An Israeli bombing of a school turned shelter in Gaza City has killed at least 27 people, rescuers said, and hundreds of thousands in the Rafah area are fleeing in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war amid Israel’s newly announced campaign to “divide up” the Gaza Strip.

Three missiles hit Dar al-Arqam school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood on Thursday afternoon, the civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal said, killing several children and wounding 100 people.

The building was being used as a shelter for Palestinians displaced from their homes. In a statement, the Israeli military said it had taken precautions to avoid civilian casualties in the bombing of what it described as a control centre for the militant group Hamas.

Another 20 people were killed in a dawn airstrike on the Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, bringing the total number of casualties reported by the local health ministry to 97 in the past 24 hours.

The intense wave of Israeli bombing comes amid a major expansion of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) aerial and ground operations in the besieged Palestinian territory following Israel’s decision to abandon a two-month-old ceasefire two weeks ago.

The Israeli military said on Thursday it had struck more than 600 “terror targets” across the strip since resuming large-scale airstrikes on 18 March. Gaza’s health ministry, which the UN relies on for casualty data, says 1,163 people have been killed in bombings since the ceasefire collapsed.

On Wednesday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the army was “seizing territory” and “dividing up” Gaza. Israel has cut off humanitarian aid, food and fuel to the strip for over a month in an effort to pressure Hamas.

He did not elaborate on how much Palestinian land Israel intended to capture in the renewed offensive, but according to Ocha, the UN humanitarian agency, the IDF has declared 64% of the territory military buffer zones and “no-go” zones for civilians.

Netanyahu’s latest announcement has renewed fears of permanent displacement for the strip’s 2.3 million residents. It is also likely to inflame worries that Israel intends to permanently take control of the territory.

On Thursday, local media footage showed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the southern city of Rafah and surrounding areas, as Israeli ground troops advanced to create Netanyahu’s newly announced security corridor. Movement was impeded, however, by at least three Israeli strikes on the two main roads leading north.

The “Morag route” is named for a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, suggesting the new military zone will separate the two southern cities in the same manner as Israel’s Netzarim corridor, just south of Gaza City.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which Israel says 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed and a further 250 taken captive. Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 50,357 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Efforts led by Qatari and Egyptian mediators to restart ceasefire talks have so far failed.

The inspector general of the Department of Defense (DoD) is launching an investigation into Pentagon secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the encrypted messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive information about military operations in Yemen.

The investigation, announced on Thursday, follows a bipartisan request from the Senate armed services committee after allegations emerged that highly precise – and most likely classified – intelligence about impending US airstrikes in Yemen, including strike timing and aircraft models, had been shared in a Signal group chat that included a journalist.

Investigators will also review compliance with classification and records retention requirements – which appear to have been defied by a timer set on the channel.

The investigation will “determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business”, the memo by acting Pentagon inspector general Steve Stebbins reads.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon declined to comment on ongoing investigations.

The Republican senate armed services committee chair, Roger Wicker, and Democrat ranking member, Jack Reed, requested the investigation after learning that Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, had been included in a Signal group chat with national security council members discussing Yemen operations.

“This chat was alleged to have included classified information pertaining to sensitive military actions in Yemen,” the senators wrote in their letter.

“If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know.”

The Atlantic published the messages shared by Hegseth on Signal, which included operational details about strikes against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, such as launch times of F-18 fighter jets, bomb drop timings and naval Tomahawk missile launches – sent before the operation had been carried out.

The White House and Hegseth himself have aggressively maintained that the Signal messages were merely “team updates” lacking classified sources or methods.

Yet the Pentagon’s own classification guidelines suggest the kind of detailed military plans in the Signal chat would typically be classified at least at the “secret” level, while some of the real-time updates could have risen to a higher level of classification. Hegseth’s messages even included the phrase “clean on OPSEC” – operational security – implying he recognized the sensitivity of the information being shared.

