How did the conflict begin?

Fighting broke out in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, on 15 April 2023 as an escalating power struggle between the two main factions of the military regime finally turned deadly.

On one side are the Sudanese armed forces who remain broadly loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler. Against him are the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a collection of militia who follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The RSF was founded by the former dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir as an Arab counterinsurgency militia. Bashir wanted to crush a rebellion in the region of Darfur that began more than 20 years ago due to the political and economic marginalisation of the local population.

Initially known as the Janjaweed, the RSF quickly became synonymous with widespread atrocities. In 2013, Bashir transformed the group into a semi-organised paramilitary force and gave its leaders military ranks before deploying it to crush a fresh rebellion in South Darfur.

Hemedti’s power struggle with Burhan can be traced back to 2019 when the RSF and regular military forces cooperated to oust Bashir from power. When attempts to transition to a democratic civilian-led government faltered, many analysts felt an eventual showdown between Burhan and Hemedti was inevitable.

What has been the human cost?

The conflict has plunged Sudan into what the UN has described as “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history”. Tens of thousands have died, millions have been displaced, and hunger and disease are rife.

According to the most recent figures, about 26 million people face severe food insecurity. Famine has been declared in the Zamzam displacement camp in Darfur.

About 11.3 million people have been forced to flee the fighting, including nearly 2.95 million who have fled across the country’s borders. Most have gone to Chad and South Sudan, where underfunded aid agencies say they are struggling to meet basic needs. A UN appeal for $1.51bn to support Sudanese refugees and their hosts in the region through the end of the year remains just 27% funded.

In its latest humanitarian update, published on 1 October, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said significant declines in vaccination rates and the destruction of health infrastructure resulting from the war mean Sudan is grappling with multiple disease outbreaks, including cholera, malaria, dengue fever, measles, and rubella. An estimated 3.4 million children under the age of five are at high risk of epidemic diseases, according to Unicef.

The conflict has also robbed huge numbers of an education. More than 90% of the country’s 19 million school-age children are unable to access formal education. Schools have been targeted in airstrikes, occupied by armed groups and used to store weapons.

What atrocities are the warring sides accused of?

The UN has accused the army and the RSF of carrying out indiscriminate attacks in residential areas, committing acts of sexual violence, arbitrarily detaining and torturing civilians and recruiting child soldiers. Both parties may have committed war crimes, a UN report in February said. They have denied the claims.

The US went a step further last year, declaring that both had carried out war crimes and that the RSF had committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Some of the war’s worst atrocities have been committed in Darfur, western Sudan. As many as 15,000 people were killed in the city of El Geneina in West Darfur last year by the RSF and allied Arab militias in violence targeted at the Masalit people. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the violence carried “haunting echoes of the genocide that began almost 20 years ago”.

In June, pro-democracy activists said the RSF killed more than 100 people in an attack on a village in central Sudan.

What is the current status of the war?

In recent weeks, the RSF has launched a full-scale attack on El Fasher, the only major population centre in Darfur it is yet to control. The attack follows a months-long siege. The city’s last hospital was forced to close after the paramilitary group stormed it in June. The RSF is also advancing in regions south of Khartoum.

In the capital, which fell to the RSF early on in the war, the armed forces have gone on the offensive, pounding the centre and south of the city from the air this month.

Several rounds of negotiation efforts have so far failed to end the fighting.

Why is Darfur at the centre of the conflict?

Home to about 9 million people, Darfur, the vast and largely arid swath of western and south-western Sudan, has been at the centre of the conflict largely because it remains the stronghold of Hemedti. Many of the RSF’s recruits are drawn from the region and from Hemedti’s own Rizeigat tribe.

For years, the RSF has terrorised communities in Darfur and much of the region is lawless: militias and other armed groups attack civilians with virtual impunity. In recent years, the RSF has invested significant resources in Darfur in an attempt to control its strategic assets, such as airstrips, mines, water sources and major roads. Analysts trace many of the roots of the latest conflict back to the appalling violence and human rights abuses in Darfur about 20 years ago.

How did the conflict begin?

Fighting broke out in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, on 15 April 2023 as an escalating power struggle between the two main factions of the military regime finally turned deadly.

On one side are the Sudanese armed forces who remain broadly loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler. Against him are the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a collection of militia who follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The RSF was founded by the former dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir as an Arab counterinsurgency militia. Bashir wanted to crush a rebellion in the region of Darfur that began more than 20 years ago due to the political and economic marginalisation of the local population.

Initially known as the Janjaweed, the RSF quickly became synonymous with widespread atrocities. In 2013, Bashir transformed the group into a semi-organised paramilitary force and gave its leaders military ranks before deploying it to crush a fresh rebellion in South Darfur.

Hemedti’s power struggle with Burhan can be traced back to 2019 when the RSF and regular military forces cooperated to oust Bashir from power. When attempts to transition to a democratic civilian-led government faltered, many analysts felt an eventual showdown between Burhan and Hemedti was inevitable.

What has been the human cost?

The conflict has plunged Sudan into what the UN has described as “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history”. Tens of thousands have died, millions have been displaced, and hunger and disease are rife.

According to the most recent figures, about 26 million people face severe food insecurity. Famine has been declared in the Zamzam displacement camp in Darfur.

About 11.3 million people have been forced to flee the fighting, including nearly 2.95 million who have fled across the country’s borders. Most have gone to Chad and South Sudan, where underfunded aid agencies say they are struggling to meet basic needs. A UN appeal for $1.51bn to support Sudanese refugees and their hosts in the region through the end of the year remains just 27% funded.

In its latest humanitarian update, published on 1 October, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said significant declines in vaccination rates and the destruction of health infrastructure resulting from the war mean Sudan is grappling with multiple disease outbreaks, including cholera, malaria, dengue fever, measles, and rubella. An estimated 3.4 million children under the age of five are at high risk of epidemic diseases, according to Unicef.

