Some of the world’s most profitable – and most polluting corporations – have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are “probably junk”, suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis.

Delta, Gucci, Volkswagen, ExxonMobil, Disney, easyJet, and Nestlé are among the major corporations to have purchased millions of carbon credits from climate friendly projects that are “likely junk” or worthless when it comes to offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a classification system developed by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog

Some of these companies no longer use CO2 offsets amid mounting evidence that carbon trading do not lead to the claimed emissions cuts – and in some cases may even cause environmental and social harms.

However, the multibillion-dollar voluntary carbon trading industry is still championed by many corporations including oil and gas majors, airlines, automakers, tourism, fast-food and beverage brands, fashion houses, banks, and tech firms as the bedrock of climate action – a way of claiming to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint while continuing to rely on fossil fuels and unsustainable supply chains.

Yet, for 33 of the top 50 corporate buyers, more than a third of their entire offsets portfolio is “likely junk” – suggesting at least some claims about carbon neutrality and emission reductions have been exaggerated according to the analysis. The fundamental failings leading to a “likely junk” ranking include whether emissions cuts would have happened anyway, as is often the case with large hydroelectric dams, or if the emissions were just shifted elsewhere, a common issue in forestry offset projects.

“These findings add to the mounting evidence that peels back the greenwashed facade of the voluntary carbon market and lays bare the ways it dangerously distracts from the real, lasting action the world’s largest corporations and polluters need to be taking,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, Corporate Accountability’s director of research.

The fossil fuel industry is by far the largest investor in the world’s most popular 50 CO2 offsetting schemes. At least 43% of the 81m CO2 credits purchased by the oil and gas majors are for projects that have at least one fundamental flaw and are “probably junk”, according to the analysis.

The transport industry, which accounts for about a fifth of all global planet-warming emissions, has also relied heavily on carbon offsetting projects to meet climate goals. Just over 42% of the total credits (55m) purchased by airlines and 38% purchased by automakers (21m) for the top 50 projects are likely worthless at reducing emissions, the analysis found.

The new analysis, shared with the Guardian, builds on a joint investigation last year into the top 50 CO2 offset projects – those that have sold the most carbon credits in the global market. The vast majority of the most popular 50 offset projects were classified as likely or potentially junk due to one or more fundamental failing that undermines its promised emission cut, according to the criteria and classification system applied to the analyses.

The top 50 projects include forestry schemes, hydroelectric dams, solar and wind farms, waste disposal and greener household appliances schemes across 20 (mostly) developing countries, according to data from AlliedOffsets, the most comprehensive emissions trading database, which tracks projects from inception. They account for almost a third of the entire global voluntary carbon market (VCM), suggesting that junk or overvalued carbon credits that exaggerate emission reduction benefits could be the norm.

The VCM industry works by carbon credits being tradable “allowances” or certificates that allows the purchaser to offset 1 ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent in greenhouse gasses by investing in environmental projects anywhere in the world that claim to reduce carbon emissions.

Climate experts say that the carbon trading market has failed to produce the promised planetary benefits, delayed the transition away from oil, gas and coal, and caused harm to forests and communities in developing countries where most offset projects are located.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration published new guidelines on responsible participation in VCMs which they say will drive credible and ambitious climate action. But critics argue that offsets are fundamentally flawed.

“Overall, carbon offsets are, according to most expert analyses, neither credible nor scalable to the urgency and scale of the carbon dioxide problem,” said Richard Heede, co-director of the Climate Accountability Institute, a nonprofit research and education group.

“This report documents the prevalence of ‘worthless’ or ‘likely junk’ carbon offsets in the global Voluntary Carbon Market, and undermines the corporate rationale for claiming emissions reductions based on such credits,” Heede added.

The new sector-by-sector analysis found:

Fossil fuel firms and airlines

Oil and gas majors are among the largest corporate buyers of likely junk offsets. Almost half (49%) the 3.7m carbon credits purchased by ExxonMobil are for two projects classified as likely junk or worthless. Internal company documents show that scientists at Exxon, which is one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters, were accurately predicting the impact of fossil fuels on the climate in the 1970s.