The former state department attorney Brian Finucane, who has extensive experience in counter-terrorism operations including strikes against Houthis, told the Guardian the specificity of aircraft information suggested the information was classified, and that “in my experience, this kind of pre-operational detail would have been classified”.

The inspector general’s evaluation will be conducted in Washington and at US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, with additional locations potentially coming as the investigation proceeds.

Donald Trump fired six national security council staffers after a fraught meeting in the Oval Office where the far-right activist Laura Loomer presented opposition research against a number of staffers that she said showed they were disloyal to the US president, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The firings encompassed four staffers who were fired overnight, after the meeting, and two who were removed over the weekend. It created the extraordinary situation where Loomer appeared to have more influence than the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, over the NSC and undercut Waltz in having aides axed under him.

Loomer brought a booklet of papers laying out the perceived disloyalty of about a dozen staffers, including Waltz’s principal deputy, Alex Wong, to the meeting, which was also attended by JD Vance, the chief of staff Susie Wiles, the commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and Waltz himself.

The fired officials included Brian Walsh, the senior director for intelligence who previously worked for now secretary of state Marco Rubio on the Senate intelligence committee; Thomas Boodry, the senior director for legislative affairs who previously served as Waltz’s legislative director in Congress; and Maggie Dougherty, the senior director for international organizations, the people said.

While the firings appeared arbitrary, one of the people said that the White House looked through Loomer’s opposition research and verified parts of it. Ultimately, it found that one NSC official had recently criticized Trump on social media and others had ties to Republican establishment figures like the senators John McCain and Mitch McConnell, whom Trump despises.

The firings did not include Wong, who has been one of Loomer’s top targets. Loomer has vilified Wong over the work of his wife, Candice, at the justice department, which involved prosecuting January 6 Capitol rioters. Loomer has also publicly suggested that Wong has sympathies with the Chinese communist party.

Loomer did not immediately respond to questions sent by text about the alleged sins of the NSC officials she targeted. Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the NSC, did not respond to a request for comment.

But in the days since Waltz inadvertently added a journalist from the Atlantic to a Signal group chat, where the defense secretary Pete Hegseth shared updates about a US military strike against the Houthis in Yemen, Loomer suggested Wong and other career NSC officials were trying to sabotage Trump by causing a scandal.

She baselessly claimed Wong deliberately added the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the sensitive chat “as part of a foreign opp to embarrass the Trump administration on behalf of China”. (The White House’s final internal conclusion, the Guardian has reported, was that Waltz added Goldberg by mistake himself.)

Loomer has been part of a group of Trump allies to disparage Waltz and his team, calling them “neocons” – short for neo-conservatives – as a pejorative term to castigate them for being too hawkish and eager to project US military power abroad, at odds with Trump’s “America first” foreign policy.

The online vilification of Waltz and his team took a turn on Wednesday when Loomer appeared at the White House for the meeting. It was not immediately certain how Loomer was cleared to access the White House complex given she lacks a “hard pass” even as a reporter, a sore issue she has complained about in recent weeks.

Loomer sat directly across from Trump in the Oval Office as she made her pitch to him directly to remove the people she was targeting. The New York Times reported that the Republican representative Scott Perry, who had his own concerns about staffers in the administration, was also trying to meet with Trump at the same time.

The effect on Waltz was not clear. He left the White House with Trump on Marine One on Thursday, which signaled support from the president, who last week declined to fire Waltz over the Signal chat episode. Waltz has also recently shown more deference to Wiles, the chief of staff, in an effort to win her support, the people said.

But Waltz’s political enemies point out that Waltz survived the Signal chat episode principally because Trump was unwilling to give the news media a victory, and not because of his confidence in Waltz. His main ally is also perceived to be the senator Lindsey Graham, as opposed to a network of allies inside Trump’s inner circle.

Indian police said on Thursday they had arrested a US tourist who sneaked on to a highly restricted island carrying a coconut and a can of Diet Coke to a tribe untouched by the industrial world.

Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, set foot on the restricted territory of North Sentinel – part of India’s Andaman Islands – in an attempt to meet the Sentinelese people, who are believed to number only about 150.

