite shrine in the city of Aleppo.

The interior ministry said on its official Telegram account the video dated back to the rebel offensive on Aleppo in late November and the violence was carried out by unknown groups, adding that whoever was circulating the video now appeared to be seeking to incite sectarian unrest.

In the city of Homs, Syrian police imposed an overnight curfew, state media reported, after skirmishes there linked to demonstrations residents said were led by members of the minority Alawite and Shia Muslim religious minorities.

One demonstrator was killed and five others wounded in Homs “after security forces … opened fire to disperse” the crowd, Agence France-Presse reported, saying the protests were sparked by the video of the Alawite shrine.

Some residents told Reuters the demonstrations were linked to pressure and violence in recent days aimed at members of the Alawite minority.

Syria’s new ruling administration, led by the Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the curfew. State media said the curfew was being imposed for one night, from 6pm local time (1500 GMT) until 8am on Thursday morning.

The observatory also reported demonstrations by thousands in Tartus and Latakia, also an Alawite stronghold, as well as other areas, including Assad’s home town of Qardaha.

The protests were the largest by the Alawites since Assad’s fall on 8 December, and came after hundreds of Syrians protested in the capital, Damascus, against the torching of a Christmas tree.

The country’s new leaders have repeatedly vowed to protect minority religious groups, who fear the former rebels now in control could seek to impose a conservative form of Islamist government.

In a predominantly Alawite neighbourhood of Damascus, Alawite sheikh Ali Dareer told Reuters on Thursday that homes had been vandalised and people beaten on the basis of their religious identity, despite HTS promises the community would be treated with respect. He blamed “a third party” trying to incite discord.

Dareer said that the community had extended its hand to the new government but there “have been many violations”, citing multiple accounts of people being beaten at a checkpoint.

An HTS fighter in the area said there had been an incident on Thursday in which Alawites were taken off a bus and beaten because of their religion, but denied that HTS was responsible.

Assad’s long-time regional ally, Shia-majority Iran, has criticised the course of events in Syria in recent days. Syria’s newly appointed foreign minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, said earlier this week that Iran must respect the will of the Syrian people and Syria’s sovereignty and security.

• Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

Of all the horrors Mohammed Ammar Hamami remembers from his time in the Assad regime’s notorious Sednaya prison, the most vivid is the clanging of metal execution tables being moved around on the floor below.

About once every 40 days, prison guards would drag the tables away from under the feet of condemned men. Nooses around their necks and hands tied behind their backs, they would die by hanging. Most of the bodies were burned in Sednaya’s crematorium.

“This is the noise we used to hear,” the 31-year-old said, picking up the edge of one of the tables and letting the smash of metal on metal echo around the large room. “When we hear this noise, it means they are executing people … Imagine sitting upstairs and knowing prisoners are being executed downstairs.”

Hamami was freed from Sednaya after five hellish years on 8 December, when Syria’s longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad fled the country in the face of a lightning-fast Islamist rebel offensive. Along with the 20 other men held in his dirty, dark and unfurnished cell, he heard shouting in the corridor before collapsing in astonishment when his father’s face appeared in the cell door’s small window.

A week later, the mechanic wanted to return to Sednaya, on the outskirts of Damascus, to retrieve clothes left behind in the chaos – but also, he said, to try to understand that what he had lived through in what he called “the killing machine” was real. On release, he was very thin after experiencing complications from diabetes which was not treated properly during his imprisonment. He is missing teeth from beatings and is still suffering from three broken ribs.

“I wanted to revisualise the life we lived here,” Hamami said. “After I went out and breathed fresh air, now I can tell the difference … We were the living dead.

“It was like I was reborn. Today I am not 31, I am seven days old,” he said.

Hamami was a fighter under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, which mounted an armed opposition to the regime after a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy Arab spring protests. He was arrested in 2019 and sentenced to death. His impoverished family from the Damascus suburb of Ghouta paid £63,000 in bribes to various branches of the security apparatus to get his sentence reduced to 20 years.

They are among the luckier ones. Many families are still searching for any trace of Syria’s estimated 100,000 missing people, most of whom were disappeared into the regime’s vast network of torture and detention centres. A week after the Guardian witnessed the extraordinary moment Sednaya’s doors were flung open, relatives were still digging up floors in the hope of finding secret cells and combing through ledgers and files strewn about trashed offices.

