Brutal heat continues to plague the south-west US, with excessive heat alerts lingering long into September as parts of the region set grim new records for deaths connected to the sweltering temperatures.

Autumn has offered little reprieve for cities that have already spent months mired in triple-digit temperatures. This week, Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; and Palm Springs, California, are all grappling with severe weather, with highs that have pushed over 100F (38C). More than 16 million people in the US were under heat alerts on Friday, according to the National Weather Service, mostly clustered in the southern tips of Nevada, Arizona and California.

“Late-season heat is dangerous because people are fatigued from fighting heat all summer,” the NWS forecast office in Las Vegas cautioned in an alert, which warned of extreme weather expected to last through the weekend and into next week. “This is especially true this year,” it added, “as 2024 continues to break all-time heat records.”

Fueled by the climate crisis, and often exacerbated by concrete cityscapes that cook when temperatures rise, heatwaves are getting longer, larger and more intense.

Las Vegas had its 102nd day of temperatures above 100F on Friday, a new record for the most days in a single year. Several states, including Arizona and California, have experienced their warmest summers on record this year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and forecasters are predicting that 2024 may rank as the hottest year – a record just set in 2023.

“But it’s not over,” NWS Las Vegas said on Twitter, noting the heat warnings lingering in the forecast through the weekend.

The scorching and sustained heat has taken a devastating toll; heat already ranks as the most lethal weather-related disaster in the US, and deaths are increasing. Heat-associated fatalities are growing across the south-west, where shadeless streets can grow hot enough to cause second-degree burns in seconds. As dangerously hot weather stretches past summer and into spring and fall, the risks for those who don’t have access to cooling have continued to rise.

In Arizona’s Maricopa county, home to Phoenix, 664 fatalities are believed to have been linked to the heat this year , according to public health officials, who are still working to confirm more than half of them. Southern Nevada, where Las Vegas is located, has seen more deaths this year than in any year prior, with officials confirming this week that there have been 342 fatalities linked to the heat. This surpassed last year’s record, which marked an 80% increase over 2022.

But even these tragically high numbers are believed to paint only part of the picture. Heat deaths can be difficult to track, especially among high-risk populations including in unhoused communities. “We will inevitably see this number climb,” Melanie Rouse, Clark county’s coroner, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Older people, children and people with underlying health conditions are among the most at risk, especially among those without access to air conditioning, but first responders have also reported that heat-related emergencies have been climbing for workers.

“Delivery drivers, warehouse operators, our construction trades – basically anyone who has to work outside – we have seen emergencies from them and people with regular medical emergencies, and during a normal day the heat causes them to succumb,” Scott Vivier, the deputy fire chief in Henderson, a city south-east of Las Vegas, said in July.

Vivier’s department is among the first in the region to use a new tool called the polar pod, which enables emergency responders to pack someone in ice and water while they transport them to the hospital. Vivier said it’s had an incredible impact on their ability to save lives, and that they’ve even been trained to use the pods to revive overheated pets.

Exposure to prolonged extreme heat can also have lingering effects that are harder to quantify. As residents across the south-west yearn for the coming of a cooler autumn, public health clinicians have cautioned the heat can pack a psychological punch as well, leading to symptoms like irritability, anxiety and difficulty concentrating.

Singer Chappell Roan has pulled out of an appearance at this weekend’s All Things Go festival, claiming that her situation has become “overwhelming”.

The rising star, who currently has seven songs in the Billboard Top 100, released a statement on her Instagram stories, announcing that she won’t appear at either the DC or New York City stages this weekend.

“I apologise to people who have been waiting to see me in NYC & DC this weekend at All Things Go, but I am unable to perform,” the 26-year-old wrote. “Things have gotten overwhelming over the past few weeks and I am really feeling it. I feel pressures to prioritise a lot of things right now and I need a few days to prioritise my health. I want to be present when I perform and give the best shows possible. Thank you for understanding. Be back soon xox.”

Organisers of the festival responded with a post on X, showing support, writing that “it’s important to remember that health and well-being always comes first.”.

Roan had made headlines in the last week after an interview with the Guardian in which she spoke about her thoughts on the upcoming election.

“I have so many issues with our government in every way,” she said. “There are so many things that I would want to change. So I don’t feel pressured to endorse someone. There’s problems on both sides. I encourage people to use your critical thinking skills, use your vote – vote small, vote for what’s going on in your city.”

