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Middle East crisis live: Kuwait reports missile and drone attack; US says it struck Iran radar sites over weekend

The latest exchange of fire between the US and Iran marks the third major violation of a ceasefire that was agreed by both sides in April. That deal was reached after almost six weeks of violent conflict that began when the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in February, killing the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Since then, the truce has largely held, while the Trump administration has used a blockade on ships in the strait of Hormuz to pressure Iran into agreeing to a more permanent peace agreement that would reopen the vital waterway and address concerns over Tehran’s nuclear program. However on 7 May, the US and Iran exchanged fire, testing the strength of the ceasefire. Iran accused the US of violations by targeting two ships in the strait of Hormuz and attacking civilian areas, while the US insisted it struck in retaliation, after three US destroyers were targeted. Then last week, the US said it had targeted missile launch sites and boats attempting to lay mines. On both previous occasions, the US insisted that the action carried out was limited, and did not indicate the ceasefire with Iran was over.

Colombia’s far-right presidential candidate Espriella wins first round of vote ahead of runoff

The far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday and will face senator Iván Cepeda, the candidate backed by leftwing president Gustavo Petro, in the runoff. With 99.97% of ballots counted, the outsider and Donald Trump admirer Espriella secured 43.7% of the vote – just over 10.3m votes – compared with 40.9% (about 9.6m votes) for Cepeda, a philosopher and human rights activist who has served as a senator since 2014. The two will face each other in a runoff on 21 June. Although polls in recent weeks had already detected Espriella’s rapid rise, most still showed him trailing Cepeda, who for months seemed to hold a solid lead. Espriella appears to have consolidated much of the vote that had previously been going to the rightwing senator Paloma Valencia, who at one point polled above 20% and was running in second place but finished Sunday with just 6.9%. Espriella, who calls himself el Tigre (the Tiger), celebrated the result: “Compatriots, defenders of the homeland, more than 10 million Colombians placed their trust in el Tigre and joined the pack ... In 21 days, we are going to change the history of Colombia forever,” he said in a video alongside his wife and children, all wearing shirts of the Colombian national football team. Petro posted on X that “as president, I do not accept the preliminary results” released by the National Civil Registry, the independent public body responsible for organising Colombia’s elections. Without showing any evidence, the president claimed the count included “800,000 additional people” and said he would only “consider and accept” the results of the official scrutiny process, during which the National Electoral Council reviews the physical tally sheets, a procedure that can take days or even weeks. The lawyer Juan Carlos Galindo Vácha, who previously headed the National Civil Registry on two occasions, accused Petro of spreading “disinformation”. “Historically, in presidential elections, the difference between the preliminary count, which is unofficial, and the official scrutiny process is less than 1%. That alone undermines any claim by President Petro that there was fraud in the count,” he said in an interview with Radio Caracol. He added: “The president should show greater respect for the citizens who take part in the electoral process, whether as polling officials or electoral observers. He should not make these wild claims that even he does not understand.” Cepeda delivered his speech shortly after Petro’s post and echoed the president’s allegations, likewise without presenting evidence. The senator said there was “information regarding a certain number of polling stations” in which “atypical voting patterns” had allegedly occurred. “Only once the electoral commissions have fully clarified this matter will we comment on tonight’s results,” he added. After a wave of victories by far-right candidates in recent years in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Honduras, Colombia remains one of the few countries in Latin America still governed by the left, alongside Mexico and Brazil, which will hold its own presidential election in October. Espriella is an outspoken admirer of several rightwing leaders in the region, including the US president, Donald Trump, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei. A criminal lawyer and millionaire businessman who has never held public office, Espriella built his campaign around a promise to return to a policy of total confrontation in response to Colombia’s worsening security crisis, now considered the worst since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Espriella advocates ending Petro’s “total peace” policy of negotiating the dismantling of criminal groups – of which Cepeda is widely regarded as the architect – and replacing it with a mano dura (iron-fist) strategy inspired above all by El Salvador’s populist strongman Bukele, who has imprisoned at least 2% of his country’s adult population as part of a controversial crackdown on gangs. Even the lawyer’s neatly trimmed beard and habitual use of baseball caps have drawn comparisons with Bukele’s style. Espriella has incorporated his tiger nickname into much of his campaign branding. He has attracted controversy by attacking journalists and, at one point, telling a radio host that he was winning over female voters because of the size of his genitals. In a speech on Sunday night, Valencia acknowledged the result and endorsed Espriella in the runoff. Despite widespread concern about security, election day itself passed peacefully. The past few months have been marked by a surge in guerrilla attacks, homicides, kidnappings, forced displacement and massacres, and last year the rightwing senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot during a campaign event by a Farc dissident group and later died.