“Until today, they did not allow us to visit or tell us where he is, and we had to pay lots of bribes. When we checked a month ago, through another bribe, we were told he was here and he was fine,” said a woman looking for her son, who gave her name as Umm Ali.

“When it was liberated, we couldn’t find anybody. Even if they are dead, we want our children … Anybody hosting these criminals, we want them back here,” she said.

After the collapse of decades of brutal dynastic rule, the full extent of the crimes Assad and his father, Hafez, committed against their own people – chemical attacks, barrel bombs, forced conscription, demographic engineering – are now known to the world. Even so, it is difficult to comprehend the cruelty prisoners endured in Sednaya, the most feared of all the regime’s detention centres.

When Hamami arrived at the prison’s “red wing” in 2019, which housed people accused of security crimes, he was placed downstairs, in the worst cellblock. For the first four days, he was not allowed food; for the next four, no water.

The smell from the damp, filthy, 1 sq metre cells – which sometimes held two men at a time – was overpowering. An orange jumpsuit used for executions lay on the floor; brown water dripped from a leaking pipe. The temperature during the Guardian’s visit was 8C.

Hamami was thrown back into the block several times during his incarceration – sometimes for offences such as making a tasbih, a string of prayer beads, from date stones.

“I’ve never seen this place with my eyes before. I knew it by touch,” Hamami said, exploring with the light from his phone. In one cell, a name had been scratched on the wall, along with a date. “That was my friend from Aleppo,” he said. “I didn’t know what happened to him … it appears he was executed.”

After eight days, Hamami was taken upstairs, naked. He was instructed to stand facing the wall before about a dozen guards lashed his back about 100 times, he estimates. The walls of the reception area are covered in black marks, which Hamami said were from whips and belts.

Cell four, down the hall, would become his home for the next five years: a five metre by five metre room, with no light, no furniture, and a rudimentary toilet, shared with about 20 other men. Some had fought in the war, like him; a few were Alawites, a sect that traditionally supported the government.

On Hamami’s return visit, the floor of cell four was covered in damp blankets and clothes. His old spot was in the left-hand corner closest to the door, where he retrieved two red hoodies to take home. He searched for but gave up on finding a homemade sewing kit he had hidden inside the seam of a blanket.

As a result of the extortionate sums of money Hamami’s family paid every few months to reduce his sentence, his parents, wife and two children were allowed to visit, separated by a few metres by metal cages in the visiting room. They brought him medicine, food, and clothes, although the guards helped themselves first to anything that came through the prison’s doors, he said.

Adjusting to leaving Sednaya has been difficult, Hamami said; he had not immediately recognised his own children waiting for him in the prison grounds. “My kids ran to me, and I opened my arms, then closed them,” he said. Dazed by the morning’s events, at first he wasn’t even sure they were real, he said.

A new Syria, liberated from more than 50 years of Assad rule and 13 of civil war, is still an overwhelming prospect. Clashes in the coastal province of Tartous this week between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group that now controls the country, and remnants of the Assad regime, could be a sign of yet more dangerous times to come.

“Us prisoners used to chat and say: ‘Even if we are released while the regime is still in power, we would still live in terror.’ The first thing I thought about if I got out was, take my family, leave the country,” Hamami said.

“But now, this country is ours, and we will rebuild it, and live a new life.”

Details have emerged of a “terrifying” incident in which a crew member fell from yacht Porco Rosso and drifted for more than a kilometre before being rescued on a deadly night of racing, during which two sailors on other yachts were killed.

Two sailors on separate yachts, Flying Fish Arctos and Bowline, died at sea amid wild weather conditions that forced line honours favourite Master Lock Comanche to withdraw, among mass retirements.

The two sailors were fatally struck by booms – a large horizontal pole at the bottom of the sail – on their respective boats. The race’s death toll threatened to rise to three when a crew member fell off Porco Rosso at about 3.15am.

The sailor, 37-year-old Luke Watkins, was blown overboard as the yacht sailed in strong winds past Green Cape on the New South Wales coast.