A spokesperson for ExxonMobile said: “Carbon offsets are a viable way to [reduce emissions and reach net zero], which is why we continue to evaluate them. We’re working to verify the claims cited in this analysis.”

With the exception of fossil fuel firms, Delta has purchased more carbon credits than any other corporation. Just over 35% of the 41m carbon credits purchased by Delta were from 11 offset projects which are likely worthless or junk, according to Corporate Accountability.

In California, a 2023 civil class-action alleged that Delta misrepresented itself as carbon-neutral as the company’s reliance on the carbon trading market renders its climate friendly representations as false and misleading. The judge reduced the scope of the lawsuit last month after Delta rejected the allegations and filed a motion to dismiss. The case continues.

A spokesperson said the company is investing in sustainable aviation fuel, more fuel-efficient aircraft and reducing fuel use through operational efficiencies in a bid to reach “net zero” by 2050. “We have shifted away from carbon neutrality and offsets.”

Meanwhile almost 72% of the 11m carbon credits ever purchased by easyJet, a popular low-cost European airline, were for projects classified as likely junk. In 2022, the airline announced plans to transition away from offsetting in favor of a “roadmap to net zero” emissions by 2050 through more fuel-efficient aircraft and perational efficiencies as well as sustainable aviation fuel and carbon capture and storage – technologies which scientists have warned could exacerbate the climate crisis.

An easyJet spokesperson said: “In the short period we did offset customer emissions, we had robust due diligence processes in place, with all projects recommended by expert partners and all required to meet the highest standards available.”

A 2021 joint investigation by the Guardian revealed that major airlines including Delta and easyJet were using unreliable “phantom” carbon credits to claim their flights were carbon neutral.

Car makers, entertainment giants, luxury goods

Almost half (46%) of the 11m CO2 credits purchased by Volkswagen from the top 50 projects were likely junk, according to the analysis. The German carmaker recently announced a joint venture to develop its own carbon credit projects and said they increasingly rely on on-site inspections, due diligence and audit processes to verify projects. VW aims to reduce its emissions by 90% compared to 2018 by converting its energy supply and increasing energy efficiency among other measures.

In the world of entertainment, almost 62% of the 5.8m carbon credits retired by Disney are from two offset projects which have been classified as likely junk or worthless.

The analysis also found that 75% of the 4.4m carbon credits purchased by the Italian luxury fashion house Gucci have been for projects classified as likely junk. Gucci, which was once a high-profile proponent of offsetting, last year dropped its carbon neutral claim amid growing evidence that the rainforest projects it relied on were likely junk and potentially harmful. Gucci is finalizing new climate commitments with a greater focus on cutting absolute emissions through its supply chain.

The food and drinks industry is a major climate polluter – and investor in carbon markets, with 37% of the industry-wide credits purchased from projects classified as likely junk.

Food and drinks industry

The analysis found that almost 36% of the 2.2m carbon credits purchased by Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, were from five offset projects which have been classified as likely junk. Nestlé said that it stopped purchasing credits from these projects in 2021/2022. “Reaching net zero emissions at Nestlé does not involve using offsetting: we focus on GHG emissions reductions and removals within our value chain to reach our net zero ambition.”

While some corporations have signaled a shift away from carbon offsetting, the VCM is still valued between $2 and $3bn – despite warnings that the industry is a false solution delaying the world’s transition away from oil, gas and coal.

“This research once again shows that big corporate polluters claiming climate credentials are the main buyers of junk credits. But racking up carbon credits doesn’t make you a climate leader. Cutting fossil fuels does. We can’t offset our way to a safe climate future,” said Erika Lennon, senior attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law (Ciel).

“For all the talk about carbon credits accelerating climate action, they are actually greenwashing climate destruction.”

Fire ants have been found on the Sunshine Coast as the super pest continues to spread beyond a containment zone in Queensland’s south-east corner.

It’s the latest in a series of so-called outlier detections of the hyper aggressive invasive species that Australia has been fighting to eradicate for decades.

The latest find was made at a development site at Nirimba on Monday, the National Fire Ant Eradication Program said.

