The Israeli military is expanding its operations on multiple fronts around the anniversary of the 7 October attacks on Monday, including planning for a “significant and serious” retaliation against Iran for last week’s large-scale ballistic missile attack on Israel.

Signs of imminent Israeli retaliation against Iran came as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for an international embargo on arms delivered to Israel for use against Gaza, where authorities say more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s year long assault.

“I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” Macron told broadcaster France Inter, adding that France was not sending any arms to Israel.

Macron made his comments as the Israel Defense Forces said a major strike on Iran was imminent, as Israel hit targets in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza on Saturday.

“The IDF [Israeli military] is preparing a response to the unprecedented and unlawful Iranian attack on Israeli civilians and Israel,” the military official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly on the issue.

As Israel said it was planning its response to Tuesday’s Iranian missile strikes, which hit on or near a number of key Israeli bases, the US president, Joe Biden, cautioned against striking Iranian oil facilities, a day after he said Washington was “discussing” such action.

“If I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oilfields,” Biden said during a rare appearance at the White House daily press briefing. The Biden administration has already suggested it opposes an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Amid the worsening violence, speculation was hardening that a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs had killed Hashem Safieddine, who had been widely expected to succeed Hezbollah’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah. According to Lebanese security sources, Safieddine has been unreachable since Friday.

Assessments suggest that Safieddine was killed with aides and Iranian advisers in a powerful strike that has made reaching any bodies difficult. In the aftermath of the strike the IDF said it had hit Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters without disclosing who was present.

The fighting comes as Israel prepares to mark the first anniversary on Monday of the devastating 7 October Hamas attack that prompted the current war in Gaza, which has now engulfed neighbouring Lebanon, creating a dangerous regional crisis.

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, will lead a memorial service in Sderot, one of the cities hardest hit during the onslaught by Hamas militants, amid fears that the anniversary may attract fresh attacks on Israeli citizens.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it was also ordering Palestinian civilians in some areas of the Gaza Strip – including Nuseirat and Bureij, which host large encampments of internally displaced people – to evacuate, saying that the IDF planned to act “with great force” against Hamas operating there.

Israel also appeared to be ramping up operations over the weekend in southern Lebanon, which its ground forces entered earlier this week.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it was opposing Israeli attempts to enter the southern town of Odaisseh, adding that clashes were ongoing.

As Hezbollah continued to fire rockets at northern Israel, there were direct hits in two buildings in Karmiel and near Acre, with reports of casualties from an impact on an apartment block in the Israeli-Arab village of Deir al-Asad.

Israel, which began ground operations targeting southern Lebanon on Monday last week, says they are focused on villages near the border and has said Beirut is “not on the table”, but has not specified how long the ground incursion will last.

It says the operation’s aim is to allow tens of thousands of its citizens to return home after Hezbollah bombardments, which began on 8 October 2023, forced them to evacuate from its north.

Rapidly escalating violence in recent days has brought intense Israeli strikes on Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon as ground troops conducted raids near the border, transforming nearly a year of cross-border exchanges into full-blown war.

In the first reported Israeli airstrike on the northern Tripoli region in the current flare-up, Hamas said “Zionist bombardment” of the Beddawi refugee camp killed a commander, Saeed Atallah Ali, as well as his wife and two daughters on Saturday.

Amid mounting fears over the deepening region-wide crisis, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, renewed his call for ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon on Saturday.

“The most important issue today is the ceasefire, especially in Lebanon and in Gaza,” he told reporters. “There are initiatives in this regard, there have been consultations that we hope will be successful.”

Three hospitals in south Lebanon were forced to close on Friday after Israeli bombings struck two and the other ran out of supplies, displacing a number of doctors from the area and creating concerns around the state of the Lebanese health sector.

Marjayoun governmental hospital and the Salah Ghandour hospital in Bint Jbeil, large healthcare centres along the eastern and western sections of the Lebanese borders, announced their closure after their premises were struck, killing seven and wounding 14 healthcare workers.

“The main hospital of the entrance was targeted as paramedics were approaching. Seven were killed, five were wounded. We considered this a message, so we decided to close,” said Dr Mones Kalakish, the director of Marjayoun governmental hospital. He added that because of the frequent targeting of paramedics in south Lebanon, wounded people had not been able to reach the hospital for the past three days.

“There was no warning to the hospital before they struck. The warning didn’t come over the telephone, it came via bombing,” Kalakish said.

Mays al-Jabal governmental hospital, 700 metres from the Israel-Lebanon border, said on Friday hospital staff could no longer perform their role due to a cutoff of supplies.

“Medical supplies, diesel, electricity, none of it was available. Unifil was bringing us water, and now they are unable to move. How can a hospital operate without water?” said Dr Halim Saad, the director of Mays al-Jabal hospital’s medical services.