“That is one of the most terrifying experiences that you can have,” said David Jacobs, vice-commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA), which administers the race. Being washed overboard at night made it “tenfold more scary”, he said.

Watkins spoke to the media on Friday afternoon and described being thrown off the boat by a big wave which “completely washed the deck”, before being pinned underwater.

“I somehow managed to unclip myself from the boat as I could feel I was on my last breath,” he said. “When I popped up above the water, the boat was probably 200m in front of me.”

Watkins said he followed the safety protocol but after 10 minutes in the water, began feeling cold and tried to “keep the thoughts under control”.

“It was pretty rough, getting thrown down waves – it’s hard to keep yourself above water a lot of the time. So I swallowed a fair bit of salt water.”

The race continued on its passage to Constitution Dock, with the first boats expected to arrive later on Friday or early Saturday morning.

The incident aboard Flying Fish Arctos occurred about 30 nautical miles east-south-east of Ulladulla on the NSW south coast, with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) receiving a mayday call just before midnight.

A 55-year-old crew member from Western Australia was struck in the back of the head by the boom.

“It was moving violently through the night with challenging sea conditions, and a crew member suffered a significant head injury,” Supt Joseph McNulty told reporters.

Water police were deployed to assist the vessel and escorted it back into Jervis Bay, but despite CPR efforts from his fellow crew members, the man died.

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The crew member aboard Bowline was struck approximately 30 nautical miles east-north-east of Batemans Bay and fell unconscious, with CPR also unsuccessful.

The 65-year-old man from South Australia also suffered a head injury from the boom, at about 2.15am. NSW police vessel Nemesis was nearby and deployed immediately, McNulty said.

“The crew did a pretty substantial job of doing CPR, trying to keep that crew member alive, but their efforts were unfortunately met with the death of that person in the early hours of this morning,” McNulty said.

A second Bowline crew member who was injured with a suspected broken shoulder was taken on to Nemesis and into a waiting ambulance at Batemans Bay.

McNulty said it was believed both men were “general crew members helping on the deck work” – their degree of experience was an element of the investigation.

Police believed both vessels may have been changing sails at the time of the fatal accidents.

“So they weren’t actually sailing with the wind,” McNulty said. “That creates a different set of circumstances. The hull moves, the sails are moving, the booms are moving.”

The vessels, which were seized as evidence, were active crime scenes and all the passengers and crew members were being interviewed, McNulty said.

“Both those crew are doing [it] pretty tough at the moment … We’ve offered them some counselling,” he said.

“They are shaken up from what they’ve seen and what they’ve had to do, but gallantly, they provided CPR to their crew member through the night while they waited for police to attend, and they didn’t give up. They kept going until … those two men had lost their lives.”

Jacobs said “developed systems and procedures” helped save Watkins, the crew member who was washed overboard.

The incident triggered his emergency position-indicating radio beacon, a safety device that must be worn by all sailors in the race.

As a result, Amsa was automatically notified and contacted the race committee.

Amsa also deployed an aircraft to begin searching.

“They had, we believed, been washed about 1.2km away from the boat,” Jacobs said of Watkins.

As at 8.30am Friday, 16 yachts – from the total fleet of 104 – had retired from the race. Three had lost their masts, two had mainsail damage and the others had “various equipment failures”, Jacobs told reporters..

”

Jacobs said the northerly winds had pushed the vessels down the coast, with the lead yachts travelling “extremely fast”.

Jacobs said the CYCA would conduct an investigation into the incidents.

The vice-commodore said he was “personally surprised” a number of the super-maxi yachts had pulled out of the race, including Master Lock Comanche, URM and Alive.

“It is unusual that we get so many of the larger boats pulling out,” he said.

McNulty warned conditions could worsen overnight on Friday as the boats continue towards Tasmania.

“It’s going to be a challenging night in the Bass Strait, big seas are coming,” he said.

Anthony Albanese said his thoughts were with the two sailors and their families.

“The Sydney to Hobart is an Australian tradition, and it is heartbreaking that two lives have been lost at what should be a time of joy,” the prime minister said in a statement.

“We send our love and deepest condolences to their families, friends and loved ones.”

Six sailors were killed in storms during the 1998 running of the Sydney to Hobart, which triggered a NSW coronial inquest and mass reforms to the safety protocols that govern the race.