The conflict has also robbed huge numbers of an education. More than 90% of the country’s 19 million school-age children are unable to access formal education. Schools have been targeted in airstrikes, occupied by armed groups and used to store weapons.

What atrocities are the warring sides accused of?

The UN has accused the army and the RSF of carrying out indiscriminate attacks in residential areas, committing acts of sexual violence, arbitrarily detaining and torturing civilians and recruiting child soldiers. Both parties may have committed war crimes, a UN report in February said. They have denied the claims.

The US went a step further last year, declaring that both had carried out war crimes and that the RSF had committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Some of the war’s worst atrocities have been committed in Darfur, western Sudan. As many as 15,000 people were killed in the city of El Geneina in West Darfur last year by the RSF and allied Arab militias in violence targeted at the Masalit people. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the violence carried “haunting echoes of the genocide that began almost 20 years ago”.

In June, pro-democracy activists said the RSF killed more than 100 people in an attack on a village in central Sudan.

What is the current status of the war?

In recent weeks, the RSF has launched a full-scale attack on El Fasher, the only major population centre in Darfur it is yet to control. The attack follows a months-long siege. The city’s last hospital was forced to close after the paramilitary group stormed it in June. The RSF is also advancing in regions south of Khartoum.

In the capital, which fell to the RSF early on in the war, the armed forces have gone on the offensive, pounding the centre and south of the city from the air this month.

Several rounds of negotiation efforts have so far failed to end the fighting.

Why is Darfur at the centre of the conflict?

Home to about 9 million people, Darfur, the vast and largely arid swath of western and south-western Sudan, has been at the centre of the conflict largely because it remains the stronghold of Hemedti. Many of the RSF’s recruits are drawn from the region and from Hemedti’s own Rizeigat tribe.

For years, the RSF has terrorised communities in Darfur and much of the region is lawless: militias and other armed groups attack civilians with virtual impunity. In recent years, the RSF has invested significant resources in Darfur in an attempt to control its strategic assets, such as airstrips, mines, water sources and major roads. Analysts trace many of the roots of the latest conflict back to the appalling violence and human rights abuses in Darfur about 20 years ago.

Israeli police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency say they have arrested a network of Israeli citizens spying for Iran who allegedly provided information on military bases and conducted surveillance of individuals.

The investigators claimed the network had been active for about two years. According to reports in the Israeli press, the suspects are accused of photographing and collecting information about Israeli bases and facilities, including the defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, known as the Kirya, and the Nevatim and Ramat David airbases.

The Nevatim base was targeted in both Iranian missile attacks this year, and Ramat David has been targeted by Hezbollah.

“This is one of the most serious security cases investigated in recent years,” state prosecutors said, with police adding the group had carried out 600 missions over two years.

News of the alleged network, which includes two minors, follows the arrest in September of an Israeli businessman accused of spying for Iran, who according to the allegations against him had travelled twice to Iran to discuss the possibility of assassinating the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, or the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, Ronen Bar.

Reports described the individuals arrested as Jewish immigrants from Azerbaijan living in the Haifa area, some related, who were arrested just over a month ago and are expected to be charged with helping an enemy in wartime.

According to a statement released on Monday, the seven Israeli citizens were arrested for gathering sensitive information on Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bases and energy infrastructure.

According to Haaretz the suspects allegedly received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash transfers from Russian intermediaries, as well as in crypto currencies.

Three of the suspects were apprehended while allegedly photographing sensitive sites in southern Israel, and the police discovered dozens of documents in their possession.

“Investigations revealed that over a period exceeding two years, the suspects executed multiple security missions under the direction of two Iranian intelligence agents known as ‘Alkhan’ and ‘Orkhan’,” said a statement.

“The network members were aware that the intelligence they provided compromised national security and could potentially aid enemy missile attacks. The network conducted extensive reconnaissance missions on IDF bases nationwide, focusing on air force and navy installations, ports, Iron Dome system locations, and energy infrastructure such as the Hadera power plant.

“These activities were financially compensated with payments totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars, often facilitated through cryptocurrencies,” the statement added suggesting those arrested had been motivated by “greed”.

“The operation involved photographing and documenting strategic sites, with the collected data being transferred to Iranian agents. Network members utilised advanced equipment procured specifically for these tasks under Iranian guidance.”

“There was a system,” said one of the investigating police officers, Yaron Binyamin. “They collected dozens of documents that noted the exact site to photograph, what information to gather and how much money they would be paid. A real price list.

“The method was first to receive the mission to film a base, then travel there, unload the equipment and find a vantage point, then deliver the photos via encrypted software to their Iranian handlers.”

Those arrested were also allegedly tasked with collecting intelligence on several Israeli citizens at the behest of Iranian agents.

This included conducting surveillance on targeted individuals. Some members were apprehended while attempting to gather intelligence on an Israeli citizen residing near their location, with security assessments indicating potential Iranian plans to harm this individual.

The latest arrests suggest that the well-developed intelligence operations run by Israel targeting Iran, Gaza and Hezbollah have not been a one-way street, with Iran and its proxies also running operations in Israel.

Israel’s state attorney suggested other cases yet to be disclosed may be under investigation.

Israel carried out a series of airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley early on Monday morning, hitting buildings belonging to the Hezbollah-run banking institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan.

At least 10 airstrikes were carried out in the southern suburbs of the capital, with an entire building collapsing and a jet of fire streaming into the air in the Chiyah neighbourhood. A building close to Lebanon’s only commercial airport was also struck, video footage showing a smoke plume billowing while a nearby plane sat on the runway.

“They struck empty buildings in residential neighbourhoods, and destroyed those surrounding neighbourhoods. These weren’t military centres or weapons caches,” said Ma’an Khalil, the mayor of Ghobeiry municipality in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The US envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Beirut hours after the strikes, where he met Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri, and the country’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, to discuss ways towards a ceasefire.