More than 50 healthcare workers have been killed since 23 September, when Israel started an intense aerial campaign in south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley. Paramedics all over the country have been killed and injured by Israeli airstrikes, including in a medical centre in central Beirut, where nine were killed in a strike on Thursday.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firas Abiad, said on Thursday that 97 paramedics had been killed since fighting between Hezbollah and Israel started last year – a number which has grown over the past two days.

The displacement of medical workers due to Israeli bombing has created problems across the country at a time when the number of people wounded by Israeli strikes regularly exceeds 100 a day. The health system in Lebanon, and particularly in the south, is fragile after five years of economic crisis and almost a year of war.

At Rafik Hariri university hospital in Beirut, the largest public hospital in Lebanon, officials said Israeli bombing of nearby Dahiyeh, a southern suburb, had displaced some of its staff, leaving some unable to come to work. The hospital has opened a dorm on its campus to accommodate some of its more vital staff and tried to find housing in safe areas for others.

There is a concern among hospital staff that work conditions in the Beirut hospital could become dangerous, as news of hospitals and paramedics being bombed spreads.

“A person who does not have big responsibilities, they might think to leave. I can’t blame them, they have their own security, own family, own life,” Dr Jihad Saade, the chief executive of Rafik Hariri university hospital, said. Until now, the hospital has been operating normally.

Displacement of medical staff has primarily affected south Lebanon, where Israeli bombing is more frequent. It is unclear how many people still remain in the south, after Israel ordered people in about 70 villages to evacuate.

More than 2,000 people have been killed and more than 9,535 wounded since fighting started in Lebanon, most of them since 23 September.

The Princess 2010 yacht is an impressive specimen of a boat. Before the war, its gleaming white hull could be seen cruising Lebanon’s coastline, revellers making sure they enjoyed every inch of the 24-metre-long vessel they each paid $600 to ride.

Since Israel started an intense bombing campaign across wide swathes of Lebanon on 23 September, the Princess has been making a very different type of journey. The $1.3m craft has been ferrying families from Beirut to Cyprus, bottles of champagne replaced by hastily packed suitcases.

“The trips are fully booked, we have done about 30 trips on our two boats since the bombing started [on 23 September],” said Khailil Bechara, a broker who works with ship captains to transport people to Cyprus.

At $1,800 a head, a seat on a boat bound for Cyprus is not cheap. But demand is high as people desperately try to find any route out of Lebanon.

Israel’s military campaign has killed nearly 2,000 people and wounded more than 9,000 since fighting between it and Hezbollah started on 8 October last year, with most of those casualties incurred since 23 September. More than 1 million people have been displaced since then, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said on Thursday.

Huge explosions shook the sky in the vicinity of Beirut’s main airport in the early hours of Friday. Although the airport is still open, only Lebanon’s national flag carrier, Middle East Airlines, will fly there. People have been fighting for the few seats left on departing flights, while embassies have been chartering private flights for their nationals. On Friday, Greece sent a C-130 military transport plane to Beirut to evacuate 60 Greek and Cypriot citizens.

Some private jets will no longer touch down in the airport, the owner of a private plane told the Guardian. They said their plane was grounded in Paphos airport in Cyprus for insurance purposes.

Instagram is full of sponsored content advertising boats to people who want to flee Lebanon by any means possible. Some boats resemble those that for years have departed from the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli towards Cyprus or Italy, overloaded with Syrian refugees hoping for a better life.

“Lots of people have been asking for these trips … Even though the airport is still open, people who have money are willing to pay,” Bechara said. The boats he worked with held up to 15 people, were insured and were fully compliant with safety standards, he added.

Most Lebanese people cannot afford a space on luxury yachts, and many do not have the visa required to land on Cyprus;s shores.

Sahar Sourani, a 33-year-old Lebanese woman who works for an international NGO, has been trying to figure out a way to get her parents and brother’s family out of the country. Her family left Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, after an Israeli airstrike levelled a nearby residential building on 20 September, killing 45 people.

Sourani’s family cannot travel via boat to Cyprus due to its prohibitive cost and the visa requirements. They planned to travel to the border with Syria and take a bus through Syria to Amman, Jordan, where they would then board a flight to Muscat, Oman, where her sister lives.

The Lebanese government has said that more than 300,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria over the last 10 days to escape Israel’s bombing campaign. On Friday morning, however, they woke up to news that Masnaa, the main border crossing to Syria, had been bombed by Israel, after the Israeli military claimed that Hezbollah was using it to smuggle weapons into Lebanon.

Sourani immediately called a travel agency, who managed to book her parents on separate flights, a little over a week from now. They could not travel on the same flight due to a lack of availability seats.