Details have emerged of a “terrifying” incident in which a crew member fell from yacht Porco Rosso and drifted for more than a kilometre before being rescued on a deadly night of racing, during which two sailors on other yachts were killed.

Two sailors on separate yachts, Flying Fish Arctos and Bowline, died at sea amid wild weather conditions that forced line honours favourite Master Lock Comanche to withdraw, among mass retirements.

The two sailors were fatally struck by booms – a large horizontal pole at the bottom of the sail – on their respective boats. The race’s death toll threatened to rise to three when a crew member fell off Porco Rosso at about 3.15am.

The sailor, 37-year-old Luke Watkins, was blown overboard as the yacht sailed in strong winds past Green Cape on the New South Wales coast.

“That is one of the most terrifying experiences that you can have,” said David Jacobs, vice-commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA), which administers the race. Being washed overboard at night made it “tenfold more scary”, he said.

Watkins spoke to the media on Friday afternoon and described being thrown off the boat by a big wave which “completely washed the deck”, before being pinned underwater.

“I somehow managed to unclip myself from the boat as I could feel I was on my last breath,” he said. “When I popped up above the water, the boat was probably 200m in front of me.”

Watkins said he followed the safety protocol but after 10 minutes in the water, began feeling cold and tried to “keep the thoughts under control”.

“It was pretty rough, getting thrown down waves – it’s hard to keep yourself above water a lot of the time. So I swallowed a fair bit of salt water.”

The race continued on its passage to Constitution Dock, with the first boats expected to arrive later on Friday or early Saturday morning.

The incident aboard Flying Fish Arctos occurred about 30 nautical miles east-south-east of Ulladulla on the NSW south coast, with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) receiving a mayday call just before midnight.

A 55-year-old crew member from Western Australia was struck in the back of the head by the boom.

“It was moving violently through the night with challenging sea conditions, and a crew member suffered a significant head injury,” Supt Joseph McNulty told reporters.

Water police were deployed to assist the vessel and escorted it back into Jervis Bay, but despite CPR efforts from his fellow crew members, the man died.

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The crew member aboard Bowline was struck approximately 30 nautical miles east-north-east of Batemans Bay and fell unconscious, with CPR also unsuccessful.

The 65-year-old man from South Australia also suffered a head injury from the boom, at about 2.15am. NSW police vessel Nemesis was nearby and deployed immediately, McNulty said.

“The crew did a pretty substantial job of doing CPR, trying to keep that crew member alive, but their efforts were unfortunately met with the death of that person in the early hours of this morning,” McNulty said.

A second Bowline crew member who was injured with a suspected broken shoulder was taken on to Nemesis and into a waiting ambulance at Batemans Bay.

McNulty said it was believed both men were “general crew members helping on the deck work” – their degree of experience was an element of the investigation.

Police believed both vessels may have been changing sails at the time of the fatal accidents.

“So they weren’t actually sailing with the wind,” McNulty said. “That creates a different set of circumstances. The hull moves, the sails are moving, the booms are moving.”

The vessels, which were seized as evidence, were active crime scenes and all the passengers and crew members were being interviewed, McNulty said.

“Both those crew are doing [it] pretty tough at the moment … We’ve offered them some counselling,” he said.

“They are shaken up from what they’ve seen and what they’ve had to do, but gallantly, they provided CPR to their crew member through the night while they waited for police to attend, and they didn’t give up. They kept going until … those two men had lost their lives.”

Jacobs said “developed systems and procedures” helped save Watkins, the crew member who was washed overboard.

The incident triggered his emergency position-indicating radio beacon, a safety device that must be worn by all sailors in the race.

As a result, Amsa was automatically notified and contacted the race committee.

Amsa also deployed an aircraft to begin searching.

“They had, we believed, been washed about 1.2km away from the boat,” Jacobs said of Watkins.

As at 8.30am Friday, 16 yachts – from the total fleet of 104 – had retired from the race. Three had lost their masts, two had mainsail damage and the others had “various equipment failures”, Jacobs told reporters..

”

Jacobs said the northerly winds had pushed the vessels down the coast, with the lead yachts travelling “extremely fast”.

Jacobs said the CYCA would conduct an investigation into the incidents.