Before the bombings, Israel issued several warnings via X , pinpointing buildings belonging to Al-Qard Al-Hassan in the southern suburbs of Beirut and across Lebanon and warning people to move at least 500 metres away from these buildings. Streets from the affected areas were soon choked with traffic as people fled in anticipation of the strikes.

Al-Qard Al-Hassan has branches across Lebanon, with 15 in greater Beirut alone.

The strikes were part of what Israel said were efforts to dismantle Hezbollah’s financial system. The Israeli military said on Sunday night that Al-Qard Al-Hasssan financed Hezbollah and the group “uses this money to finance its terrorist activities”, including buying and storing arms.

The announcement that Israel would start targeting the bank, a part of Hezbollah’s civilian institutions, signified an expansion of the scope of Israel’s targets from just the group’s military wing. The institution had sanctions placed on it by the US in 2017 during the Trump administration for giving Hezbollah access to the international financial system, according to the US treasury.

Al-Qard Al-Hassan was founded in the early 1980s as a charitable institution, part of Hezbollah’s robust social services network.

The banking institution became more popular after Lebanon’s 2019 financial crisis, when commercial banks froze almost all accounts and almost entirely stopped issuing loans. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people, primarily Shia Muslims, bank with Al-Qard Al-Hassan, many of them giving the bank familial assets such as gold in exchange for loans.

According to Lina Khatib, the director of the Soas Middle East Institute, though Al-Qard Al-Hassan is not the main way in which Hezbollah manages the finances of its social network, the potential loss of the institution would be a “significant blow”.

“If this gold is destroyed, Hezbollah’s constituents expect that it will be able to compensate them for their loss. For the time being, the level of trust that Hezbollah’s constituency has in the group remains high despite its huge losses,” Khatib said.

Shortly after the strikes, Hezbollah announced that it had launched rockets at a groups of Israeli soldiers in Al-Malakiyah and Markaba, south Lebanon. Intense fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters stretched on from Sunday into Monday morning, as Israel continued to conduct cross-border incursions into south Lebanon.

Israel has said it is trying to degrade and destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure and capabilities along the border. Its progress is unclear, as the border areas have been virtually depopulated and media access is limited.

On Monday afternoon, Hochstein said implementation of the UN security council resolution 1701 was the path towards a ceasefire in Lebanon and rejected calls to amend the UN agreement.

Resolution 1701 ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and has since been the framework that governs security dynamics on the Lebanese-Israeli border. Under the terms of the agreement, Hezbollah and other armed militias must not be present past the Litani River, about 18 miles (30km) north of the border. The resolution also dictated that Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanon.

“The non-implementation of resolution 1701 is the reason for the intensification and continuation of this conflict,” Hochstein said after meeting Berri, who negotiates on behalf of Hezbollah. It was the US envoy’s first visit to Lebanon since Israel launched Operation Northern Arrows on 23 September.

The implementation of resolution 1701 has been viewed as key to stopping the fighting, which started on 8 October last year after Hezbollah launched missiles “in solidarity” with Hamas’s attack on Israel a day earlier. More than 2,400 people have been killed and more than 11,530 wounded in Lebanon since then.

Over the last month, Lebanese officials have stated their willingness to adhere to the resolution, without mentioning Hezbollah’s presence south of the Litani River by name.

Hezbollah previously rejected being pushed back from the de facto border, but unprecedented losses for the group have reportedly softened its stance as it seeks a ceasefire with Israel. Almost all of its senior military leadership and its former secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, have been killed by Israeli attacks in the past three months.

According to the Axios news website, Israel gave its conditions for a ceasefire to Washington last week in a document that included amendments to resolution 1701. The document requested that Israel be allowed to conduct “active enforcement” to ensure that Hezbollah does not rebuild its military capacity in border areas of south Lebanon. It also demanded that Israel’s air force have freedom of operation in Lebanese airspace.

Hochstein said on Monday that he would not “engage in talks on amending resolution 1701, but rather the possibility of its implementation”. Lebanese officials are likely to reject the new demands, which would be seen as encroaching on the country’s sovereignty.

Moldovans have voted by a razor-thin majority in favour of joining the EU after a pivotal referendum clouded by allegations of Russian interference.

On Sunday, Moldova held key votes in a presidential election and a referendum on EU membership, marking a critical moment in the continuing struggle between Russia and the west for control over the small, landlocked nation in eastern Europe, home to 2.5 million people.

After all the votes were counted in the referendum that asked voters to choose whether to enshrine in the country’s constitution a path toward the EU, the “yes” vote crept into first place with 50.46% of the nearly 1.5m ballots cast, according to the Central Electoral Commission.

The result meant that the pro-EU campaign won by just more than 13,000 votes, narrowly avoiding a shock setback for the pro-western president, Maia Sandu.

The separate presidential election results showed Sandu topped the first round of the vote with 42%. She will face her closest competitor, Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor backed by the pro-Russian Socialists, in the second round in two weeks.

“Moldova has won the first difficult battle in the push to join the European Union,” Sandu said at a conference on Monday.

She also decried attempts by “foreign forces” to buy votes, describing it as an “attack on Moldovan sovereignty”.

The double vote in one of Europe’s poorest countries was seen as a crucial test of Sandu’s pro-European agenda. The result means a clause will be added to the constitution defining EU accession as a goal, though the country’s potential admission to the European bloc is still many years away.

The tight referendum result will disappoint Sandu’s supporters and her allies in Brussels.

Pre-election surveys indicated that Sandu held a comfortable lead over Stoianoglo and other candidates, while polls suggested that about 60% of voters supported the pro-EU path in the run-up to the referendum.