“I’m afraid that the airport is going to close before they get to leave. I’ve been checking the calendar and counting the days. Things are getting crazier every day,” Sourani said. She herself will not leave, as she is waiting to see whether or not fighting affects her neighbourhood in Achrafieh, east Beirut.

“I never imagined or accepted to leave Lebanon fleeing. I might have left here because I found a better opportunity elsewhere, this is life. But being forced to leave, no one would accept this,” Sourani said.

For those who have managed to leave Lebanon, their journeys were fraught with difficulty. Rasha Jabr, a 39-year-old consultant working in the humanitarian field, was struggling to find any place on a flight for her and her daughter, who was supposed to start university in Germany next week.

Her husband advised her to pack her things and go to the airport every day at 6am to wait on standby in case someone did not show up to their flight. Eventually, through an enterprising travel agent, she managed to find a seats on a plane heading to the United Arab Emirates.

As she put her bags in the car to head to the airport on Thursday night, bombing began near her house in Choueifat, a neighbourhood close to the southern suburbs of Beirut. “As we were putting out stuff in the car, black dust was falling all over us because of the chemicals in the missiles,” Jabr said.

Israel was carrying out some of the most intensive strikes since the beginning of the war, in what it said were strikes targeting Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor of the late secretary general of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by the Israeli military killed last week.

“I was in the airport as they were bombing, just thinking, will they bomb the plane? Will they bomb the airport?” Jabr said. With smoke from Israeli bombing visible from the airport, her plane took off and she made it to the UAE. “I am more fortunate than others because I have the option, because I have the residency in Dubai, but I have a feeling of hidden guilt, and that’s not something we can process easily,” Jabr said.

Robert Jenrick will be toppled by the Tory party’s right wing should he attempt to pivot to the centre ground if installed as leader, senior Conservatives have warned.

Jenrick, who remains the frontrunner for the job after the party’s conference in Birmingham, has won support from the right with a series of uncompromising stances. He has said he would welcome Nigel Farage into the party, leave the European convention on human rights and vote for Donald Trump.

Having started life as an MP as a moderate, some believe he has only temporarily adopted a more rightwing stance as part of his efforts to win the leadership. Some allies have suggested he will move back to the centre once in office.

However, senior party figures are already warning Jenrick that if he becomes leader, his fate will be in the hands of rightwing MPs willing to attack those who have attempted to move away from their agenda.

They warned that he had entrusted his fate to the “Braverman right” – a reference to the former home secretary, Suella Braverman. Jenrick was made immigration minister under Braverman in the expectation that he would be a moderating force. However, he is said to have been radicalised by his time in the Home Office on the need for tougher policies.

One shadow minister compared Jenrick to Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader delivered into power by the right, but ultimately unable to widen his appeal to voters. Duncan Smith was removed as leader after just over two years.

“What will happen to him is that he will suffer the fate of IDS,” they said. “He will try to pivot to the centre, but what he’ll find is that the Braverman right won’t let him. They would pull their support and threaten to submit their latest vote of no confidence for a leadership contest. They have got him by the balls. It now only takes 19 letters to prompt a confidence vote in the leader.”

Allies of Jenrick strongly disputed the idea, pointing out that the likes of Victoria Atkins, Ed Argar and John Lamont – Tory figures associated with the liberal, One Nation wing of the party – also backed his leadership bid.

Jenrick bolstered his credentials with the party’s grassroots during the conference by confirming that his daughter’s middle name was Thatcher. He has also appeared in a hoodie emblazoned with the words “Hamas Are Terrorists”.

MPs will whittle down the four remaining candidates to two this week. Those two will then be put forward to a vote of party members. While Jenrick remains favourite, a small number of MPs changing their vote could have a major impact. James Cleverly, shadow home secretary, was thought to have had a good conference after calling on the party to be “more normal”.

However, there are sobering revelations about the party’s relevance to the public in the latest Opinium poll for the Observer. It reveals that more of the public were aware of Phillip Schofield’s return to TV in his programme Cast Away than had heard about the Conservative conference. Labour still leads in most policy areas with the public, though the two main parties are now tied on the economy.

Among those giving a view, Cleverly was deemed to have had a good conference, seeing an improvement in his “acceptability” score and is currently the frontrunner among the wider British public.

Kemi Badenoch has taken the biggest knock to her public perception. She received criticism last week for suggesting maternity pay was “excessive”. Half (49%) of 2019 Conservative voters say Cleverly would be an acceptable leader of the Conservative party, with 41% saying the same of Jenrick, 40% of Tom Tugendhat and 37% of Badenoch.

Adam Drummond, head of political and social research at Opinium, said: “To nobody’s surprise, voters are not paying a great deal of attention to the Conservative leadership contest and it is notable that, as unpopular as the Labour government already is, voters prefer them over the Tories on almost all issues, with the two parties tied on the economy.”