A member of the community reported two nests that have now been destroyed, and broadscale treatment is under way in the surrounding area.

Fire ant campaigners have long warned the Sunshine Coast was at risk due to patchy resourcing to attack the pest.

“This was probably inevitable,” said Reece Pianta, from the Invasive Species Council.

“It’s something we’ve been concerned about for a very long time because there were only resources to treat fire ants in effectively less than half of the outer eradication boundary.”

Earlier this year the ants were also found at Caboolture, between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast.

They have also been found west of the Great Dividing Range and on the islands offshore from Brisbane.

Pianta said the Nirimba find, at a site that had been prepared for development, suggested there might be a link to the movement of organic materials, like soil and turf, that can carry fire ants.

The movement of those materials is restricted but the Invasive Species Council said enforcement was crucial.

Fire ants have also recently been detected in NSW at South Murwillumbah and Wardell, south of Ballina, with those infestations stamped out. Authorities remain on high alert.

Nobody does rock star like Lenny Kravitz. He pads into the recording studio like a tranquillised tiger. It’s dark in here, but he is wearing shades. He’s got on a leather jacket, skinny black jeans, a T-shirt made from metallic shards. His dreadlocks reach way down his back and are as black as his designer stubble. Kravitz, who has spent much of his adult life topless, has a 28in waist and an eight-pack that could double as a xylophone. Last Sunday, he celebrated his 60th birthday and he’s every bit as gorgeous as he was when he made his name in the late 80s; possibly more so. The consensus seems to be that he’s the hottest 60-year-old man on the planet.

I can’t believe you’re 60, I say. “I can barely believe it myself. But it’s beautiful,” he says. Is it in the genes? “It’s a combination of genes, self-care, hard work and discipline.”

Kravitz is instantly recognisable, his songs less so. Take away the few big hits (American Woman, It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s Over, Are You Gonna Go My Way, Fly Away) and many of us would struggle to name a song of his. It’s 26 years since he last had a Top 10 hit in the UK and 24 years in the US. And he’s hardly prolific. Blue Electric Light, released this month, is only his 12th studio album in 35 years. Yet Kravitz remains huge, worth an estimated $90m (£70m). He writes and produces for other musicians (notably Madonna’s Justify My Love, although this takes us back 34 years), acts (The Hunger Games, Precious, The Butler) and works as a successful interior designer.

Blue Electric Light is a classic Kravitz mix of funk, soul, pop and heavy rock. His voice is honeyed, he is a gifted multi-instrumentalist and he has a fine ear for writing songs that sound as if they’ve already been written by someone else. The album is sunny and sexy, at various points echoing Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Prince, Elvis Costello and Miguel.

Then there is the outrageous song TK421. Named after the Star Wars character, it also seems to be a euphemism for Kravitz’s you-know-what. (“Come on, baby, get on the one / Can you feel it, oh, my TK421!”) The accompanying video is every bit as raunchy as the lyrics. It’s his first nude scene and he pulls it off with aplomb.

Kravitz, who lives in France, the Bahamas and Brazil, grew up in New York. His mother was the actor Roxie Roker, who starred in the sitcom The Jeffersons; his father, Sy Kravitz, was an NBC television news producer. Roxie was black with Bahamian ancestry, while Sy was white and Jewish.

By the time he was in his teens, his mother was a household name – and wealthy with it. But she was adamant she wouldn’t spoil Kravitz, who showed promise in music – choral, classical and pop. Despite that, he ended up at the brattish Beverly Hills High in Los Angeles, which inspired the TV series Beverly Hills 90210. “On their 16th birthday, you’d see the kids driving in their BMWs. The teachers’ parking lot was full of Chevys and Fords and the student parking lots were Porsches and Ferraris. It was pretty funny,” he says.

Did you have a car? “Hell no!” So how did you get to school? “Bus or a carpool with friends.” But your parents could have afforded to buy you one? “Of course. My mother was on a No 1 TV show for 11 fucking years. But that would not be raising her boy to become a man. We had no maid – on Saturday morning, she’s scrubbing toilets. She was the most amazing human being.”