Moldova applied to join the EU after Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, which was condemned by Sandu and many in the country as tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fled to its capital, Chișinău. Moldova officially began EU accession negotiations in June, though scepticism remains high about the country’s ability to implement the necessary democratic and judicial reforms in the near future.

Observers believe that a weakened Sandu could face a tricky second-round runoff against a united pro-Moscow opposition front led by Stoianoglo.

According to preliminary data, Moldovans inside the country voted against the referendum, but ballots from the largely pro-EU diaspora, which were counted towards the end, gave the yes campaign a last-moment push.

“Sandu had hoped to receive a strong mandate to advance her push for EU integration, but the narrow outcome raises significant questions about the level of support for her policies,” said one western diplomat in Chișinău.

“Her position is now shakier than it was prior to her decision to call the referendum,” the official added.

The two ballots were held amid claims by Moldovan authorities that Moscow and its proxies had orchestrated an intense “hybrid war” campaign to destabilise the country and derail its path towards the EU.

The allegations against Moscow included funding pro-Kremlin opposition groups, spreading disinformation, meddling in local elections and backing a big vote-buying scheme.

As votes were being counted on Sunday, Sandu blamed “foreign forces” for orchestrating an “unprecedented assault on our country’s freedom and democracy”.

“We have clear evidence that these criminal groups aimed to buy 300,000 votes – a fraud of unprecedented scale,” Sandu added. “Their objective was to undermine a democratic process.”

On Monday, an EU spokesperson blamed Russia and its proxies for “unprecedented interference” in the referendum vote.

“Moldova was facing really unprecedented intimidation and foreign interference by Russia and its proxies ahead of this vote,” the spokesperson said.

In particular, officials in Moldova have accused the fugitive pro-Russian businessman Ilan Shor, a vocal opponent of EU membership, of running a destabilising campaign from Moscow.

Earlier this month, the national police chief, Viorel Cernăuțanu, accused Shor and Moscow of establishing a complex “mafia-style” voter-buying scheme and bribing 130,000 Moldovans – almost 10% of normal voter turnout – to vote against the referendum and in favour of Russia-friendly candidates in what he called an “unprecedented, direct attack”.

Last week, law enforcement agencies said they had also uncovered a programme in which hundreds of people were taken to Russia to undergo training to stage riots and civil unrest.

Shor, who is based in Moscow and denies wrongdoing, has openly offered on social media to pay Moldovans to persuade others to vote in a certain way, and said that was a legitimate use of money that he had earned. In the early hours of Monday, he claimed Moldovans had voted against the referendum.

Marta Mucznik, a senior EU analyst at the International Crisis Group, said: “The impact of pro-Russian disinformation campaigns is evident. Tactics such as spreading fake news, vote-buying, and portraying the EU negatively have effectively swayed voters away from pro-EU sentiments.

“The narrow margins highlight a deep split in public opinion and significant polarisation over Moldova’s EU integration goals.”

Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said the people of Moldova had “voted for the European future despite all of Russia’s attempts to buy votes and other foreign interference, including massive disinformation campaigns”. In written comments to the Guardian, he said it was very important for security across Europe to investigate how far foreign interference had affected the election “and how much opinions were influenced by illegal means”.

Moscow on Monday sought to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Moldovan elections, claiming that the narrow margin in the country’s constitutional referendum on EU membership “raised questions”.

“Even in these circumstances … we saw just how many people don’t support President Sandu’s ideology,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said as he urged reporters to wait for the final results of the election.

Moldova’s election is part of a series of key votes happening across the region this year. Next week, Georgia, another former Soviet country caught in a tug-of-war between Russia and the west, will hold key parliamentary elections, marking another test of the region’s shift away from Moscow.

Additional reporting by Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

Moldovans have voted by a razor-thin majority in favour of joining the EU after a pivotal referendum clouded by allegations of Russian interference.

On Sunday, Moldova held key votes in a presidential election and a referendum on EU membership, marking a critical moment in the continuing struggle between Russia and the west for control over the small, landlocked nation in eastern Europe, home to 2.5 million people.

After all the votes were counted in the referendum that asked voters to choose whether to enshrine in the country’s constitution a path toward the EU, the “yes” vote crept into first place with 50.46% of the nearly 1.5m ballots cast, according to the Central Electoral Commission.

The result meant that the pro-EU campaign won by just more than 13,000 votes, narrowly avoiding a shock setback for the pro-western president, Maia Sandu.

The separate presidential election results showed Sandu topped the first round of the vote with 42%. She will face her closest competitor, Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor backed by the pro-Russian Socialists, in the second round in two weeks.

“Moldova has won the first difficult battle in the push to join the European Union,” Sandu said at a conference on Monday.

She also decried attempts by “foreign forces” to buy votes, describing it as an “attack on Moldovan sovereignty”.

The double vote in one of Europe’s poorest countries was seen as a crucial test of Sandu’s pro-European agenda. The result means a clause will be added to the constitution defining EU accession as a goal, though the country’s potential admission to the European bloc is still many years away.

The tight referendum result will disappoint Sandu’s supporters and her allies in Brussels.

Pre-election surveys indicated that Sandu held a comfortable lead over Stoianoglo and other candidates, while polls suggested that about 60% of voters supported the pro-EU path in the run-up to the referendum.

Moldova applied to join the EU after Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, which was condemned by Sandu and many in the country as tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fled to its capital, Chișinău. Moldova officially began EU accession negotiations in June, though scepticism remains high about the country’s ability to implement the necessary democratic and judicial reforms in the near future.

Observers believe that a weakened Sandu could face a tricky second-round runoff against a united pro-Moscow opposition front led by Stoianoglo.

According to preliminary data, Moldovans inside the country voted against the referendum, but ballots from the largely pro-EU diaspora, which were counted towards the end, gave the yes campaign a last-moment push.

“Sandu had hoped to receive a strong mandate to advance her push for EU integration, but the narrow outcome raises significant questions about the level of support for her policies,” said one western diplomat in Chișinău.