• An employee at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine has been killed in a car bomb attack that Ukrainian military intelligence said punished a “war criminal”. Russia’s investigative committee, which probes serious crimes, said Andrei Korotkiy died after a bomb planted under his car went off near his house in the city of Enerhodar, where the plant is located, on Friday morning. Korotkiy worked in the plant’s security department, the committee said, adding a criminal case was opened into his death. Ukrainian military intelligence published a video of his car exploding and in a statement called Korotkiy a “war criminal” and collaborator, accusing him of repressing Ukrainians and of handing Russia a list of the plant’s employees and then pointing out people with pro-Ukrainian views. Authorities at the plant – Europe’s largest, with six nuclear reactors – condemned Ukrainian authorities for orchestrating the killing.

• Ukraine said it hit an oil depot in Russia’s Voronezh border region in a drone attack that reportedly caused a huge blaze. A source in the SBU security service told Agence France-Presse a depot with 20 fuel and lubricant tanks was hit in the drone attack overnight to Friday. “The enemy’s air defences were active but unsuccessful,” the source said, adding there were reports of a “massive fire”. Russian emergency services reported a fire was raging over 2,000 sq metres (21,500 sq ft) in a warehouse storing hydrocarbon products in the Voronezh region. The Voronezh regional governor earlier confirmed a Ukrainian drone strike.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday he had visited the northern Sumy region, from where Ukraine launched a major incursion into Russia’s neighbouring Kursk region. “It is crucial to understand that the Kursk operation is a really strategic thing, something that adds motivation to our partners, motivation to be with Ukraine, be more decisive and put pressure on Russia,” the Ukrainian president said. Shown visiting Ukrainian troops alongside his top army commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, Zelenskyy thanked the military and said the incursion “greatly helped” Kyiv to secure the latest military support packages from the west. Almost two months into the surprise operation, Kyiv’s troops control swathes of Russian border territory, though the pace of the advance has slowed and Moscow’s forces have begun to counterattack.

• Romania recovered fragments of a Russian drone from a canal in the Danube Delta near the Ukrainian border, the defence ministry said on Friday. Romania shares a 650km (400-mile) border with Ukraine and has had Russian drone fragments fall on its territory repeatedly over the past year.

• Ukrainian investigators alleged on Friday they had found stacks of cash totalling almost $6m during a raid of the home of a state official suspected of helping men dodge mobilisation. The raid was part of an investigation into an illegal scheme to register would-be draft dodgers as disabled. The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) swooped on the home of an official in charge of the regional medical commission in the western Khmelnitsky region and her son, a manager in Ukraine’s state pension fund. Separately, in the eastern Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s SBU security service said it had detained 13 people over a similar scheme.

• Belarus on Friday sentenced 12 people to prison terms of up to 25 years on terrorism charges over the 2023 sabotage of a Russian military plane that was claimed by pro-Ukraine activists. In February last year, a group of opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime said they had destroyed a Russian army spy plane at a base outside Minsk. Russia did not comment on the operation and Minsk initially denied it but later called it an act of terrorism and blamed Ukrainian security services. Belarus prosecutors said on Friday that Minsk city court sentenced 12 people accused of involvement in the “terrorist attack” at Machulishchy airbase to prison terms from two years and three months to 25 years. Only five of the group are in Belarus.

• Russia on Friday sentenced a Crimean man to 14 years in a penal colony on treason charges after it accused him of aiding the Ukrainian military. Russian media said the FSB security service had accused Igor Kopyl, 47 – a resident of Sevastopol, the Crimean port where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based – of assisting Kyiv’s armed forces and preparing a “terrorist” attack. The FSB said Kopyl was a former member of the Ukrainian navy and had been recruited by Kyiv in 2022.

• Ukrainian feminist activists on Friday staged a topless protest outside the embassy of Iran, which Kyiv and the west say is arming Russia. Ukraine’s Femen group is a feminist art collective that has for years staged demonstrations in Ukraine and abroad. Agence France-Presse reported seeing two activists take their shirts off near the Iranian embassy building in Kyiv, chanting and displaying anti-Iran and anti-Russia slogans written on their bodies.

A silent march took place in support of Gisèle Pelicot and other female victims of sexual violence on Saturday in Mazan, the village where Pelicot’s husband is accused of drugging her and inviting more than 80 men to assault her at their home.

Hundreds of women and men turned out in solidarity with the woman at the centre of a case that has shocked the world. Members of the Pelicot family did not attend but said they appreciated the public support.

One woman on the march told French reporters: “I am there as a woman, mother and grandmother … I am here firstly to support Gisèle, who is really very brave, and other women and girls.”

She said she hoped the case would persuade people to “listen to women … and not close their eyes” to sexual abuse.

On Friday, judges at the mass rape trial in Avignon agreed to allow videos made by Dominique Pelicot of the alleged abuse of his wife to be shown to the press and public in the courtroom.