The vice-commodore said he was “personally surprised” a number of the super-maxi yachts had pulled out of the race, including Master Lock Comanche, URM and Alive.

“It is unusual that we get so many of the larger boats pulling out,” he said.

McNulty warned conditions could worsen overnight on Friday as the boats continue towards Tasmania.

“It’s going to be a challenging night in the Bass Strait, big seas are coming,” he said.

Anthony Albanese said his thoughts were with the two sailors and their families.

“The Sydney to Hobart is an Australian tradition, and it is heartbreaking that two lives have been lost at what should be a time of joy,” the prime minister said in a statement.

“We send our love and deepest condolences to their families, friends and loved ones.”

Six sailors were killed in storms during the 1998 running of the Sydney to Hobart, which triggered a NSW coronial inquest and mass reforms to the safety protocols that govern the race.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday its analysis of samples from the first severe case of bird flu in the country last week showed mutations not seen in samples from an infected backyard flock on the patient’s property.

The CDC said the patient’s sample showed mutations in the hemagglutinin (HA) gene, the part of the virus that plays a key role in it attaching to host cells.

The agency said the risk to the general public from the outbreak has not changed and remains low.

Last week, the United States reported its first severe case of the virus, in a Louisiana resident above the age of 65, who was suffering from severe respiratory illness.

The patient had been infected with the D1.1 genotype of the virus that had been recently detected in wild birds and poultry in the US, and not the B3.13 genotype detected in dairy cows, humans and some poultry in multiple states.

The mutations seen in the patient are rare but have been reported in some cases in other countries and most often during severe infections. One of the mutations was also seen in another severe case in British Columbia, Canada.

No transmission from the patient in Louisiana to other persons has been identified, said the CDC.

Donald Trump has told 37 people on death row who had their sentences commuted by Joe Biden to “go to hell” in a lacerating Christmas Day social media post.

The president-elect – long a vocal advocate of capital punishment – lashed out at Biden’s decision on his Truth Social platform, after wishing a merry Christmas to political opponents he addressed as “Radical Left Lunatics”.

He then turned to those shown clemency by Biden in a decision announced on Monday: “ … to the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky ‘souls’ but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL!”

Biden’s move reduced the death sentences of 37 out of 40 prisoners on federal death row to life imprisonment without parole and followed pressure from campaigners who warned that they were likely to be executed on Trump’s return to the White House.

The exceptions applied to three men who had been convicted of offences regarded as terrorism or hate crimes, including Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found guilty of carrying out the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attack.

Biden – a one-time adherent of capital punishment – said in a statement that “guided by my conscience … I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

During his first presidency, Trump restarted federal executions after a 17-year gap, eventually presiding over more than the previous 10 presidents combined.

Biden’s commutation order won the praise of campaigners, including Martin Luther King III, the son of the murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The majority of those whose sentences were commuted are people of colour, and 38% are Black, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

One of Trump’s earliest forays into the political arena was a full-page advert calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty after the rape of a jogger in New York City’s Central Park in 1989 and the subsequent arrests of five Black and Latino teenagers, who were charged and eventually convicted of the crime. All five, who denied involvement, were ultimately exonerated and released from prison after another man belatedly made a confession that was confirmed by DNA evidence.

The men, now in their 50s, sued Trump for defamation after he falsely said during a presidential debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia in September that they had admitted guilt and that the victim had been killed.

In another segment of his Christmas Day post, Trump sarcastically offered season’s greetings to Chinese troops serving in the Panama Canal, which he has publicly mused be returned to the US, and to the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, whom he taunted with the title “governor” in the latest of several demeaning provocations since winning November’s presidential election.

“Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything’,” he wrote.

“Also, to Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada, whose Citizens’ Taxes are far too high, but if Canada was to become our 51st State, their Taxes would be cut by more than 60%, their businesses would immediately double in size, and they would be militarily protected like no other Country anywhere in the World.”

Christmas wishes were also extended to the residents of Greenland, “which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the US to be there, and we will”. This was a reference to his call, initially made during his first presidency, that Denmark – which has sovereignty over the territory – sell it to the US. Both Denmark and Greenland’s autonomous administration have said that it is not for sale.