“Her position is now shakier than it was prior to her decision to call the referendum,” the official added.

The two ballots were held amid claims by Moldovan authorities that Moscow and its proxies had orchestrated an intense “hybrid war” campaign to destabilise the country and derail its path towards the EU.

The allegations against Moscow included funding pro-Kremlin opposition groups, spreading disinformation, meddling in local elections and backing a big vote-buying scheme.

As votes were being counted on Sunday, Sandu blamed “foreign forces” for orchestrating an “unprecedented assault on our country’s freedom and democracy”.

“We have clear evidence that these criminal groups aimed to buy 300,000 votes – a fraud of unprecedented scale,” Sandu added. “Their objective was to undermine a democratic process.”

On Monday, an EU spokesperson blamed Russia and its proxies for “unprecedented interference” in the referendum vote.

“Moldova was facing really unprecedented intimidation and foreign interference by Russia and its proxies ahead of this vote,” the spokesperson said.

In particular, officials in Moldova have accused the fugitive pro-Russian businessman Ilan Shor, a vocal opponent of EU membership, of running a destabilising campaign from Moscow.

Earlier this month, the national police chief, Viorel Cernăuțanu, accused Shor and Moscow of establishing a complex “mafia-style” voter-buying scheme and bribing 130,000 Moldovans – almost 10% of normal voter turnout – to vote against the referendum and in favour of Russia-friendly candidates in what he called an “unprecedented, direct attack”.

Last week, law enforcement agencies said they had also uncovered a programme in which hundreds of people were taken to Russia to undergo training to stage riots and civil unrest.

Shor, who is based in Moscow and denies wrongdoing, has openly offered on social media to pay Moldovans to persuade others to vote in a certain way, and said that was a legitimate use of money that he had earned. In the early hours of Monday, he claimed Moldovans had voted against the referendum.

Marta Mucznik, a senior EU analyst at the International Crisis Group, said: “The impact of pro-Russian disinformation campaigns is evident. Tactics such as spreading fake news, vote-buying, and portraying the EU negatively have effectively swayed voters away from pro-EU sentiments.

“The narrow margins highlight a deep split in public opinion and significant polarisation over Moldova’s EU integration goals.”

Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said the people of Moldova had “voted for the European future despite all of Russia’s attempts to buy votes and other foreign interference, including massive disinformation campaigns”. In written comments to the Guardian, he said it was very important for security across Europe to investigate how far foreign interference had affected the election “and how much opinions were influenced by illegal means”.

Moscow on Monday sought to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Moldovan elections, claiming that the narrow margin in the country’s constitutional referendum on EU membership “raised questions”.

“Even in these circumstances … we saw just how many people don’t support President Sandu’s ideology,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said as he urged reporters to wait for the final results of the election.

Moldova’s election is part of a series of key votes happening across the region this year. Next week, Georgia, another former Soviet country caught in a tug-of-war between Russia and the west, will hold key parliamentary elections, marking another test of the region’s shift away from Moscow.

Additional reporting by Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

A Ngunnawal elder has rebuked Lidia Thorpe over her confrontation with King Charles, saying the Victorian senator doesn’t speak for her people and that her comments of “fuck the colony” were “disrespectful”.

Aunty Violet Sheridan, 69, met the royals as part of an official greeting party on Monday and was sitting near the king in Parliament House when Thorpe “jumped out”, marched forward and started shouting at the royals. Thorpe yelled at the king to “give us our land back”, and shouted “fuck the colony” and “you are not my king”.

Sheridan said when she greeted Charles and Camilla “it was all from the heart and I said, ‘I warmly welcome the majesties to Ngunnawal land and also to Canberra’ and it had just ended, and then she’s (Thorpe) jumped out.

“Lidia Thorpe does not speak for me and my people, and I’m sure she doesn’t speak for a lot of First Nations people. It was disrespectful to come there and go on like that, there’s a time and place.”

The grandmother acknowledged the pain and suffering brought by colonisation and the legacies still being felt but she said coming together as a nation would “bring healing”.

“We have a lot of unfinished business, but I don’t want to be negative,” Sheridan said. “Let’s sit down and talk together, for our next generations to bring healing.”

Charles and Camilla are touring Australia and Samoa this week and are expected to face opposition from some First Nations people who oppose the monarchy.

Wayne Coco Wharton was in the Australian capital on Monday holding what he called a day of resistance against the visit, and calling for the acknowledgement of massacres and violent dispossession in Canberra.

Wharton said he wanted to give the king an International Criminal Court notice for genocidal crimes, but said he was barred from getting close to the king.

“This is resistance,” he said, calling himself “an adversary on behalf of sovereign nations”.

“I tried to explain to the authorities, I was trying to serve a document on the king of England, accusing him of genocide and war crimes,” the Kooma man told Guardian Australia.

He said Great Britain failed to acknowledge the country’s history and its legacy.

“They don’t own the genocide and the war crimes the king and his predecessors did on their behalf.

“All the advantage, all the wealth, all the land they required, is through the direct results of massacres, wars and genocide of First Nations people.”

Thorpe – a Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman – said in a statement she met and was supported by traditional owners and that she had backing from First Nations people around the country.

“This morning before the event in Parliament, I met with and was supported by Ngambri Ngunnawal Traditional Custodians from that Country, and I have the support from Blak Sovereign Movement Elders from around the whole country. I take the lead from the Blak Sovereign Movement.

“The King is not our Sovereign, he’s not our King. Over the past few weeks I have been requesting meetings with him, but was ignored. Today I felt it was right to speak up on behalf and the Blak Sovereign Movement to call out Genocide and the invasion and theft of our Lands, Waters and Skies by the Crown.”

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said her government is working to immediately pass a new law on Monday to overcome a court ruling that risks blocking the country’s multimillion-dollar deal with Albania aimed at curbing migrant arrivals.