The president of the bench, Roger Arata, had argued the court should be cleared of those not directly involved in the case because the videos represented an affront to public decency and were too “shocking”.

The bench agreed to allow them to be screened in open court after Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers insisted their client wanted them shown. As Pelicot, 72, was drugged to the point of being comatose, she has no memory of the rapes and says the videos are proof of what she suffered.

A majority of the 50 men accused of raping her have denied the charges, saying they thought she was pretending to be asleep and they had acted with the consent of her husband.

Antoine Camus, one of Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers, told the court: “The great majority of those accused say they did not have the impression they were committing a rape. A perception is subjective, everyone can have a different one of the same event. Here we must at least debate the credibility of the perception claimed by the accused that they did not commit a rape.

“For Gisèle Pelicot, these videos explode the theory that the rape was accidental, due to inattention or carelessness. What they show is a rape of opportunity.”

Stéphane Babonneau, another of Pelicot’s lawyers, said: “For Gisèle Pelicot it is too late … the damage has been done. She will have to live with the 200 rapes she suffered while unconscious, and the brutality of the proceedings taking place in this courtroom for the rest of her life.

“But if the public nature of the debates means that other women don’t have to go through this, then the suffering she inflicts on herself every day will make sense,” he said.

Dominique Pelicot, a retired electrician, recruited men from an online chatroom called “Without their Knowledge” and invited them to the couple’s house in Mazan near Carpentras in Provence after drugging his wife with sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication mixed with her evening meal or wine.

The father of three, 71, who was caught only after a security guard found him filming up the skirt of a female customer in a local supermarket and called the police in 2020, has pleaded guilty to aggravated rape over a period of 10 years.

Gisèle Pelicot, who has become a symbol for feminists angered at France’s failure to respond to the #MeToo movement and confront widespread sexual abuse, has said police saved her life.

Another 30 men shown on almost 20,000 videos and photographs police discovered on a USB drive attached to Dominique Pelicot’s home computer have yet to be identified.

The court case will continue until the end of December. The accused face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Tunisia will hold a presidential election on Sunday against the backdrop of a crackdown on dissent and human rights violations committed against undocumented migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

The incumbent, Kais Saied, whose most prominent critics are behind bars, is expected to sail to an easy win after a campaign with few rallies and public debates, marking a significant step back for a country that long prided itself as the birthplace of the Arab spring uprisings of 2011.

Only 11% of the electorate of 9 million voted in December’s local elections. Similarly low voter turnout this weekend would provide a hint of disapproval with Saied’s tenure so far.

Observers say Saied, who has been in office since 2019, has increasingly bent the country’s institutions to his will.

Last year, he ordered a crackdown on undocumented black migrants that drew criticism from around the world, but the EU nevertheless proceeded with a €105m deal with Tunisia to stem irregular migration.

The deal has helped fund security units that, according to a recent Guardian investigation, have been perpetrating widespread sexual violence against women on migration routes in its territory.

In the run-up to the election, the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) whittled down an initial longlist of 17 presidential candidates to three after a raft of controversial disqualifications. Of the remaining trio, the former lawmaker Ayachi Zammel was jailed this week for reportedly falsifying documents. It is unclear if his candidature remains valid despite his detention.

Bassam Khawaja, a deputy director for Middle East and north Africa at Human Rights Watch, said: “Since the start of the electoral period on 14 July, authorities have prosecuted, convicted, or detained at least nine prospective candidates.”

Late in September, Tunisia’s parliament voted with an overwhelming majority to strip the courts of the power to reverse decisions made by its electoral body. The vote followed a row between the ISIE and a court that overturned the former’s disqualification of three presidential contenders.

The latest development has made Saied, who will lead for another five years if victorious on Sunday, near unstoppable.

Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow in the Middle East programme at the Washington-based thinktank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the election would “almost certainly be a low point in the trajectory of what was once the sole democracy in the Arab world”.

After the Arab spring protests ousted the longstanding ruler Ben Ali in 2011, Tunisia was hailed as one of the region’s brightest democratic lights, a reputation boosted by back-to-back elections.

Saied stood as an independent candidate and establishment outsider in the previous election in 2019, campaigning on a platform of strong government after nearly a decade of deadlock between Islamist and secular blocs since the 2011 revolution. The political outsider won by a landslide, with 73% of the vote in a second round runoff with turnout of 58%.

In 2021, he suspended the opposition-controlled parliament and fired the prime minister. The following year, a referendum changed the constitution and gave Saied sweeping powers in a newly introduced unitary system of government. He apportioned to himself the power to appoint magistrates and the seven ISIE members by presidential decree – and fire them at will.