All outsiders, Indians and foreigners alike, are banned from travelling within 3 miles (5km) of the island to protect the Indigenous people from outside diseases and to preserve their way of life.

“The American citizen was presented before the local court after his arrest and is now on a three-day remand for further interrogation,” the Andaman and Nicobar Islands police chief, HGS Dhaliwal, told AFP.

Satellite photographs show a coral reef-fringed island – stretching to some 6 miles at its widest point – with thick forest and white sand beaches.

The Sentinelese last made international headlines in 2018 after they killed John Allen Chau, 27, an American missionary who landed illegally on their beach.

Chau’s body was not recovered and there were no investigations over his death because of the Indian law prohibiting anyone from going to the island.

India sees the wider Andaman and Nicobar Islands as strategically sited on key global shipping lanes. They are closer to Myanmar than mainland India.

New Delhi plans to invest at least $9bn (£6.7bn) to expand naval and airbases, troop accommodation, the port and the main city in the region.

Dhaliwal said Polyakov kept blowing a whistle off the shore of North Sentinel Island for about an hour to attract the tribe’s attention before he went ashore.

“He landed briefly for about five minutes, left the offerings on the shore, collected sand samples, and recorded a video before returning to his boat,” Dhaliwal said. “A review of his GoPro camera footage showed his entry and landing into the restricted North Sentinel Island.”

Police said Polyakov was arrested late on Monday, about two days after he went ashore, and had visited the region twice in recent months.

He first used an inflatable kayak in October 2024 but was stopped by hotel staff, police said on Thursday. Polyakov made another unsuccessful attempt during a visit in January 2025.

This time Polyakov used another inflatable boat with a motor to travel the roughly 35 kilometres (22 miles) of open sea from the main archipelago.

The Sentinelese, whose language and customs remain a mystery to outsiders, shun all contact and have a record of hostility to anyone who tries to get close.

A photograph issued by the Indian coastguard and Survival International two decades ago showed a Sentinelese man aiming a bow and arrow at a passing helicopter.

Indian authorities have prosecuted any locals who have aided attempts to enter the island and are trying to identify anyone who may have helped Polyakov.

The Andamans are also home to the 400-strong Jarawa tribe, who activists say are also threatened by contact from outsiders. Tourists have previously bribed local officials in an attempt to spend time with the Jarawa.

Donald Trump has been ordered by a judge in England to pay more than £620,000 in legal costs after unsuccessfully suing a company over denied allegations he took part in “perverted” sex acts.

The US president brought a data protection claim against Orbis Business Intelligence, a consultancy founded by a former MI6 officer, Christopher Steele, in 2022.

Steele authored the report known as the Steele dossier, which included allegations – all denied by Trump – that he had been “compromised” by the Russian security service, the FSB, and also included two memos that claimed he had taken part in “sex parties” while in St Petersburg and consorted with sex workers in Moscow.

Mrs Justice Steyn threw out the claim in February last year without ruling on the truth of the allegations, and ordered Trump to pay Orbis’s costs “of the entire claim” including an initial payment of £290,000, which a hearing in January was told Trump had “decided not to pay”.

That led to him being prevented from taking part in a three-day hearing to decide the size of the total legal bill, after which Judge Rowley on Thursday ordered the US president to pay £626,058.98.

The judge said the figure was “both reasonable and proportionate”, with interest accruing daily at 12%.

In a witness statement, Trump said he had brought the case to prove that claims in the Steele dossier, published by the BuzzFeed website in 2017, that he engaged in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia were false.

Many of the claims in the dossier were never substantiated and lawyers for Trump said the report was “egregiously inaccurate” and contained “numerous false, phoney or made-up allegations”.

Steele was paid by Democrats for research that included salacious allegations Russians could use to blackmail Trump. The dossier assembled in 2016 created a political storm just before Trump’s inauguration with rumours and uncorroborated allegations that have since been largely discredited.