In a later unrelated post, Trump wrote that he had met the retired Canadian ice hockey star Wayne Gretzky and asked him to run for the prime minister’s office, “soon to be known as the Governor of Canada”.

“He had no interest, but I think the people of Canada should start a DRAFT WAYNE GRETZKY Movement,” Trump wrote. “It would be so much fun to watch!”

Manmohan Singh, India’s first Sikh prime minister and the architect of the big-bang economic reforms that set the stage for the country’s emergence as a global powerhouse, has died aged 92.

A hospital statement attributed Singh’s death to “age-related medical conditions”.

The government announced seven days of mourning along with a state funeral for Singh. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, paid tribute to him, saying: “India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders.”

Singh, called India’s “reluctant prime minister” due to his shyness and preference for being behind the scenes, was considered an unlikely choice to lead the world’s biggest democracy. But when Congress leader Sonia Gandhi led her party to a surprise victory in 2004, she turned to Singh to be prime minister.

Famed for his trademark sky-blue turbans and home-spun white kurta pyjamas, Singh became the country’s first non-Hindu prime minister. He served a rare full two terms as prime minister in India’s tumultuous politics and is credited with spurring the rapid economic growth that lifted tens of millions of Indians from poverty.

Born in 1932 in Gah, a village in present-day Pakistan, Singh’s early life was shaped by hardship and he walked miles to go to school.

His family was uprooted during the partition of the subcontinent after independence from Britain in 1947 and migrated to the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in India.

Singh, one of 10 siblings, was so determined to get an education he would study at night under streetlights to escape the noise in his joint-family home. His brother, Surjit Singh, recalled his father “used to say Manmohan will be the prime minister of India” because he “always had his nose in a book”.

His diligence paid off when he won scholarships to study economics at Cambridge and later at Oxford, where he earned a doctorate.

He went on to hold pivotal government roles including serving as head of India’s central bank. Later, he worked for the International Monetary Fund.

Singh was pitchforked into politics in 1991 when India, facing one of the worst-ever economic crises, was on the brink of default. The then prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao, drafted Singh to be his finance minister.

In a seismic shift, Singh broke away from India’s Soviet-style economic planning model. He quoted Victor Hugo – “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come” – before adding that “the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea”.

He dismantled the restrictive “license raj” which dictated the products factories could make and what types of bread could be sold, devalued the rupee to boost exports, opened key industrial sectors to private and foreign investment, and slashed taxes. The bold steps ushered in rapid growth, earning Singh the moniker of India’s economic “liberator”.

The same deft economic hand marked his first term as prime minister. He presided over an economy that grew at more than 8%, championed landmark initiatives such as the Indo-US civil nuclear deal which ended India’s nuclear isolation, and launched ambitious social welfare programmes. But his second term was marred by a string of massive corruption scandals that eroded public trust in his administration.

Those scandals led to accusations that Singh, despite being personally incorruptible, lacked the authority to control his coalition partners. His former adviser Sanjaya Baru wrote a tell-all memoir, saying it seemed Singh “would maintain the highest standards of probity in public life but would not impose this on others”. Singh’s seeming deference to Sonia Gandhi led to allegations that he was her “puppet”.

Singh, who is survived by his wife Gursharan Kaur and three daughters, famously described politics as “the art of the possible” and said toward the end of his second term as prime minister that “history will be kinder to me than the media”.

Manmohan Singh, India’s first Sikh prime minister and the architect of the big-bang economic reforms that set the stage for the country’s emergence as a global powerhouse, has died aged 92.

A hospital statement attributed Singh’s death to “age-related medical conditions”.

The government announced seven days of mourning along with a state funeral for Singh. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, paid tribute to him, saying: “India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders.”

Singh, called India’s “reluctant prime minister” due to his shyness and preference for being behind the scenes, was considered an unlikely choice to lead the world’s biggest democracy. But when Congress leader Sonia Gandhi led her party to a surprise victory in 2004, she turned to Singh to be prime minister.

Famed for his trademark sky-blue turbans and home-spun white kurta pyjamas, Singh became the country’s first non-Hindu prime minister. He served a rare full two terms as prime minister in India’s tumultuous politics and is credited with spurring the rapid economic growth that lifted tens of millions of Indians from poverty.