More than a dozen leaders of the leading opposition party, Ennahda, including the former MP Said Ferjani, who was also imprisoned under Ali, were detained. Many remain in captivity.

Khawaja said: “Holding elections amid such repression makes a mockery of Tunisians’ right to participate in free and fair elections.”

Saied’s pursuit of an authoritarian agenda has coincided with downturn in Tunisia’s economic fortunes. Unemployment has risen and inflation is in double digits. According to the World Bank, the country’s economic recovery from years of a cost-of-living crisis and a recession in 2023 has slowed.

Throughout his tenure, Saied has accused civil society and opposition groups critical of his governance of having nefarious motives and being puppets of foreign countries. That line of thinking was echoed by the lawmakers in September, as some even outside the ruling party accused judges of acting on behalf of unnamed foreign interests.

With the coast clear for his re-election, there are fears of more democratic backsliding and populist propaganda efforts in the years to come.

Yerkes said: “By manipulating the 2024 presidential election, Saied has put one more nail in the coffin of Tunisia’s democratic transition and ensured the outcome well before the process began.”

Tunisia will hold a presidential election on Sunday against the backdrop of a crackdown on dissent and human rights violations committed against undocumented migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

The incumbent, Kais Saied, whose most prominent critics are behind bars, is expected to sail to an easy win after a campaign with few rallies and public debates, marking a significant step back for a country that long prided itself as the birthplace of the Arab spring uprisings of 2011.

Only 11% of the electorate of 9 million voted in December’s local elections. Similarly low voter turnout this weekend would provide a hint of disapproval with Saied’s tenure so far.

Observers say Saied, who has been in office since 2019, has increasingly bent the country’s institutions to his will.

Last year, he ordered a crackdown on undocumented black migrants that drew criticism from around the world, but the EU nevertheless proceeded with a €105m deal with Tunisia to stem irregular migration.

The deal has helped fund security units that, according to a recent Guardian investigation, have been perpetrating widespread sexual violence against women on migration routes in its territory.

In the run-up to the election, the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) whittled down an initial longlist of 17 presidential candidates to three after a raft of controversial disqualifications. Of the remaining trio, the former lawmaker Ayachi Zammel was jailed this week for reportedly falsifying documents. It is unclear if his candidature remains valid despite his detention.

Bassam Khawaja, a deputy director for Middle East and north Africa at Human Rights Watch, said: “Since the start of the electoral period on 14 July, authorities have prosecuted, convicted, or detained at least nine prospective candidates.”

Late in September, Tunisia’s parliament voted with an overwhelming majority to strip the courts of the power to reverse decisions made by its electoral body. The vote followed a row between the ISIE and a court that overturned the former’s disqualification of three presidential contenders.

The latest development has made Saied, who will lead for another five years if victorious on Sunday, near unstoppable.

Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow in the Middle East programme at the Washington-based thinktank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the election would “almost certainly be a low point in the trajectory of what was once the sole democracy in the Arab world”.

After the Arab spring protests ousted the longstanding ruler Ben Ali in 2011, Tunisia was hailed as one of the region’s brightest democratic lights, a reputation boosted by back-to-back elections.

Saied stood as an independent candidate and establishment outsider in the previous election in 2019, campaigning on a platform of strong government after nearly a decade of deadlock between Islamist and secular blocs since the 2011 revolution. The political outsider won by a landslide, with 73% of the vote in a second round runoff with turnout of 58%.

In 2021, he suspended the opposition-controlled parliament and fired the prime minister. The following year, a referendum changed the constitution and gave Saied sweeping powers in a newly introduced unitary system of government. He apportioned to himself the power to appoint magistrates and the seven ISIE members by presidential decree – and fire them at will.

More than a dozen leaders of the leading opposition party, Ennahda, including the former MP Said Ferjani, who was also imprisoned under Ali, were detained. Many remain in captivity.

Khawaja said: “Holding elections amid such repression makes a mockery of Tunisians’ right to participate in free and fair elections.”

Saied’s pursuit of an authoritarian agenda has coincided with downturn in Tunisia’s economic fortunes. Unemployment has risen and inflation is in double digits. According to the World Bank, the country’s economic recovery from years of a cost-of-living crisis and a recession in 2023 has slowed.

Throughout his tenure, Saied has accused civil society and opposition groups critical of his governance of having nefarious motives and being puppets of foreign countries. That line of thinking was echoed by the lawmakers in September, as some even outside the ruling party accused judges of acting on behalf of unnamed foreign interests.

With the coast clear for his re-election, there are fears of more democratic backsliding and populist propaganda efforts in the years to come.

Yerkes said: “By manipulating the 2024 presidential election, Saied has put one more nail in the coffin of Tunisia’s democratic transition and ensured the outcome well before the process began.”

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have begun vaccination against mpox, nearly two months after the disease outbreak that spread to several countries was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization.