Orbis had said the lawsuit should be thrown out because the report had never been meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without the permission of Steele or Orbis. It also said the claim had been filed too late.

Donald Trump has been ordered by a judge in England to pay more than £620,000 in legal costs after unsuccessfully suing a company over denied allegations he took part in “perverted” sex acts.

The US president brought a data protection claim against Orbis Business Intelligence, a consultancy founded by a former MI6 officer, Christopher Steele, in 2022.

Steele authored the report known as the Steele dossier, which included allegations – all denied by Trump – that he had been “compromised” by the Russian security service, the FSB, and also included two memos that claimed he had taken part in “sex parties” while in St Petersburg and consorted with sex workers in Moscow.

Mrs Justice Steyn threw out the claim in February last year without ruling on the truth of the allegations, and ordered Trump to pay Orbis’s costs “of the entire claim” including an initial payment of £290,000, which a hearing in January was told Trump had “decided not to pay”.

That led to him being prevented from taking part in a three-day hearing to decide the size of the total legal bill, after which Judge Rowley on Thursday ordered the US president to pay £626,058.98.

The judge said the figure was “both reasonable and proportionate”, with interest accruing daily at 12%.

In a witness statement, Trump said he had brought the case to prove that claims in the Steele dossier, published by the BuzzFeed website in 2017, that he engaged in “perverted sexual acts” in Russia were false.

Many of the claims in the dossier were never substantiated and lawyers for Trump said the report was “egregiously inaccurate” and contained “numerous false, phoney or made-up allegations”.

Steele was paid by Democrats for research that included salacious allegations Russians could use to blackmail Trump. The dossier assembled in 2016 created a political storm just before Trump’s inauguration with rumours and uncorroborated allegations that have since been largely discredited.

Orbis had said the lawsuit should be thrown out because the report had never been meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without the permission of Steele or Orbis. It also said the claim had been filed too late.

JD Vance said on Thursday that Elon Musk would remain a “friend and an adviser” to the vice-president and Donald Trump after he leaves his current role with the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

In recent days, several news outlets, including Politico, reported that Trump had told members of his cabinet that the tech billionaire, who holds the position of “special government employee”, would soon be stepping back from his role in the administration, and would take on a supporting role and return to the private sector.

As a special government employee, Musk’s current service is capped at 130 days, which, if counted from the day of the inauguration, is set to expire sometime in late May.

But on Wednesday, Musk dismissed the report as “fake news” and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, criticized the Politico story, calling it “garbage”, and adding that Musk “will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at Doge is complete”.

And then, on Thursday morning, in an interview with Fox News, Vance stated: “Doge has got a lot of work to do, and yeah, that work is going to continue after Elon leaves, but fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president.

“Elon came in and we said: ‘We need you to make government more efficient, we need you to shrink the incredible fat bureaucracy that thwarts the will of the American people but also costs way too much money,” Vance added. “We said, ‘That’s going to take about six months’ – and that’s what Elon signed up for, but of course, he’s going to continue to be an adviser and by the way, the work of Doge is not even close to done, the work of Elon is not even close to done.”

Despite Musk’s 130-day cap, Doge is expected to continue until 2026, as a result of Trump’s executive order.

The reports regarding Musk’s future involvement with the Trump administration come as earlier this week, a liberal judge in Wisconsin, Susan Crawford, defeated a Musk-backed conservative judge in the race for a seat on the state’s supreme court, framed by Democrats as a referendum on the popularity of Musk and Trump.

Musk invested millions in the race, in what what became the most expensive judicial contest in US history, and also spent time campaigning in the state.

In her acceptance speech, Crawford said: “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin, and we won!”

• Ukraine appears to have resolved some of its shortages of troops fighting against Russia, including by widening the pool of eligible recruits, the top US general in Europe, Christopher Cavoli, said on Thursday. He also underscored that any US cutoff of weapons and intelligence would be extremely harmful to the Ukrainian war effort, despite Kyiv’s attempts to diversify its weapons suppliers.