The comment sparked pushback online and led Roan to respond in a number of TikTok videos in which she attempted to clarify her stance. While admitting she would be voting for the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, she added: “I’m not going to settle for what the options that are in front of me, and you’re not going to make me feel bad for that.”

Roan also said: “Obviously, fuck the policies of the right, but also fuck some of the policies on the left. That’s why I can’t endorse. That’s why I can’t, like, put my entire name in my entire project behind one.”

The singer, who was recently named best new artist at the MTV VMA awards, has previously spoken about the troubles she has had with her expedited rise to fame.

In June, she broke down on stage in North Carolina, saying to fans: “I just want to be honest with the crowd. I just feel a little off today because I think that my career is just kind of going really fast and it’s really hard to keep up. I’m just being honest that I’m just having a hard time today.”

She has also released a number of statements about how she has been treated by over-eager fans who have crossed the line with “creepy” behaviour. “I don’t care that this crazy type of behaviour comes along with the job, the career field I’ve chosen,” she said. “That does not make it OK, that doesn’t make it normal. That doesn’t mean that I want it, that doesn’t mean that I like it.”

In her Guardian interview, Roan also spoke about her diagnosis of “severe depression” for which she is in therapy at the moment. “I think it’s because my whole life has changed,” she said. “Everything that I really love to do now comes with baggage.”

Roan, whose hit singles include Good Luck, Babe and Hot to Go!, has scheduled tour dates in the upcoming weeks in Tennessee and the Austin City Limits festival in Texas. She is also scheduled to be a musical guest on Saturday Night Live on 2 November.

Maggie Smith, the prolific, multi-award-winning actor whose work ranged from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Harry Potter to Downton Abbey, has died aged 89.

The news was confirmed by her sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens in a statement. They said: “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27 September.

“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days.

“We thank you for all your kind messages and support and ask that you respect our privacy at this time.”

Smith’s gift for acid-tongued comedy was arguably the source of her greatest achievements: the waspish teacher Jean Brodie, for which she won an Oscar, prim period yarns such as A Room With a View and Gosford Park, and a series of collaborations on stage and screen with Alan Bennett including The Lady in the Van. “My career is chequered,” she told the Guardian in 2004. “I think I got pigeonholed in humour … If you do comedy, you kind of don’t count. Comedy is never considered the real thing.” However, Smith also excelled in non-comedic dramatic roles, performing opposite Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre, winning a best actress Bafta for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, and playing the title role in Ingmar Bergman’s 1970 production of Hedda Gabler.

Born in 1934, Smith grew up in Oxford and began acting at the city’s Playhouse theatre as a teenager. While appearing in a string of stage shows, including Bamber Gascoigne’s 1957 musical comedy Share My Lettuce opposite Kenneth Williams, Smith also made inroads on film, with her first substantial impact in the 1958 Seth Holt thriller Nowhere to Go, for which she was nominated for a best supporting actress Bafta. After starring in Peter Shaffer’s stage double bill The Private Ear and The Public Eye, Smith was invited by Olivier to join the nascent National Theatre company in 1962, for whom she appeared in a string of productions, including as Desdemona to Olivier’s Othello in his notorious blackface production in 1964. (Smith repeated the role in Olivier’s film version the following year, for which they were both Oscar-nominated.)

In 1969 she was cast in the lead role of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the adaptation of the Muriel Spark novel about the Edinburgh schoolteacher with an admiration for Mussolini; Smith went on to win the best actress Oscar in 1970. Later the same year she starred in Ingmar Bergman’s production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler for the National Theatre in London’s West End; the Evening Standard’s Milton Shulman described her as “haunt[ing] the stage like some giant portrait by Modigliani, her alabaster skin stretched tight with hidden anguish.” Another Oscar nomination for best actress came her way in 1973 for the Graham Greene adaptation Travels with My Aunt, and an Oscar win (for best supporting actress) in 1979 for California Suite, the Neil Simon-scripted anthology piece in which she played an Oscar-nominated film star.