Some of the 265,000 doses donated to the DRC by the EU and the US were administered in the eastern city of Goma in North Kivu province, where hospitals and health workers have been overstretched, struggling to contain the new and possibly more infectious strain of mpox.

The DRC, with about 30,000 suspected mpox cases and 859 deaths, accounts for more than 80% of all the cases and 99% of all the deaths reported in Africa this year. All of the central African country’s 26 provinces have recorded mpox cases.

Although most mpox infections and deaths recorded in the DRC are in children under 15, the doses being administered are only meant for adults and will be given to at-risk populations and frontline workers, the health minister, Roger Kamba, said this week.

“Strategies have been put in place by the services in order to vaccinate all targeted personnel,” said Muboyayi Chikayal, the minister’s chief of staff, as he launched the vaccination.

At least 3m doses of the vaccine approved for use in children are expected from Japan in the coming days, Kamba said.

A two-year-old child was crushed to death and three other migrants died in two attempts to cross the Channel from France on Saturday.

French authorities said the infant died after being trampled following a “wave of panic” among migrants trying to board a dinghy.

At the bottom of a second dinghy, rescuers found the bodies of two men and a woman, all aged in their 30s.

According to France Bleu radio in the area, the first dinghy requested help at about 7am on Saturday, and a rescue vessel, the Abeille Normandie, was sent in response. The dinghy was not sinking but was overcrowded.

“A person on the dinghy called us to ask for help. She said over the telephone that a child was dead and that if they were not helped, everyone would die,” Célestin Pichaud, a local coordinator of French charity Utopia 56, told the radio station.

The local prefect, Jacques Billant, said rescue teams had acted immediately after being alerted to the death of the child in the first boat on Saturday morning. He said the mother, a 24-year-old from Somalia who had given birth to the child in Germany, was being treated by medics.

“The rescue team helicoptered couldn’t save [the child] and the child was declared dead,” Billant said.

A 17-year-old passenger from the same dinghy was taken by helicopter to hospital with burns to his leg. Billant said 14 migrants were transported back to land but added that a number of passengers refused help and insisted on continuing their crossing to the UK.

In the second vessel, containing more than 83 migrants, “several failures of the motor led to a movement of panic” and several passengers fell into the sea,” Billant said. All were rescued. The remaining passengers wanted to continue their crossing but finally agreed to be rescued. After rescuers evacuated the boat, the three bodies were discovered.

Billant said it was thought they had been crushed and suffocated in the panic and had drowned in 40cm of water at the bottom of the inflatable. “Despite attempts by doctors they were also declared dead,” he said.

The migrants involved in both incidents came from Eritrea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Ethiopia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Kuwait and Iraq, he added.

Billant condemned the people traffickers who he said were risking the lives of people in vessels of “deplorable quality”.

“We deplore the fact the traffickers take even greater risk with people’s lives, not only adults but more and more families with children, babies to whom they sell a passage across a dangerous sea in an inappropriate vessel,” Billant said.

“I repeat, with force, these vessels are overcrowded, underpowered, under-inflated, and there are not lifejackets for all occupants, as is often the case and was the case for both cases this morning. And yet migrants continue to take to the sea each time the weather conditions are favourable.”

He said the authorities had prevented 31 crossings involving 250 migrants since Thursday.

As well as the “deplorable quality” of the vessels, he said the traffickers were “major criminals” who showed “no consideration for the lives of these children, women and men”.

A police spokesperson said investigations had been ordered into both tragedies.

France’s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, posted on X: “This appalling tragedy should make us all aware of the catastrophe that is unfolding. The people smugglers have the blood of these people on their hands and our government will intensify the fight against these mafias who enrich themselves by organising these crossings of death.”

On Friday, the Home Office announced G7 countries had agreed “a major new international plan to smash the criminal gangs responsible for smuggling illegal migrants into the UK”.

Ministers said the new plan would bolster border security, combat transnational organised crime and protect vulnerable people from exploitation by people smugglers. The agreement was reached after discussions by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, at the G7 interior and security ministers’ meeting in Avellino, Italy.

Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “This is yet another devastating and preventable tragedy. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families. Each of these lives represents someone who was seeking safety and the hope of a future free from war and persecution.

“There have been many more deaths this year compared to last which is a clear indication that a different approach is urgently needed. It is vital that the government now adopts a multipronged strategy to tackle dangerous crossings, that includes not just seeking to disrupt the gangs but also providing more safe and legal routes for refugees, as well as meaningful collaboration with European partners.”

On Friday, 395 people crossed in seven boats, after a lull due to poor weather conditions, according to Home Office figures.

Joe Biden is urging lawmakers to refill the coffers of disaster relief programs as the projected recovery and rebuilding costs related to Hurricane Helene are estimated to be as much as $200bn over 10 years.