• Under questioning from senators in Washington, Cavoli, commander of US European command and the Nato supreme allied commander Europe, said Ukraine depended on the US for larger anti-aircraft and missile defence systems. “If the Ukrainians were not able to receive intelligence from us, they would struggle to target, especially in-depth operational level targets such as command posts, logistics areas and things like that.”

• Cavoli said Ukrainian forces were holding territory the Russian region of Kursk, and Moscow had lost about 4,000 tanks in the war – which would be nearly the total of the US tank fleet.

• European countries are already providing more than half of Ukraine’s ammunition needs, recently put at 2 million rounds by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said on Thursday. “These things are moving very well … we need to get the help to Ukraine as fast as possible.”

• The Czech-led drive to supply Ukraine with artillery ammunition has received further financing to keep deliveries running until September, the Czech foreign minister, Jan Lipavsky, said on Thursday before a meeting of Nato foreign ministers. The initiative received new financing from Canada, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, he said.

• Fierce battles were reported on Thursday in Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces continue to hold territory and hundreds of Kyiv’s troops are reported to have holed up in a monastery. Russia’s defence ministry and pro-Russian war bloggers reported heavy battles under way in Gornal, Guevo and Oleshnya, neighbouring villages that hug the border with Ukraine’s Sumy region. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine and Reuters said it could not independently verify the reports.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Ukraine’s northern Sumy region across the border from Kursk on Thursday. “We are working to protect our positions. We are aware of what the enemy is counting on,” he said. “In any case, we will protect our state, our independence, our people.” Kyiv’s top general warned last week that Russian forces were stepping up attacks along the north-eastern border in a bid to break into Sumy.

• Russian claimed its troops had taken control of the settlements of Vesele and Lobkove in eastern Ukraine. Reuters said it could not independently confirm the battlefield claim.

• A Russian drone attack on Kharkiv hit dwellings and triggered fires late on Thursday, killing at least two people and injuring 32, local officials said. Kharkiv, in north-eastern Ukraine, has been subject to nearly nightly Russian drone attacks in the past week. In the south-eastern city of Dnipro, three people were injured in a mass drone attack, the regional governor said. In the Zaporizhzhia region further south, one person was injured during drone strikes, the regional governor said.

• Russia on Thursday declared the Elton John Aids Foundation (EJAF) an “undesirable” organisation, outlawing the HIV treatment and prevention group from operating in the country. Elton John is popular in Russia, as Pjotr Sauer writes, and has performed there more than two dozen times, dating back to the Soviet era. Since launching its full-scale war on Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has waged a Soviet-style crackdown on rights groups and NGOs. Among those labelled as “undesirable” are the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Transparency International and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

• The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has told Nato members that Washington remains committed to the alliance but they must massively ramp up their defence spending targets. Ahead of Nato’s June summit in The Hague, Donald Trump has demanded the alliance more than double its current spending target to 5% of GDP – more than any member, including Washington, spends now. Poland hit 4.7% this year and is aiming for 5% next year. The Nato chief, Mark Rutte, said: “Great things are happening. Over the last couple of months, we literally see hundreds of billions of euros rolling in.”

• Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiga, said as he met Nato counterparts that “it is time to increase pressure on Moscow … While the media attention is on global trade wars, we must not forget there is a real, full-scale war going on in Europe.” On the Trump tariffs, Norway’s foreign affairs minister, Espen Barth Eide, said: “It’s important to understand that we grow faster and better together, that if we want to build resources for a stronger defence, we need to have economic growth. Protectionism will not do us any good.”

• The US has withdrawn from the ICPA, an international group collecting evidence of potential Russian war crimes in Ukraine, the president of its parent body, Eurojust, said on Thursday. Michael Schmid said: “We of course regret that but at the same time we obviously continue the work with the [other] participants.” The ICPA brings together investigators from several countries under the umbrella of Eurojust, an EU judicial body.