His relationship with his father was fraught. When Kravitz was 15, he was desperate to go to a jazz concert, to see the drummer Buddy Rich. Although his father had introduced him to jazz, he told his son he’d been out enough that week and couldn’t go. Kravitz said he was going – and that he was also leaving home.

Today, he says he must have put his mother through so much pain. There was no internet, no mobile phones. If he didn’t have change or there was no working phone box, he couldn’t get in touch with her. And often he didn’t. He was homeless; sometimes living in a car, sometimes depending on the kindness of strangers. “It’s a miracle I survived, that I wasn’t abused,” he says.

Hold on, I say – I thought you said in your memoir that you were abused by a woman in her 20s when you were 13? Ah, he says, that was different. “Yes, she did do that, but that wasn’t …” He comes to a stop. “In today’s world, yes, that was abuse and assault. It was this chick who saw this young teenager and thought I was cute and I’m going to give him some. Any young boy would have taken that opportunity and enjoyed the hell out of it.”

Did you have sex with her? “No. She began and I stopped her.” Why? “I had a girlfriend.” What did she think when you stopped her? “She thought it was comical – ‘You have a girlfriend?!’” Were you a virgin? He nods. I ask if he’s talked about it to his daughter, the actor Zoë Kravitz, and whether she regards it as abuse. He doesn’t answer directly. “I mean, she stopped, and I can’t speak for everyone, but that would have been a fantasy for so many kids. But, for me, it’s not what I wanted.”

Kravitz initially struggled to secure a record deal. He was told he was too black to play rock’n’roll, despite the fact that Little Richard and Chuck Berry had helped invent it 40 years earlier. He straightened his hair, wore blue contact lenses and became Romeo Blue. Where did that come from? “I had a lot of girlfriends, so they nicknamed me Romeo.” Blue was a tribute to the guitarist Adrian Belew.

He was Romeo Blue in 1985 when he met the Cosby Show actor Lisa Bonet, four years his junior. When she turned 20, they eloped. A year later, they had Zoë and the dynasty was extended (Zoë is a star in her own right). Bonet and Kravitz split up when Zoë was four and are often cited as role models for bringing up a child harmoniously post-divorce.

In his memoir, he writes of the time he overheard his father on the phone talking to a woman and realised he was having an affair – one of many. Kravitz was devastated and told him so. His father replied that he’d end up doing the same thing – as though it was some kind of curse.

Was his father right? “He became right,” he says. “After the marriage, I became more like him. I was becoming a player.” How did you feel about it? “I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be that guy. So I had to tackle that and it took years.” How did you tackle it? “By taking responsibility. Discipline. Not letting my own desires take over.”

Kravitz tells me he’s not been in a serious relationship for nine years. Were you serious when you said a while ago that you wanted to be celibate until you found the right woman? “Yes. It’s a spiritual thing.” He says he’d love to be in a relationship now, but he thinks he might struggle. “I have become very set in my ways, in the way I live.”

By 1989, Kravitz had embraced his real name and released his first album. What was wrong with it in the first place? He looks embarrassed. “I thought ‘Lenny Kravitz’ sounded ridiculous. I’ve got nothing against my Jewish heritage, but it sounded like a Jewish lawyer or a doctor. I didn’t think it was very rock’n’roll. How wrong I was.”

It didn’t take long for him to come to his senses. “I cut the processed hair, grew dreadlocks and became myself. It was a wonderful exercise in finding my way home.”

Did you not realise you were gorgeous back then? “Not. At. All. I never thought that and still don’t think that.” Really? “I’m telling you the truth. I have grown to accept myself and be comfortable with myself, but I have never been one to look in a mirror and go: ‘Ooh yeah, look at that! You’re so beautiful.’ And especially not back then, as a teen. Absolutely not.”

The video for TK421, which features plenty of mirrors, would suggest otherwise. “I can’t take credit for that,” he says. “I hired this young Ukrainian woman director, Tanu. She had this idea: we’re going to come to your house, you’re going to wake up and open the curtains, get ready for your day … I thought that sounds like the most boring thing ever. Then, when she gets there, she says: ‘So you sleep in the nude, yeah?”