In a letter sent to congressional leaders, the president said while the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the Department of Defense is able to meet “critical life-saving and life-sustaining missions and will continue to do so within present funding levels”, they will need additional funding.

“My administration has provided robust and well-coordinated federal support for the ongoing response and recovery efforts,” Biden wrote.

“As with other catastrophic disasters, it will take some time to assess the full requirements for response and recovery efforts, and I fully expect that the Congress will do its part to provide the funding needed.”

Biden said that a comprehensive disaster relief package would be necessary when Congress returns on 12 November – but said action on individual programs could be needed before then. But there are currently no plans for Congress to reconvene before the election.

The request comes as Kamala Harris cut short a campaign swing through the western states to visit western North Carolina in the southern Appalachian mountains where entire towns were washed away.

Biden viewed the damage and cleanup efforts in the Carolinas by air on Wednesday, and again in Florida and Georgia on Thursday. He said the work to rebuild will cost “billions of dollars” and additional disaster relief funding “can’t wait … people need help now”.

At least 225 people have been confirmed dead from Helene, and officials say they expect the death toll to continue to rise as recovery efforts continue. A police department spokesperson in Asheville, North Carolina, told CBS News in an email late on Friday that it is “actively working 75 cases of missing persons”. Nearly 1 million people remain without power.

In his letter to lawmakers, Biden said that funding through the Small Business Administration (SBA) “will run out of funding in a matter of weeks and well before the Congress is planning to reconvene”.

The SBA is designed to help small business owners and homeowners recoup property and equipment through the disaster relief loan program. Administration officials told CNN that the program needs $1.6bn in additional funding to meet about 3,000 Hurricane Helene-related applications it is receiving daily.

Last month, before Helene hit, the White House warned that the low funding levels could lead to the SBA “effectively ceasing operations” after paying out for weather-related costs and accidents, including the Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore, the continued recovery after Maui’s wildfires and tornado damage in the midwest.

The damage caused by Helene could cost upwards of $34bn, according to early estimates from Moody’s Analytics. The private forecaster AccuWeather put the cost of damages at $225bn to $250bn, with very little covered by private insurance.

The issue of Helene costs is already deeply political. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, has said lawmakers would assess the post-Helene needs in full after the election.

Former president Trump has accused Democrats of spending over $640m in Fema funds on housing migrants, a claim the White House calls “bold-faced lies”.

On Friday, in Georgia, Trump said: “A lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia and supposed to go to North Carolina and all of the others is going and has gone already.

“It’s been gone for people that came into the country illegally, and nobody has ever seen anything like that. That’s a shame.”

Officials say those funds, authorized by Congress, was part of an entirely different program run by Fema unconnected to disaster relief but to provide housing to immigrants applying for US citizenship.

The disaster agency responded to Trump’s claim with a fact-check page. “This is false,” Fema said in a statement. “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs.” A week after the hurricane hit, more than $45m has been dispersed to communities affected by the storm.

It is a universally acknowledged truth that Bridget Jones films are packed with humour and comedic scenes that attract viewers in their droves.

However, in a slight departure, Hugh Grant has revealed that the fourth film in the series will also be “very sad”.

The Love Actually star, 64, has reprised the role of Daniel Cleaver for the upcoming movie, adapted from Helen Fielding’s novel Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy.

In the latest instalment, due out on Valentine’s Day next year, Bridget navigates life as a single mother after the death of her husband, Mark Darcy.

Grant told the Graham Norton Show: “It is a good and moving script – it is extremely funny but very sad.”

He also revealed that he was “crammed in” as there was “no obvious role” for his character, who was a former love interest of Bridget.

“So we didn’t have a 60-year-old Daniel Cleaver wandering around looking at young girls, I made up a good interim story for him.”

The Oscar-winner Renée Zellweger has reprised her role in the film, the script for which was written by Fielding.

So far, the production studio has been tight-lipped as to how closely the new film will follow the storyline of the book.

Grant also spoke candidly about his parents’ view of his acting career, admitting that “they were not at all supportive”.

“My mother was a churchgoer and wanted me to be the archbishop of Canterbury,” he said. “In their world showbusiness meant nothing.

“I remember when Four Weddings And A Funeral came out, my mother went to a dinner party with like-minded people and when asked about her two sons she said: ‘One is an investment banker and the other is a film star.’

“Another guest said: ‘How very interesting, which bank?’ That’s the world I grew up in.”

Despite not apparently impressing his parents with his career choice, Grant has become a household name.

After making his feature film acting debut in 1982 in Privileged, Grant’s credits include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Two Weeks Notice.

In recent years he has appeared in Paddington 2, The Gentlemen and the musical fantasy Wonka.

As well as being a Bafta award winner, Grant is a twice Emmy Award nominee.