On Friday, a court in Rome ruled to transfer back to Italy the last 12 asylum seekers being held in the new Italian migration hub in Albania. The ruling has cast doubt on the feasibility and legality of plans by the EU to explore ways to establish migrant processing and detention centres outside the bloc as part of a new hardline approach to migration.

The group of individuals, who had arrived at the port of Shëngjin from Lampedusa onboard a military vessel last week, were among the 16 people transferred for the first time to the designated facility in Gjadër under the agreement between Meloni and the Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama, aimed at holding men who are intercepted in international waters while trying to cross from Africa to Europe.

Four of the 16 men were immediately sent back to Italy on Thursday, including two who were underage and two who were deemed as vulnerable.

The remaining 12 individuals whom the Rome judges ordered be transferred back to Italy were returned via the port of Bari on Saturday in a blow to Meloni that risks turning the initiative into what aid workers and opposition groups have deemed a “complete failure” and a “financial disaster”.

Meloni’s party, the far-right Brothers of Italy, angrily condemned the decision on social media, blaming “politicised magistrates” who “would like to abolish Italy’s borders. We will not allow it.”

Italy’s justice minister, Carlo Nordio, attacked the judges, citing how “the definition of a safe country cannot be up to the judiciary”.

The dispute that has sparked the clash revolves around the definition of what constitute “safe countries” of origin for migrants. The 16 asylum seekers hailed from Egypt and Bangladesh, countries deemed safe by Italy, and therefore, according to the government, they should have been repatriated to their countries of origin.

However, the judges ordered their transfer to Italy, citing how the men could be at risk of violence if repatriated, effectively upholding the 4 October ruling of the European court of justice that the Italian government appeared to have overlooked. As a general rule, EU law takes precedence over conflicting national laws.

The EU court made it clear that a country not entirely safe cannot be deemed safe, underlining that the condition of insecurity, even if limited to a specific part of the country, such as a certain region, could lead to the entire country being deemed unsafe.

The aim of the forthcoming decree is to draw up a new list of safe countries, which can be updated every six months, and to allow a court of appeal to reconsider rulings that order the transfer of asylum seekers to Italy. Meloni’s government hopes in this way to bind the magistrates’ decision to government decrees and not to international laws.

The row between the judges and the government escalated further on Sunday when Meloni published excerpts on social media of a letter sent by one prosecutor to a group which includes judges.

In it, Judge Marco Patarnello warned that Meloni was “stronger and much more dangerous” than the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who faced frequent legal woes and who repeatedly attacked the judiciary.

Rightwing politicians said the letter proved the legal bias against the government.

Critics pointed out however that Meloni did not post the rest of the text, in which Patarnello said “we must not engage in political opposition, but we must defend jurisdiction and the citizens’ right to an independent judge”.

On Monday, the president of the judiciary’s union, Giuseppe Santalucia, said: “We are not against the government, it would be absurd to think that the judiciary, an institution of the country, is against an institution of the country like political power.”

A reported 90 hoax bomb threats have been made against Indian airlines in the past week, provoking international travel chaos as planes were grounded, diverted and flown to safety by fighter jet escorts.

The unprecedented surge in fake bomb threats against multiple Indian and international airlines has caused severe disruption to India’s aviation industry and created a growing sense of panic among air passengers.

Last week, there were a reported 90 bomb threats made against airlines flying domestically and to international destinations out of Indian airports. On Saturday alone, 30 hoax threats were reported, and at least 20 more threats were made to different airlines on Sunday.

Indian aviation authorities and criminal investigators have yet to uncover the source and motive of the surge in bomb threats, which are largely being sent via email or posted through anonymous accounts on social media platforms such as X. Major Indian airlines such as Air India, Vistara, SpiceJet and IndiGo have primarily been targeted but American Airlines, Jet Blue and Air New Zealand have also had threats that led to flights being diverted.

The impact on India’s airline industry has been enormous. Regulations enforce airlines to act on every threat, meaning dozens of planes have had to reroute and make emergency landings in third countries such as Turkey or Germany, or turn back to India.

On Sunday, Afghanistan refused permission for a Vistara flight bound for Frankfurt to make an emergency landing after it received a bomb threat, forcing the plane to turn back to India.

India’s air travel sector has been booming, with domestic air traffic carrying 152 million passengers in 2023. Over the past week, passengers have been left enraged as their travel has been delayed, sometimes by days, and airlines are facing huge financial losses.

Last week, an Air India Boeing 777 en route from Delhi to Chicago was diverted to the remote Canadian town of Iqaluit due to a bomb threat. The 200 passengers on board were grounded for three days before finally making it to Chicago onboard a Canadian air force plane.

In incidents in Singapore and the UK last week, fighter jets were dispatched to escort Indian flights that had been issued with bomb threats.

India’s civil aviation minister, K Ram Mohan Naidu, described the surge in hoax threats as a “matter of grave concern” and said that those “responsible for the disruptions will be identified and duly prosecuted”.

The scale of the threats over the past week is far beyond anything India’s aviation industry has had to deal with before. Between 2014 and 2017, Indian flights received about 120 bomb threats in total.

Officials have made one arrest of a minor, and introduced rules that anyone found involved in a bomb hoax will be put on a no-fly list. However, officials are still scrambling to get to the bottom of the issue, as the threats continue to come in unstopped.

An aviation security official who spoke to Indian media described a pattern in how the threats were being issued. “A threat is given using social media or through a phone call, and then suddenly similar threats start to appear within a short span of time,” they said.

They said while the motive was still to be determined, it was clearly intended to “disturb the aviation sector, create panic, and keep the agencies on their toes”.

A reported 90 hoax bomb threats have been made against Indian airlines in the past week, provoking international travel chaos as planes were grounded, diverted and flown to safety by fighter jet escorts.