European leaders condemn Israel’s deepening incursion into Lebanon

European leaders have condemned Israel’s expanding incursion into Lebanon, after its military captured the medieval Beaufort castle and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to push even deeper into the country. France’s president Emmanuel Macron called for an end to fighting, saying “nothing justifies the major escalation under way in south Lebanon”. The country’s foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, has requested a meeting of the UN security council for Monday. The foreign ministers of the UK and Germany joined France in condemning the new operation. Britain’s Yvette Cooper called for the ceasefire that has been in place between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah since April to be respected. The US-brokered truce to halt the fighting between both sides has rarely been observed. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah, which has a strong political presence in southern Lebanon and has launched thousands of missiles and drones into northern Israel. Israel’s campaign has forced more than a million people from their homes, while 3,300 people, including dozens of children, have been killed. The current conflict began in March, after Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader. Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, on Saturday accused Israel of “implementing a policy of total destruction of cities and towns”. Netanyahu has called Sunday’s capture of Beaufort castle a “dramatic shift” in the campaign against Hezbollah. Israeli forces used the Beaufort castle, also known as Qalaat al-Shaqif, as a base during their previous two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000. The castle offers views across Lebanon and into northern Israel. It was built as a crusader castle around the 12th century and later occupied by Saladin’s Jerusalem army, the Ottomans, the French and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In a video statement released after the military took Beaufort, Netanyahu said “We have returned united, determined and stronger than ever. “Now my directive is to deepen and expand our hold in places that were under Hezbollah’s control.” Netanyahu noted the historic significance of the castle, which the military first seized in 1982, calling it a “symbol of a heroic battle for our fighters.” But some experts have questioned the strategic significance of the capture, and said its capture amounted to little more than a public relations coup. The military’s presence there will not solve the issue with Hezbollah, Orna Mizrahi, a former deputy director in Israel’s national security council, told the Associated Press. “We are damaging them in the operations, but in parallel we need to pursue a political and diplomatic solution,” Mizrahi said. Talks between senior officials from Israel and Lebanon began in April in Washington, the first in more than three decades between the countries, which have no formal diplomatic relations. Those discussions are set to continue this week, but Hezbollah is not taking part and has said it will not accept any results. Israel’s latest advance and the continuing violence in Lebanon also present a challenge in efforts to secure a lasting peace agreement between the US and Iran. Tehran has continued to insist that any agreement to extend the current ceasefire with Washington and return shipping to the strait of Hormuz must include an end to fighting in Lebanon as well. Observers have suggested Israeli officials and military commanders want to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before a potential deal imposes new limits or stops the current offensive. With Agence France-Presse