Smith continued her successful parallel film and stage careers in the 1980s. She starred opposite Michael Palin in A Private Function, the wartime-set comedy about food rationing, co-scripted by Alan Bennett, and had a colourful supporting role as gossipy cousin Charlotte Bartlett in Merchant Ivory’s A Room With a View, for which she was nominated for yet another Oscar. She followed it up with The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, a character study in which Smith played the unmarried, frustrated woman of the title. On stage she played Virginia Woolf in Edna O’Brien’s 1980 play at the Stratford Festival theatre in Canada, and in 1987 starred as tour guide Lettice Douffet in Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage. She also reunited with Bennett for his Talking Heads series on both radio and TV, playing a vicar’s wife having an affair.

Film roles continued to roll in: she starred alongside Joan Plowright and Cher in Franco Zeffirelli’s loosely autobiographical Tea With Mussolini, a dowager countess in Robert Altman’s country-house murder mystery Gosford Park, and opposite Judi Dench in Ladies in Lavender, written and directed by Charles Dance. She also accepted the prominent role of Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series, appearing between 2001 and 2011 in every instalment apart from Deathly Hallows Part 1. Meanwhile she achieved arguably her most impactful TV role as the countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, created by Gosford Park writer Julian Fellowes – reprising the role in two standalone cinema films, released in 2019 and 2022. Having played the role on stage in 1999, Smith enjoyed a late career triumph in The Lady in the Van, Alan Bennett’s memoir about the woman who lived on his driveway.

Smith was married twice: to fellow actor Robert Stephens between 1967 and 1975, and Beverley Cross between 1975 and his death in 1998.

Two Just Stop Oil activists have been jailed for throwing tomato soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after one of them told a judge she would “accept whatever sentences I receive with a smile”.

Phoebe Plummer, 23, was sentenced to two years in prison for causing an estimated £10,000 worth of damage to the artwork’s frame at the National Gallery in London in 2022. Her codefendant, Anna Holland, 22, received 20 months for the same offence, but will serve only half in custody.

Passing sentence at Southwark crown court on Friday, the judge, Christopher Hehir, told them: “You two simply had no right to do what you did to Sunflowers and your arrogance in assuming otherwise deserves the strongest condemnation.”

In October 2022, Plummer and Holland had gone to room 43 of the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square and hurled two tins of Heinz soup over the 1888 painting, one of Van Gogh’s most famous works, before gluing themselves to the wall beneath it.

In July, they were found guilty of criminal damage by a jury after three hours of deliberations. Judge Hehir told them at the time to be “prepared, in practical and emotional terms, to go to prison”.

Plummer was further sentenced to three months in jail for interfering with national infrastructure by taking part in a slow march along Earls Court Road in west London in November 2023. Her codefendants in that case, Chiara Sarti and Daniel Hall, received suspended sentences and community work orders.

Plummer gave a 20-minute address to the judge in mitigation, in which she cited Emmeline Pankhurst, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela as examples of people who had been criminalised while fighting for justice.

“On 14 October 2022 and in November 2023 I made the choices to take actions that I knew would likely lead to my arrest and prosecution,” she said. “I made those choices because I believe that non-violent civil resistance is the best, if not the only, tool that people have in order to bring about the rapid change required to protect life from the accelerating climate emergency and the political decisions being made that pour fuel on the flames and which sentence us all to a catastrophic future.

“Whilst of course there are reasons why my life and the lives of people I love and care for would be easier if I don’t receive prison sentences today I don’t intend to go into detail about these, my choice today is to accept whatever sentences I receive with a smile, knowing that I have found peace in doing what I can to defend countless millions of innocent people suffering and dying.”

She added: “I chose to peacefully disrupt a business-as-usual system that is unjust, dishonest and murderous.”

In passing his sentence, Hehir said he took into account not only the damage actually caused to the frame, but the potential for even greater damage to be caused to the painting had the soup seeped behind the glass that covered it.

Discussing the potential sentence earlier in the hearing, Hehir said: “This seems to me a case where section 63 of the sentencing code is relevant because it requires in assessing the seriousness of the offending to consider not only the harm that was caused but the harm that could have been caused. That harm could have been irreversible damage or even destruction of the painting itself if soup could seep through.”

Hehir noted that gallery staff had immediately taken the painting away to examine it and ensure it had come to no serious harm.

The boss of a Tesla factory has defended the decision to send managers to the homes of workers on long-term sick leave.

In recent weeks, a director of Tesla’s electric car plant in Germany sent managers to check up on about two dozen employees who have continued to be paid while being on sick leave over the past nine months.