• A Russian court has sentenced a man to 14 years’ jail for setting fire to railway equipment in an act of pro-Ukraine sabotage. Russia has been hit by dozens of sabotage attacks since the war started, many targeting its vast railroad network. Stanislav Ilchuk, 23, set fire to a box connected to the railway tracks in the south-western Volgograd region, according to the region’s court press service. On Wednesday, a court in the neighbouring Saratov region sentenced two 24-year-old men to 14 and 12 years in prison for setting a railway signals box ablaze.

Former heart surgeon and TV pitchman Dr Mehmet Oz was confirmed on Thursday to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Oz became the agency’s administrator in a party-line 53-45 vote.

The 64-year-old will manage health insurance programs for roughly half the country, with oversight of Medicare, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage. He steps into the new role as Congress is debating cuts to the Medicaid program, which provides coverage to millions of poor and disabled Americans.

Oz has not said yet whether he would oppose such cuts to the government-funded program, instead offering a vision of promoting healthier lifestyles, integrating artificial intelligence and telehealth into the system, and rethinking rural healthcare delivery.

During a hearing last month, he told senators that he did favor work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but that paperwork shouldn’t be used to reaffirm that they are working or to block people from staying enrolled.

Oz, who worked for years as a respected heart surgeon at Columbia University, also noted that doctors dislike Medicaid for its relatively low payments and some don’t want to take those patients.

He said that when Medicaid eligibility was expanded without improving resources for doctors, that made care options even thinner for the program’s core patients, which include children, pregnant people and people with disabilities.

“We have to make some important decisions to improve the quality of care,” he said.

Oz has formed a close relationship with his new boss, Robert F Kennedy Jr. He’s hosted the health secretary and his inner circle regularly at his home in Florida. He’s leaned into Kennedy’s campaign to “make America healthy again” (Maha), an effort to redesign the country’s food supply, reject vaccine mandates and cast doubt on some long-established scientific research.

The former TV show host talks often about the importance of a healthy diet, aligning closely with Kennedy’s views.

While Oz has faced some criticism for promoting unproven vitamin supplements and holistic treatments – staples of the “Maha movement” – he’s regularly encouraged Americans to get vaccinated.

Oz will take over the CMS days after the agency was spared from the type of deep cuts that Kennedy ordered at other public health agencies. Thousands of staffers at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health are out of a job after mass layoffs that started on Tuesday.

The CMS is expected to lose about 300 staffers, including those who worked on minority health and to shrink the cost of healthcare delivery.

Separately on Thursday, a federal judge will temporarily block Donald Trump’s administration from cutting billions in federal dollars that support Covid-19 initiatives and public health projects throughout the country.

US district Judge Mary McElroy, appointed by the US president in 2019 but first nominated by Barack Obama, in Rhode Island said that she plans to grant the court order sought by 23 states and the District of Columbia.

“They make a case, a strong case, for the fact that they will succeed on the merits, so I’m going to grant the temporary restraining order,” said McElroy, who plans to issue a written ruling later.

The states’ lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, sought to immediately stop the $11bn in cuts. The money was allocated by Congress during the pandemic and mostly used for Covid-related initiatives, as well as for mental health and substance use efforts. The lawsuit said losing the money would devastate US public health infrastructure, putting states “at greater risk for future pandemics and the spread of otherwise preventable disease and cutting off vital public health services”.

The US Department of Health and Human Services has defended the decision, saying that the money was being wasted since the pandemic is over.

There have been calls in Italy for a “cultural rebellion” amid outrage and protests over the murders of two female students found within 48 hours of each other, bringing the number of femicides in the country since the start of the year to 11.

Sara Campanella, a 22-year-old biomedical student, was stabbed at a bus stop in the Sicilian city of Messina on Monday afternoon and died while being taken to hospital.

Stefano Argentino, a fellow student at the University of Messina, was later arrested in the town of Noto. His lawyer, Raffaele Leone, told the Italian press that Argentino, 27, had confessed to the murder.

The Messina prosecutor, Antonio D’Amato, claimed Argentino had “insistently and repeatedly” harassed Campanella since she started her university course two years ago.