Israel seizes strategic castle in deepest incursion into Lebanon in 26 years

Israeli troops have captured a clifftop castle as they made their deepest incursion into Lebanon in more than 26 years, further shattering a nominal US-brokered ceasefire and complicating efforts to extend the separate truce between Washington and Tehran. After days of intense fighting and airstrikes in nearby villages, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said the military had captured Beaufort Castle, also known as Qalaat al-Shaqif, which it had used as a base during its previous occupation of southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) already controlled territory up to the Litani River in its campaign against Hezbollah, but troops are now pushing towards the Zahrani River, about six miles north. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, requested an emergency meeting of the UN security council on Monday to discuss Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, which he described as unacceptable. “Nothing can justify the prolongation of Israeli military operations in Lebanon and its increasingly deep occupation of Lebanese territory,” he said. Images and footage showed Israeli and Golani Brigade flags flying over Beaufort Castle, which overlooks much of southern Lebanon, giving it strategic importance, as shelling echoed across the surrounding hills and plumes of smoke rose from the area. The IDF said it had “launched an operation in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki area of southern Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure and expand its control of the area”. Israeli forces appear to be positioning themselves for a potential encirclement of Nabatieh, a city that serves as an economic centre and a cultural heartland for southern Lebanon. Prof Yagil Levy, the head of the Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations at the Open University of Israel, described the latest advance as no more than “victory of image”. “There was already debate in 1982 over how necessary the capture of Beaufort really was,” he said. “It attempts to present an accomplishment within a public discourse that increasingly assumes that Israel is not winning. “Protests are growing in the northern communities, criticism is emerging from within the military over soldiers’ vulnerability to drone attacks, Hezbollah remains intact, and there is no realistic plan for its disarmament.” The advance also poses a challenge to stalled negotiations between the US and Iran, as Tehran wants any deal to include the end of fighting in Lebanon as well. Observers have said Israeli officials and military commanders want to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before a potential deal imposes new limits or stops the current offensive. The fighting in Lebanon has been the broadest spillover of the Iran war, displacing more than 1.2 million people as a result of Israeli strikes and evacuation orders since 2 March. A truce officially began on 17 April but has never been observed. Israel and Hezbollah accuse each other daily of violations as justification for their attacks. For many in Lebanon, Nabatieh carries a significance that extends beyond its strategic value. Long regarded as a symbol of resistance, the city has repeatedly been on the frontline of Israeli military campaigns and is deeply embedded in the political and historical memory of southern Lebanon. Israeli forces have moved past the towns of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah and Mayfadoun in recent days and are approaching Choukine, where local people were ordered to evacuate on Saturday amid fears of further military operations. Taking over Nabatieh would deal a blow to Hezbollah’s morale, said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, a thinktank based in Beirut. Addressing fears of a virtual annexation, he said: “Given the level of destruction in the so-called ‘yellow zone’, the range of possibilities is between denying the return of the population, and annexation/settlement in a similar fashion to the West Bank. “Annexation is no longer a wild conspiracy theory. There are ministerial statements to this effect from Israel’s finance and national security ministers, among others.” Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, accused Israel on Saturday of “pursuing a scorched-earth policy and collective punishment” by “destroying towns and villages, and forcing their inhabitants into exile” in the south of the country. He said the country was facing a “dangerous” escalation and called for “a swift and real ceasefire”. The actions would bring “neither security nor stability” to Israel, he said. Salam defended his government’s engagement with its southern neighbour after military delegations held security talks in Washington on Friday. More US-brokered negotiations are planned next week. He said the outcome of the talks was not guaranteed, but called them “the least costly path for our country and our people”. The Lebanese health ministry said eight people, including three women, had been killed after a strike on southern Lebanon on Sunday. Reuters reported the Israeli military as saying one of its soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah said earlier on Saturday that it had targeted the air traffic control unit at the Meron base in northern Israel, a strategic surveillance and command facility near the Lebanese border. The group also claimed responsibility for rocket fire towards Kiryat Shmona, one of the Israeli communities most exposed to the conflict. Videos on social media appeared to show beachgoers in northern Israel running for shelter as Hezbollah rockets were launched towards the area, according to local media. The barrage was the first fired from Lebanon towards the coastal city of Nahariya in three weeks. The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli attacks had killed at least 3,371 people since 2 March, when Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in support of Iran. The group said it had attacked Israel in retaliation for the death of Iran’s supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes when the war erupted on 28 February. Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