The unprecedented surge in fake bomb threats against multiple Indian and international airlines has caused severe disruption to India’s aviation industry and created a growing sense of panic among air passengers.

Last week, there were a reported 90 bomb threats made against airlines flying domestically and to international destinations out of Indian airports. On Saturday alone, 30 hoax threats were reported, and at least 20 more threats were made to different airlines on Sunday.

Indian aviation authorities and criminal investigators have yet to uncover the source and motive of the surge in bomb threats, which are largely being sent via email or posted through anonymous accounts on social media platforms such as X. Major Indian airlines such as Air India, Vistara, SpiceJet and IndiGo have primarily been targeted but American Airlines, Jet Blue and Air New Zealand have also had threats that led to flights being diverted.

The impact on India’s airline industry has been enormous. Regulations enforce airlines to act on every threat, meaning dozens of planes have had to reroute and make emergency landings in third countries such as Turkey or Germany, or turn back to India.

On Sunday, Afghanistan refused permission for a Vistara flight bound for Frankfurt to make an emergency landing after it received a bomb threat, forcing the plane to turn back to India.

India’s air travel sector has been booming, with domestic air traffic carrying 152 million passengers in 2023. Over the past week, passengers have been left enraged as their travel has been delayed, sometimes by days, and airlines are facing huge financial losses.

Last week, an Air India Boeing 777 en route from Delhi to Chicago was diverted to the remote Canadian town of Iqaluit due to a bomb threat. The 200 passengers on board were grounded for three days before finally making it to Chicago onboard a Canadian air force plane.

In incidents in Singapore and the UK last week, fighter jets were dispatched to escort Indian flights that had been issued with bomb threats.

India’s civil aviation minister, K Ram Mohan Naidu, described the surge in hoax threats as a “matter of grave concern” and said that those “responsible for the disruptions will be identified and duly prosecuted”.

The scale of the threats over the past week is far beyond anything India’s aviation industry has had to deal with before. Between 2014 and 2017, Indian flights received about 120 bomb threats in total.

Officials have made one arrest of a minor, and introduced rules that anyone found involved in a bomb hoax will be put on a no-fly list. However, officials are still scrambling to get to the bottom of the issue, as the threats continue to come in unstopped.

An aviation security official who spoke to Indian media described a pattern in how the threats were being issued. “A threat is given using social media or through a phone call, and then suddenly similar threats start to appear within a short span of time,” they said.

They said while the motive was still to be determined, it was clearly intended to “disturb the aviation sector, create panic, and keep the agencies on their toes”.

People with major depression could alleviate their symptoms by self-administering a form of electrical brain stimulation at home, according to a clinical trial of the therapy.

Patients who took a 10-week course of the treatment were about twice as likely to see their depression go into remission than those in a control group who performed the same procedure with the current switched off.

The findings suggest that people with depression could receive beneficial brain stimulation without having to attend a clinic and that the treatment could become an effective alternative for those who do not want, or do not respond to, more traditional therapies.

“This is a potential first line treatment for depression,” said Cynthia Fu, a professor of affective neuroscience and psychotherapy at King’s College London and senior author on the study.

“It can also be used for people whose depression hasn’t improved with antidepressant medication, for people who don’t like antidepressant medication, or who don’t want psychotherapy.”

For the phase two trial, 174 people with major depressive disorder were given a headset to deliver what is known as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The headset, produced by Flow Neuroscience, which also funded the trial, contains two electrodes that apply a weak current of up to 2 milliamps to the forehead.

The 10-week course was supervised in real-time over video conference calls, starting with five 30-minute sessions a week for three weeks, followed by three 30-minute sessions a week for the next seven weeks.

While half the participants received electrical brain stimulation as expected, the other half unknowingly had “inactive” therapy, where the device delivered a brief, weak current at the start and finish of the session, but was otherwise not providing any stimulation.

Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, the researchers report that depression improved in both groups over the 10-week course, according to their scores on standard depression scales.

But those who had active brain stimulation improved most. The remission rate in the brain stimulation group was 44.9% compared with 21.8% in the inactive control group.

An estimated 5% of adults globally live with depression. The most common treatments are antidepressants and psychological therapies but more than a third of people with major depressive disorder do not reach full clinical remission.

tDCS makes neurons in frontal regions of the brain fire more readily, an effect that is thought to have a beneficial impact on the broader brain network affected by depression.

“We did see a placebo effect, with people who were receiving the inactive treatment showing an improvement,” Fu told the Guardian. “But there were more people in the active treatment arm whose depression improved than in the inactive treatment arm.”

tDCS is already used to treat conditions such as psychosis and eating disorders, and trials so far suggest the procedure is safe. The current delivered to the brain is at least 400 times weaker than that used in electroconvulsive therapy, which induces a generalised seizure in the brain. To reduce any risks from prolonged stimulation, the device shuts off after 30 minutes.

“Although tDCS for depression has been in Nice [National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] guidelines since 2015 and is considered ‘safe’, uncertainties about its efficacy remain,” said Myles Jones, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Sheffield, who was not involved in the study.

“This study demonstrates that repeated home use of tDCS is associated with a reduction in a key depression measure.”

He added: “Although single doses of tDCS have proved equivocal in changing neural activity and cognitive performance, prolonged use over days or weeks has been shown to be clinically effective in depression, tinnitus and a range of conditions.”

The owner of TikTok has sacked an intern for allegedly sabotaging an internal artificial intelligence project.

ByteDance said it had dismissed the person in August after they “maliciously interfered” with the training of artificial intelligence (AI) models used in a research project.

Thanks to the video-sharing app TikTok and its Chinese counterpart, Douyin, which rank among the world’s most popular mobile apps, ByteDance has risen to become one of the world’s most important social media companies.