André Thierig, the plant’s manufacturing director, said the home visits were common practice in the industry and that the company simply wanted to “appeal to the employees’ work ethic”.

The move by Elon Musk’s US-headquartered carmaker has sparked outrage at the trade union IG Metall, which represents a proportion of the 12,000 workers at the Berlin-Brandenburg gigafactory.

The union has campaigned against what it has alleged are harsh working conditions with “unreasonably” long hours and a poor health and safety record.

“Employees from almost all areas of the factory have reported an extremely high workload,” said Dirk Schulze, a regional director at the union. “When there are staff shortages, the ill workers are put under pressure and those who remain healthy are overburdened with additional work.

“If the factory’s overseers really want to reduce the level of sickness, they should break this vicious circle.”

Sick leave rates at the factory on the outskirts of Berlin, which the union says operates with a “culture of fear”, have commonly hit 15% or higher.

The union has said that there is a “culture of fear” that has caused stress and sick leave among workers.

However, Thierig said some workers were taking advantage of Germany’s labour protection laws.

He said that among the factory’s 1,500 temporary workers, who operate under similar conditions to full-time employees, the average rate of absence through illness is just 2%.

“In our analyses of attendance at work, some phenomena have become obvious: on Fridays and late shifts, about 5% more employees take sick leave than on other weekdays,” Thierig said. “That is not an indicator of bad working conditions because the working conditions are the same on all working days and across all shifts. It suggests that the German social system is being exploited to some extent.”

The company had identified about 200 members of staff who were still being paid but had not turned up for work at all this year. “They submit a new sicknote from the doctor at least every six weeks,” he said.

Last October, Tesla rejected claims made by IG Metall that health and safety provisions at the factory were not adequate.

The factory, which is in Grünheide, south-east of Berlin, was opened in 2022 and is the electric car manufacturer’s first in Europe.

Musk, the Tesla chief executive, cited Brexit uncertainty as a factor in deciding against building a factory in the UK.

Tesla has been contacted for comment.

The Environment Agency has warned drivers their cars can be swept away in just 30cm (12in) of water as more than 60 flood warnings were issued in England after heavy rain overnight, with further downpours to come.

Flooding disrupted rail services in England and Wales on Thursday morning and caused the M5 motorway to be closed in both directions in Gloucestershire.

The Met Office has a yellow warning in force for heavy rain covering the southern half of England and Wales, with the Midlands worst affected. At 8am on Friday, the Environment Agency (EA) issued 66 flood warnings in England and a further 121 flood alerts.

Caroline Douglass, the EA’s executive director for flood and coastal erosion, advised motorists not to drive through submerged patches of road.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she said: “Don’t take a risk and drive through flood water, because it only takes 30cm to float your car … It’s probably about half the height of your tyres.”

Douglass said drivers tended to underestimate the risk: “They think a car is very heavy object and hard to move. But 30cm is not much water. And many of these waterways are much more fast-flowing than people will realise.

“It really doesn’t take much to make a vehicle float, and so in that case, it will be swept away. We really don’t want to see the sorts of tragic circumstances, we’ve seen this year and in previous years.”

She urged people to avoid walking near rivers or watercourses over the weekend, and to keep their pets and children safe.

Douglass said the agency was particularly concerned about flooding in the Midlands. “Over the last week or so, we’ve seen heavy thunderstorms and downpours, which have saturated particular areas. And then, as we move over the weekend and into next week, we’ll see more traditional winter rainfall that is more widespread and, unfortunately, that’s then going to be landing on already saturated ground. The Midlands are [likely] to be the most affected.”

According to the Met Office warning, wet conditions could lead to difficult driving conditions and road closures, homes and businesses are likely to be flooded and there some communities could be cut off by flooding.

Avon fire and rescue service said it was working with National Highways: South-West to rescue people stranded on the M5 in Gloucestershire after heavy rainfall flooded the motorway.

National Highways said the M5 was closed northbound between J16 and J14 and the southbound carriageway was shut between J14 and J15 as emergency services worked to clear the flooding.

Councils and emergency services in Northamptonshire and Hertfordshire confirmed a number of road closures and reassured residents they were working to keep people safe overnight.

Tewkesbury borough council, in Gloucestershire, has been handing out sandbags to residents to help protect their homes against flooding.