WHO calls for community cooperation to contain Ebola outbreak in DRC

Containing the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo requires community cooperation and is “everybody’s business”, the World Health Organization has said. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organisation’s director general, made the plea on Sunday during a visit to eastern Congo where some residents have protested against stringent medical protocols for handling victims’ bodies. “We can stop this Ebola and anyone who has it can also recover. But the rule … is this thing is everybody’s business and every citizen should be involved,” Ghebreyesus said at the opening of a treatment centre in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, which is at the centre of the outbreak. Protesters have complained restrictions on handling victims’ bodies violate local burial rites, a sentiment that has been linked to at least three attacks against health centres. There is no vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, the strain behind the current outbreak, but infected people can recover, according to Ghebreyesus. He said: “If you come to health facilities when you have symptoms, you can get the support and recover, so the key is to come forward as early as possible and to get the necessary support.” Five patients had recovered and four were to be discharged on Sunday, after the earlier discharge of the other patient, the WHO chief said. The organisation has recorded 906 suspected cases and 223 suspected deaths in the DRC. Authorities in neighbouring Uganda have confirmed nine cases and one death. The number of confirmed cases in the DRC had increased to 282, with 42 deaths, after 19 new positive test results were recorded, according to data distributed by the communications ministry on Sunday. Fighting between rival armed groups in the mineral-rich Ituri region has complicated relief efforts, prompting Ghebreyesus to call for a ceasefire, saying: “No cause, no conflict, no grievance is worth condemning innocent people to death from a preventable disease.” Brazilian health authorities said they were monitoring two patients for possible Ebola infection in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, although one later tested negative for the virus. A 37-year-old man from DRC “exhibited symptoms such as fever, meeting the definition of a suspected case” of Ebola, the São Paulo state government said on Saturday. The health department in Rio de Janeiro state meanwhile reported that it had activated safety protocols after a man from Uganda showed “viral symptoms such as cough, chills and diarrhoea”. He later tested negative but remained in isolation until the investigation was completed, Brazilian authorities said. The DRC outbreak – which the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern – is the 17th recorded Ebola epidemic in the country. The disease was first identified in the central African country in 1976 and has an average death rate, across all outbreaks, of 50%. Health officials and aid workers have complained they lack basic supplies such as masks. Medical aid donated by the European Union reached Ituri last week and the US announced $80m (£60m) in additional aid, raising its total commitment to $112m. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said national incident systems must be activated rapidly and that investments in pandemic preparedness must become permanent. Jean Kaseya, the organisation’s director general, said in the Financial Times on Sunday that international support was vital and most effective when it aligned with the strategies of African institutions and African governments. “Africa’s response to Ebola must be defined by Africa itself,” he wrote. The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned on Saturday that the disease’s spread was deeply alarming and that never before had so many cases been recorded so soon. MSF teams were “witnessing a response that has not yet caught up to the rapid spread of the epidemic”, said the organisation’s deputy director, Alan Gonzalez. “The reality today is that nobody knows the true scale and severity of this outbreak. New suspected cases are being reported daily, yet hundreds of samples remain untested.”

Middle East crisis: Netanyahu hails capture of castle in Lebanon as nominal ceasefire left in tatters – as it happened