Like other big players in the tech sector, ByteDance has raced to embrace generative AI. Its Doubao chatbot earlier this year took over from the competitor Baidu’s Ernie in the race to produce a Chinese rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

ByteDance has also released wireless earbuds that are integrated with Doubao, allowing users to interact with the chatbot directly without a mobile phone.

The company commented on the sacking of the intern after rumours circulated widely on Chinese social media over the weekend.

In a statement posted on its news aggregator service, Toutiao, ByteDance said that an intern in the commercial technology team had been dismissed for serious disciplinary violations, according to a translation.

It added that its official commercial products and its large language models, the underlying technology for generative AI, had not been affected.

The company said that reports and rumours on social media contained exaggerations, including over the scale of the disruption. ByteDance said this included rumours that as many as 8,000 graphical processing units, the chips used to train AI models, were affected, and that losses were in the tens of millions of dollars.

ByteDance said that it had informed the intern’s university and industry associations about their conduct.

It comes amid scrutiny on tech companies around the world over the safety of generative AI models, and the effects of social media.

ByteDance also faces particular scrutiny in the US, where it is fighting against a threatened federal ban. The company has until 19 January to sell its stake in TikTok to an approved buyer or close it. The US government contends that TikTok is a national security threat, an allegation ByteDance strongly disputes.

ByteDance and TikTok were approached for comment.

More than 100 professional female footballers have signed a letter calling on Fifa to end its sponsorship deal with the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company, Aramco, accusing Saudi authorities of “brutal human rights violations”.

A four-year deal signed in April will see Aramco, which is 98.5% state-owned, sponsor major tournaments including the men’s World Cup in 2026 and the Women’s World Cup in 2027.

But campaigners have accused Saudi Arabia of “sportswashing” – using its investment in sport to cover up its poor human rights record.

The regime has recently handed down long prison sentences to a number of women, often in secret trials, after they used social media to advocate for more rights and freedoms for women.

Earlier this year, Manahel al-Otaibi, 30, was sentenced to 11 years in prison after using social media to call for an end to rules dictating that women needed the permission of a male relative to marry or travel. A Leeds University student, Salma al-Shehab, received a 34-year prison term for tweeting in support of women’s rights.

In the letter published today, the women said girls who would be the players of the future deserved much better from the sport’s governing body than its “allyship with this nightmare sponsor”.

The signatories said: “Saudi authorities have been spending billions in sports sponsorship to try to distract from the regime’s brutal human rights reputation, but its treatment of women speaks for itself.

“It is because we stand alongside the citizens of Saudi Arabia whose human rights are violated that we are speaking out. We don’t want to be part of covering up these violations.

“We urge Fifa to reconsider this partnership and replace Saudi Aramco with alternative sponsors whose values align with gender equality, human rights and the safe future of our planet.

“A corporation that bears glaring responsibility for the climate crisis, owned by a state that criminalises LBGTQ+ individuals and systematically oppresses women, has no place sponsoring our beautiful game.”

Last year, Fifa was criticised over plans to make Visit Saudi, the country’s tourist authority, a leading sponsor of the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

Saudi activists said the footballers’ letter “spoke louder that any PR campaign ever could”.

Lina al-Hathloul, head of monitoring and advocacy at ALQST for Human Rights, said: “As long as Saudi Arabia’s authorities fail to genuinely respect women’s rights and freedom, their reputation will continue to impede any lofty ambitions they may have. Thank you to these women for standing with the brave women of Saudi Arabia.”

Aramco has been contacted for comment.

In a statement to the Guardian, Fifa said sponsorship revenues were reinvested in the game at all levels and that investment in women’s football continued to increase, including for the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

Five new federal civil lawsuits have been filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs over the weekend, bringing forth a fresh new wave of sexual assault and rape accusations against the producer between 2000 and 2022.

Among the plaintiffs, two are men and three are women. All of the alleged incidents reportedly occurred at parties hosted by Combs.

In one lawsuit, the Jane Doe claims that in 2000, when she was 13 years old, Combs invited her to attend his MTV Video Music Awards afterparty where she was allegedly drugged and raped.

She alleges that she accepted a drink at the party and became disoriented and dizzy. Soon after, she claims that Combs threw her toward another male celebrity, known in the filing as “Celebrity A”, who then removed her clothes as she grew more and more disoriented.

She then alleges that she was raped by the celebrity while Combs and a female celebrity, named in the suit as “Celebrity B”, watched.

The plaintiff also alleges that Combs raped her while the Celebrity A and Celebrity B watched and that he attempted to force her to do oral sex on him. Doe claims she resisted by hitting Combs in the neck, and he stopped.

In another suit, a 29-year-old independent music artist accused Combs of drugging her at a party, and then raping and sexually assaulting her.

In another filing, Combs is accused of sexually assaulting a man, identified as a businessman from the Los Angeles area, at a party.

Another separate filing, Combs and a “as of yet unnamed celebrity” are accused of drugging and repeatedly sexually assaulting a man, identified only as John Doe and described as a dedicated personal trainer who worked with celebrities, at one of his afterparties.

The five lawsuits were all filed in the southern district of New York by the Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee.

Buzbee said in a statement to NBC News: “The allegations in the filed complaints speak for themselves,” and vowed to “work to see that justice is done”.

“We expect to be filing cases weekly naming Mr Combs and others as defendants as we continue to gather evidence and prepare the filings,” he added.

Buzbee also filed six other suits against Combs last week.

When asked for comment on the new allegations in the newly filed lawsuits against Combs, his representatives referred CNN to a previous statement from his attorneys in which they denied the allegations in six lawsuits filed last week.

“Mr Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process,” Combs’s attorneys said in the statement to CNN. “In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone – adult or minor, man or woman.”

CNN also reported that two more lawsuits against Combs had been filed on Monday in New York superior court.

Combs is being held at the Metropolitan detention center in Brooklyn as he awaits trial. He was denied bail as he faces federal charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. His trial is set to begin in May.