Born in 1932 in Gah, a village in present-day Pakistan, Singh’s early life was shaped by hardship and he walked miles to go to school.

His family was uprooted during the partition of the subcontinent after independence from Britain in 1947 and migrated to the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in India.

Singh, one of 10 siblings, was so determined to get an education he would study at night under streetlights to escape the noise in his joint-family home. His brother, Surjit Singh, recalled his father “used to say Manmohan will be the prime minister of India” because he “always had his nose in a book”.

His diligence paid off when he won scholarships to study economics at Cambridge and later at Oxford, where he earned a doctorate.

He went on to hold pivotal government roles including serving as head of India’s central bank. Later, he worked for the International Monetary Fund.

Singh was pitchforked into politics in 1991 when India, facing one of the worst-ever economic crises, was on the brink of default. The then prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao, drafted Singh to be his finance minister.

In a seismic shift, Singh broke away from India’s Soviet-style economic planning model. He quoted Victor Hugo – “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come” – before adding that “the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea”.

He dismantled the restrictive “license raj” which dictated the products factories could make and what types of bread could be sold, devalued the rupee to boost exports, opened key industrial sectors to private and foreign investment, and slashed taxes. The bold steps ushered in rapid growth, earning Singh the moniker of India’s economic “liberator”.

The same deft economic hand marked his first term as prime minister. He presided over an economy that grew at more than 8%, championed landmark initiatives such as the Indo-US civil nuclear deal which ended India’s nuclear isolation, and launched ambitious social welfare programmes. But his second term was marred by a string of massive corruption scandals that eroded public trust in his administration.

Those scandals led to accusations that Singh, despite being personally incorruptible, lacked the authority to control his coalition partners. His former adviser Sanjaya Baru wrote a tell-all memoir, saying it seemed Singh “would maintain the highest standards of probity in public life but would not impose this on others”. Singh’s seeming deference to Sonia Gandhi led to allegations that he was her “puppet”.

Singh, who is survived by his wife Gursharan Kaur and three daughters, famously described politics as “the art of the possible” and said toward the end of his second term as prime minister that “history will be kinder to me than the media”.

South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol’s legal team are set to attend court on Friday as the constitutional court begins hearings into his impeachment by parliament over his short-lived imposition of martial law,

The court has 180 days to decide whether to reinstate Yoon or remove him. In the latter scenario, a new presidential election would be held within 60 days.

Two lawyers in Yoon’s legal team are set to attend the court hearing, one a former prosecutor and the other a former spokesperson for the constitutional court, according to a message to reporters from Seok Dong-hyeon, a lawyer advising Yoon. The two could not be immediately reached for comment.

Yoon is not required to attend the hearing.

The unexpected martial law decree and swift political fallout shocked the nation and financial markets, unsettling key allies the United States and Europe which had seen Yoon as a staunch partner in global efforts to counter China, Russia and North Korea.

The crisis intensified this week as the opposition Democratic Party vowed to impeach acting president Han Duck-soo after he rejected a call to immediately appoint three justices to the constitutional court to fill vacancies.

Parliament is scheduled to meet on Friday afternoon. The Democratic party has said it would bring to a vote a motion to impeach Han.

The party has clashed with the Yoon-appointed prime minister over the justices, as well as bills calling for special prosecutors to investigate the president.

On Thursday, Han said it was beyond his remit as a caretaker president to appoint the justices without bipartisan agreement.

In a separate criminal case, Yoon had until Thursday defied requests by the court to submit documents as well as summons by investigators over his martial law declaration on 3 December, drawing criticism even from some members of his party.

At least 6,000 inmates escaped from a high-security prison in Mozambique’s capital Maputo on Christmas Day after a rebellion, the chief of police has said, as widespread post-election riots and violence continue to engulf the country.

The police general commander, Bernardino Rafael, said 33 prisoners had died and 15 others were injured during a confrontation with the security forces.

The prisoners fled during violent protests in which police cars, stations and general public infrastructure were destroyed after Mozambique’s constitutional council confirmed the ruling Frelimo party as the winner of the 9 October elections.

The escape from Maputo’s central prison, located 14km south-west of the city, started about midday on Wednesday after “agitation” by a “group of subversive protesters”, Rafael said. He said prisoners at the facility had snatched weapons from prison officers and began freeing other detainees.