The Guardian’s live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East is coming to a close for today. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israeli forces’ capture of Beaufort castle in southern Lebanon marked a “dramatic shift” in Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has stepped up its offensive in Lebanon with the taking of the hilltop castle. Large areas of Lebanon are under evacuation orders as Israel intensifies its fight with Hezbollah. More on today’s key events below: Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said troops will remain in Beaufort as part of Israel’s security zone in Lebanon. In a post on X, Katz said: “At the direction of prime minister Netanyahu and at my direction, the IDF expanded the manoeuvre in Lebanon, crossed the Litani River, and captured the Beaufort ridge – one of the most important strategic points for defending the settlements of the Galilee and safeguarding the security of our forces. Following the capture of Beaufort, the Israeli military issued a sweeping evacuation order to areas south of the Zahrani river, north of the Litani and around 25 miles from the border. “For the sake of your safety, we direct this to all residents located south of the Zahleh River – as indicated on the map – that you must evacuate your homes immediately,” Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X. France requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations security council after Israeli forces seized Beaufort. “I have requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council because, while we recognise Israel’s right, like that of all countries, to self-defence... nothing can justify the continuation of Israeli military operations in Lebanon and its ever-deeper occupation of Lebanese territory,” Jean-Noel Barrot said on the BFMTV channel. An Israeli strike near a hospital in Tyre, south Lebanon wounded 13 staffers, the Lebanese health ministry said. “The Israeli enemy launched an airstrike in the vicinity of Hiram Hospital in Tyre, injuring 13 hospital staff members and causing significant damage,” the ministry said in a statement, urging “the international community to put an end to the escalating and expanding Israeli attacks”. US secretary of state Marco Rubio is expected to announce a new ceasefire deal between Lebanon and Israel following political track negotiations in Washington Tuesday, the Lebanon Broadcasting Corporation International reported, citing sources. Talks are due to take place on 2 and 3 June in Washington. The Lebanese Health Ministry said the death toll in the country since March was 3,371, including civilians and combatants. The Israeli army announced Sunday that one of its soldiers had been killed the previous day by a Hezbollah explosive drone in southern Lebanon, bringing to 25 the number of Israeli military deaths since early March. While the focus today has mainly been on events in Lebanon, Iran’s top negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said the country will not accept any agreement ending its conflict with the US unless there is certainty that the Iranian people’s rights are secured. “There is no trust in the enemy’s words and promises. Our only criterion is to achieve tangible results before we fulfil our commitments in return,” he said.

Death of Congolese man renews scrutiny of race relations in Ireland

Irish authorities have agreed to a second postmortem on the body of a Congolese man who died after being restrained by shop security guards on a Dublin street, prompting an outcry and comparisons to the death of George Floyd. A forensic pathologist from England is to conduct an independent postmortem this week on Yves Sakila, 35, an alleged shoplifter who was pursued and pinned to the ground in the city centre on 15 May. The police force, An Garda Síochána, is investigating. Protestors have held several rallies and on Saturday held a vigil at Henry Street near Arnotts, a department store where Sakila allegedly stole a bottle of perfume, leading to a chase outside, where security guards detained him for about five minutes until police arrived and found him to be unresponsive. Some of the incident was filmed and shared on social media. Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, the foreign minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, visited Dublin last week to meet family representatives and Irish officials. Sakila’s relatives were traumatised and “reeling”, the minister told RTÉ. “But they also displayed an enormous amount of courage, of serenity, and of course, of patience and trust in the Irish authorities that justice will be made and that light will be shed on the circumstances around Mr Sakila’s untimely death.” The family wanted to understand “how such a demonstration of excessive force could happen in broad daylight” and to ensure that publicity around the case was not short-lived, said Wagner. The minister met Ireland’s president, Catherine Connolly, the justice minister, Jim O’Callaghan, and the foreign minister, Helen McEntee. “The conversations that I had in Dublin were very fruitful and constructive and encouraging,” she said. The case has sharpened scrutiny on race relations in Ireland, where some activists and politicians have linked the arrival of immigrants and asylum seekers with a housing shortage and cost of living crisis. Bertie Ahern, a former taoiseach, was secretly recorded earlier this month – before Sakila’s death – saying: “The ones I worry about are the Africans. We can’t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places.” Placards at vigils for Sakila have referenced Black Lives Matter, the movement that spread in the US after a police officer in Minneapolis was filmed cutting off Floyd’s oxygen supply by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of murder. Sakila, who had lived in Ireland since 2004, reportedly had convictions for theft and was living in a homeless shelter. During his pursuit, an elderly man was knocked over and broke a hip. Footage shared on social media showed Sakila face down and being restrained, with one man appearing to kneel on his neck. When police arrived they briefly handcuffed Sakila before realising he was unresponsive and taking him to the Mater hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The postmortem appeared to be inconclusive, requiring a second one, the family’s solicitor, John Gerard Cullen, told reporters. “There are so many unanswered questions,” he said. He has submitted 41 questions to gardaí. David Rouse, a pathologist with Forensic Healthcare Services in Essex, is to conduct the second postmortem.