National Rail warned passengers that the wet weather could affect train journeys in England and Wales on Friday. There would be no trains to and from Aberystwyth until 1pm, and and the line between Ledbury and Hereford was also blocked on Friday morning.

On Monday, Hurricane John hit the southern Pacific coast of Mexico, having intensified from a tropical storm to a category 3 hurricane in less than 24 hours.

John made landfall with sustained winds of 120mph, causing destructive storm surges. However, it quickly weakened back to a tropical storm, with sustained winds falling to 50mph by Tuesday morning. John moved relatively slowly, leading to more than 400mm of rainfall in a few days. This rain brought widespread flooding, leading to mudslides in which two people are reported to have died.

Having moved slightly east out to sea again, John is expected to restrengthen and return to hurricane status as it continues slowly north-east along the Mexican coast, bringing similarly heavy rainfall. It is expected to dissipate into Saturday, but further rain and heavy showers are expected to feed across southern parts of Mexico over the weekend. This means that some parts of the south-west of the country could receive more than 700mm within a week.

In India, the city of Pune in western Maharashtra state also saw devastating flooding this week. The city recorded its third wettest September day since 1901, as more than 130mm of rain fell in 24 hours. Such totals are not uncommon during the monsoon months of June, July and August, but is unusual in late September.

Monsoon season has appeared to be slower to retreat in recent years, making late September downpours less of a rarity. This week’s high rainfall totals were due to an excess of moisture over the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, combined with a low-pressure system across the region. Further heavy rain is forecast in the coming days.

In Europe, another wave of cold is expected to hit northern and western parts this week, less than two weeks after the last cold snap. As low pressure clears to the east in the coming days, a more northerly airflow will bring Arctic air southwards, reaching as far as Portugal by Friday. Temperatures are widely expected to be 5-10C below average for the time of year across much of northern, western, and parts of central Europe into this weekend. Heading into next week, temperatures will briefly return closer to average, before falling below the seasonal norm again by the middle of the week.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel “will not stop” its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon despite calls from the US, France and other allies for an immediate three-week ceasefire aimed at containing the spread of a conflict that is beginning to engulf Lebanon.

The calls for an immediate ceasefire were backed on Thursday night by Lebanon’s minister for foreign affairs, Abdallah Bouhabib, who told the UN general assembly his country was enduring a crisis that “threatens its very existence”.

Bouhabib welcomed the US/French initiative, saying “Diplomacy is not always easy, but diplomacy is the only way to save innocent lives … Lebanon views the US-French initiative as an opportunity to generate momentum, to take steps towards ending this crisis.”

Bouhabib said peace was incumbent on Israel’s government, and that there can be no lasting peace without a “two-state solution”.

Israeli airstrikes continued in Lebanon on Thursday, killing 92 people including the head of Hezbollah’s drone force, Mohammad Surur, and at least 150 rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel, according to the Israeli military.

The Israeli prime minister told reporters that his government’s policy was clear as he landed in New York, where he is due to address the UN general assembly on Friday.

“We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force, and we will not stop until we reach all our goals – chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes,” Netanyahu said.

His office had earlier distanced the Israeli government from the ceasefire plan, which it described as “an American-French proposal that the prime minister has not even responded to”.

The prime minister’s office said Netanyahu had “directed the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] to continue fighting with full force, according to the plan that was presented to him. The fighting in Gaza will also continue until all the objectives of the war have been achieved.”

Those war goals include the safe return home of more than 60,000 Israelis forced to abandon their homes in northern Israel by Hezbollah bombing, which began on 8 October last year, the day after the start of the Gaza war.

US officials hope to persuade Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire proposal by the time he addresses the UN general assembly on Friday. They argue that a pause in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah could also provide a breathing space in which to revive long-stalled negotiations with Israel and Hamas over the release of Israeli hostages in return for a truce in Gaza.

On Thursday, the White House said the Biden administration had believed that Israel was “on board” with the proposal.

John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesperson, said “we had every reason to believe that in the drafting of it and in the delivery of it, that the Israelis were fully informed and fully aware of every word in it. We wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t believe that it would be received with the seriousness with which it was composed.”

Kirby said it was unclear why Netanyahu appeared to dismiss the idea.

The US, France and some of their allies had on Wednesday called for an urgent cessation of hostilities, which they said presented “an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation”.