In a separate killing, the body of 22-year-old Ilaria Sula, a statistics student at Sapienza University of Rome, was found in a suitcase in a forested area outside the Italian capital early on Wednesday morning. She had been missing since 23 March and was allegedly stabbed to death. Her former boyfriend, Mark Samson, 23, is being questioned by police on suspicion of her murder and of hiding a body.

The murders sparked protests in Messina, Rome and other Italian cities, including Bologna, on Wednesday night. Further events are planned on Thursday.

Antonella Polimeni, the rector of Sapienza University, said Sula’s death was an “atrocious and brutal femicide that leaves us speechless and heartbroken”. She added: “We must no longer stand by and watch femicide incidents.”

A minute of silence was held for Campanella at the University of Messina. Giovanna Spatari, the university’s rector, said students were “dismayed by this umpteenth episode of femicide”.

The killings have also renewed political debate on violence against women in Italy, where there were 113 femicides in 2024, of which 99 were committed by relatives, partners or ex-partners.

Mara Carfagna, party secretary for the centre-right Noi Moderati, called for a “cultural rebellion”. “From a regulatory point of view, Italy is more advanced than other countries, but culturally we haven’t managed to evolve at the same speed,” she told La Stampa newspaper. “For this we need a rebellion shared by everyone.”

In March, Giorgia Meloni’s government approved a draft law which for the first time introduced a legal definition of femicide in criminal law, punishing it with life in prison while increasing sentences for crimes including stalking, sexual violence and “revenge porn”.

The law followed the strong public reaction to the killing of Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old student who was murdered by her former boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, in November 2023. Turetta was sentenced to life in prison in December.

A group of MPs with the opposition Democratic party has argued that an “incisive action of prevention” is now needed to stop this “continuous slaughter of women”, starting with education in schools.

Bonobos use a combination of calls to encourage peace with their partner during mating rituals, research suggests.

The discovery is part of a study that suggests our close evolutionary cousins can string together vocalisations to produce phrases with meanings that go beyond the sum of their parts – something often considered unique to human language.

“Human language is not as unique as we thought,” said Dr Mélissa Berthet, the first author of the research from the University of Zürich.

Writing in the journal Science, Berthet and colleagues said that in the human language, words were often combined to produce phrases that either had a meaning that was simply the sum of its parts, or a meaning that was related to, but differed from, those of the constituent words.

“‘Blond dancer’ – it’s a person that is both blond and a dancer, you just have to add the meanings. But a ‘bad dancer’ is not a person that is bad and a dancer,” said Berthet. “So bad is really modifying the meaning of dancer here.”

It was previously thought animals such as birds and chimpanzees were only able to produce the former type of combination, but scientists have found bonobos can create both.

The team recorded 700 vocalisations from 30 adult bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, checking the context of each against a list of 300 possible situations or descriptions.

The results reveal bonobos have seven different types of call, used in 19 different combinations. Of these, 15 require further analysis, but four appear to follow the rules of human sentences.

Yelps – thought to mean “let’s do that” – followed by grunts – thought to mean “look at what I am doing”, were combined to make “yelp-grunt”, which appeared to mean “let’s do what I’m doing”. The combination, the team said, reflected the sum of its parts and was used by bonobos to encourage others to build their night nests.

The other three combinations had a meaning apparently related to, but different from, their constituent calls.

For example, the team found a peep – which roughly means “I would like to …” – followed by a whistle – appeared to mean “let’s stay together” – could be combined to create “peep-whistle”. This combination was used to smooth over tense social situations, such as during mating or displays of prowess. The team speculated its meaning was akin to “let’s find peace”.

The team said the findings in bonobos, together with the previous work in chimps, had implications for the evolution of language in humans, given all three species showed the ability to combine words or vocalisations to create phrases.

“The cognitive building blocks that facilitate this capacity is at least 7m years old,” said Dr Simon Townsend, another author of the research. “And I think that is a really cool finding.”