Rafael said: “A curious fact is that in that prison we had 29 convicted terrorists, who they released. We are worried, as a country, as Mozambicans, as members of the defence and security forces.

“They[protesters] were making noise demanding that they be able to remove the prisoners who are there serving their sentences”, said Rafael, adding that the protests led to the collapse of a wall, allowing the prisoners to flee.

He called for the voluntary surrender of the escaped prisoners and for the population to be informed about the fugitives.

Videos circulating on social media showed the moment inmates left the prison, while other recordings revealed the captures made by military personnel and prison guards. Many prisoners tried to hide in homes, but some were unsuccessful and were detained.

In an amateur video, one prisoner, still with handcuffs on his right wrist, said he had been in the disciplinary section of the maximum security prison and had been released by other inmates.

Finnish authorities have seized a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea on suspicion it caused the outage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia a day earlier, and that it also damaged or broke four internet lines.

A Finnish coastguard crew boarded the Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, on Thursday. The crew took command and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters, a coastguard official told a press conference.

The director of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, Robin Lardot, said: “From our side we are investigating grave sabotage. According to our understanding, an anchor of the vessel that is under investigation has caused the damage.”

The Finnish customs service said it had seized the vessel’s cargo and that the Eagle S was believed to belong to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of ageing tankers that seek to evade sanctions on the sale of Russian oil.

Two fibre-optic cables owned by Finnish operator Elisa linking Finland and Estonia were broken, while a third link between the two countries owned by China’s Citic was damaged, the Finnish transport and communications agency, Traficom, said.

A fourth internet cable running between Finland and Germany and belonging to Finnish group Cinia was also believed to have been severed, the agency said.

The Finnish and the Estonian governments will hold extraordinary meetings on Thursday to assess the situation, they said in separate statements.

Baltic Sea nations are on high alert for potential acts of sabotage after a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since 2022, although subsea equipment is also subject to technical malfunction and accidents.

The Finnish electricity grid operator, Fingrid, said in a statement that repairing the 106-mile (170km) Estlink 2 interconnector would take months, and that the outage raised the risk of power shortages during the winter.

The Eagle S Panamax oil tanker crossed the Estlink 2 electricity cable at 1026 GMT on Wednesday, a Reuters review of MarineTraffic ship tracking data showed, identical to the time when Fingrid said the power outage had occurred.

The ship was stationary near the Finnish coast on Thursday afternoon, with a Finnish patrol vessel stopped nearby, the data showed.

The United Arab Emirates-based Caravella LLCFZ, which according to MarineTraffic data owns the Eagle S, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Peninsular Maritime, which, according to MarineTraffic acts as a technical manager for the ship, declined to comment outside the company’s opening hours.

The Estonian foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, said in a statement that damage to subsea installations in the Baltic Sea had become so frequent that it was difficult to believe this was caused merely by accident or poor seamanship.

“We must understand that damage to submarine infrastructure has become more systematic and thus must be regarded as attacks against our vital structures,” he said.

The 658-megawatt Estlink 2 outage began at midday local time on Wednesday, leaving only the 358MW Estlink 1 in operation between the two countries, Fingrid said.

Twelve western countries said on 16 December that they had agreed measures to “disrupt and deter” Russia’s shadow fleet to prevent sanctions breaches and increase the cost to Moscow of the war in Ukraine.

On Thursday, the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, said on X: “We must be able to prevent the risks posed by ships belonging to the Russian shadow fleet.”

The Lithuanian foreign minister, Kęstutis Budrys, said the growing number of Baltic Sea incidents should serve as a stark and urgent warning to Nato and the EU to significantly enhance the protection of undersea infrastructure there.

Police in Sweden are leading an investigation into the breach last month of two Baltic Sea telecom cables, an incident the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, has said he assumed was caused by sabotage.

Finnish and Estonian police also continue to investigate damage caused last year to the Balticconnector gas pipeline linking the two countries, as well as several telecom cables, and have said it was likely to have been caused by a ship dragging its anchor.

The Russia-Germany Nord Stream gas pipelines running along the seabed in the same waters were blown up in 2022 in a case that Germany is still investigating.