“We call for an immediate 21-day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy,” a joint statement said. “We call on all parties, including the governments of Israel and Lebanon, to endorse the temporary ceasefire immediately.”

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday that it would be “a mistake” for Netanyahu to refuse a ceasefire in Lebanon, which he warned could not become “another Gaza”.

Hezbollah has yet to respond to the call for a truce, although it and its backer, Iran, have previously insisted it would halt its strikes only if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, while the Israeli response has been overwhelmingly negative. After Netanyahu’s remarks, the defence minister said he had met the country’s top generals to discuss further military operations on the Israel’s northern front.

“We are continuing our sequence of operations – eliminating Hezbollah terrorists, dismantling Hezbollah’s offensive infrastructure and destroying rockets and missiles,” Yoav Gallant said.

“We have additional missions to complete in order to ensure the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes. We will continue throwing Hezbollah off balance and deepening their loss.”

US officials have urged Israel to accept a ceasefire on the grounds that it could lead to a negotiated withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from the border area, from where they have been firing rockets and missiles at Israel. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has argued that diplomacy is the best way to create conditions to allow residents to return to their homes.

“Getting into a full-scale war is not the way to achieve that objective,” he told the US TV channel MSNBC. “There’s no way in that situation that people are going to be able to go back.”

But western diplomats gathered in New York for the UN general assembly expressed doubt that Netanyahu would agree to such a deal, despite his long history of juggling contrary demands from the US and the extreme right in his cabinet.

Meanwhile, efforts by the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and foreign secretary, David Lammy, to secure a New York meeting with either Netanyahu or his strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, did not bear fruit, possibly reflecting Israel’s unhappiness over the UK’s limited ban on arms exports.

The families of the Gaza hostages have also said they are pushing for any Lebanon ceasefire deal to include clauses on Gaza, focused on securing the release of the roughly 70 hostages thought to still be alive and the bodies of about 30 others.

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Thursday hit a school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians, killing at least 11 people and wounding 22, including women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The Israeli military confirmed it had struck the school, in the Jabalia refugee camp, but claimed the attack had been aimed at Hamas militants hiding there.

Hezbollah has said that it will continue fighting Israel as long as the IDF keeps up its military operations in Gaza, but the ranks of the Iran-backed Shia militia have been shattered over the past nine days by a coordinated attack using booby-trapped communications devices, followed by a withering aerial bombing campaign.

Lebanon’s health ministry said 19 Syrian refugees and a Lebanese citizen had been killed in one strike in north-east Lebanon on Thursday, bringing the death toll from several days of Israeli bombardment to about 700 people, about a quarter of whom the ministry said were women or children.

The UK was one of the allies that backed the US-French call for a 21-day ceasefire. “I urge President Netanyahu and the Lebanese Hezbollah leaders to pay heed to the combined voices at the United Nations to do just that,” the British defence secretary said after a meeting with his US and Australian counterparts in London. John Healey said 700 British troops had been sent to Cyprus to help a potential emergency evacuation of civilians from Lebanon should a full-scale war break out.

The domestic political repercussions of a ceasefire for Netanyahu were made clear when his national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, told the prime minister that his party, Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), would not vote with the coalition if the government agreed a ceasefire with Hezbollah.

“We will not abandon the residents of the north. Every day that this ceasefire is in effect and Israel does not fight in the north, Otzma Yehudit is not committed to the coalition,” Ben-Gvir said at a party meeting.

The leader of the opposition Democrats party, Yair Golan, also argued against committing to a three-week ceasefire, saying Israel should initially agree to a truce of a few days, and see how well it was enforced.

Israel has said it is prepared to launch a ground incursion into Lebanon alongside its aerial bombing, and on Thursday the IDF announced its troops had completed training drills near the northern border, simulating combat in Lebanon.

The IDF called up two reserve brigades at short notice on Wednesday to deploy to the northern border, where they will join Israel’s 98th Paratrooper Division, which was put under the control of the northern command last week. However, Haaretz described this as “a relatively limited reserve call-up”. The Israeli newspaper said that after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, in the run-up to the ground invasion of Gaza, “hundreds of thousands of reservists were called up, as were several divisions”.

Haaretz’s military correspondent, Amos Harel, argued that an Israeli invasion of Lebanon “is still not a done deal”.