Kravitz says it could have backfired, but tells me why it worked. “We’re having fun, I’m singing into a toothbrush, dancing around the bathroom. It wasn’t the energy of: ‘Ooh, let’s be sexy.’”

I hate to disappoint you, I say, but it is a sexy video. Someone has written a comment below it: “OMG, 60 is the new 30, Lenny just proved it.” He nods. “OK. Well, that’s OK. I’m not going to say there were no sexy elements.”

And another comment: “Great! Now I’m pregnant!”

“Oh God! It was fun and it was cool and it was sexy,” he concedes.

A big spliff features prominently in the video, too. I’d heard that he used to be a heavy smoker. Is it true that he hired somebody to roll his joints? “Erm, yes. A junior high school friend. He had other jobs, too, but one of them was to roll joints.” What other jobs? “Just assisting me. I wanted my buddy with me.” Were you rubbish at rolling or too busy? “No, I was actually very good at it. But if I’m in the studio, playing all the instruments, running around …” Were you a mega spliffhead? “Oh yeah!” I ask if he could compete with George Michael, who told me he smoked about 25 spliffs a day. “Erm, I’d say even more. I was Bob Marley level.” Did it worry you? “No. I’d been smoking weed since I was 11. I stopped years ago. Maybe I’ll have a hit every now and then – as you saw in the video – but I’m talking about every now and again.”

He swapped grass for the gym and took his new hobby every bit as seriously. Could all 60-year-olds look like you? What about somebody like me, who’s got a zero-pack? He looks me up and down. “Right …” he says in a way that doesn’t inspire confidence. “Well, there’s a lot of hard work and discipline in being healthy for me. That means when I want to eat junk, I don’t do it.”

How do you resist? “Take last night. I worked all day, interviews, rehearsing into the night, get home at 11pm. I need to eat something. Now it’s 1am. I didn’t get my workout. So I went to the gym and I did a 90-minute workout at 2am. I don’t want to be in the gym at 2am, but I know that I must.” Why? “Because it’s part of my discipline – it’s about body, mind and spirit. I want all of those three elements aligned. If my body’s in shape and my spirit and mind are not, then it’s just something nice to look at or to boast about. Who cares? For me, all of it has to be aligned. And I have to do the work it takes to have all of those in alignment so my being can be at its maximum.”

The thing is, I explain to Kravitz, I love eating KitKats, about four of them, followed by a bag of crisps with salted peanuts poured into it. He laughs, sympathetically. “I love a KitKat, especially when it’s been kept in the refrigerator.”

I’m a year older than Kravitz. Does he think there’s hope for me? He gives me another once-over. Now I’m convinced all he can see is a human KitKat. “Absolutely. Ab-so-lute-ly. But it takes discipline. You have to change your thinking and do the work. I do it completely naturally. I’m on no hormones, no testosterone. I do this 100% by food and action.”

Have you ever been a slob? “A slob?” he repeats, as if it’s a foreign language. You know, a little bit lazy? “There are a couple of times I stayed in Paris for six months in between tours and I got a little poochy. I drank wine, I ate croissants. I just enjoyed myself and then I was like: oh shit! But that’s only happened once or twice.”

Today, Kravitz is almost as famous for an incident that happened nine years ago as he is for his music. He was rocking so hard on stage that his leather trousers split open at the crotch. He wasn’t wearing underpants. Do you think that boosted your career? “Nooooooah. Absolutely not.” Were you embarrassed? “You just have to go with it. What can you do?” Did you consider wearing underpants after that? “No, I just made sure the pants I had were working.”

Photos recently emerged of Kravitz working out in the gym in leather trousers. Was that for real? “Yep. If I’m coming from somewhere and my trainer says we can get it in now, then I’ll come as I am. A lot of the time I’m in street clothes, which people think is funny.” Kravitz doesn’t. It’s just what you do when you’re dedicated to getting body, spirit and mind in alignment.

My time is up. Kravitz stands up and his mobile rings. It’s on speakerphone. “Hey, what’s up, Rock Star?” says a voice at the other end.

Kravitz is chatting enthusiastically in a side room as I leave. I put my head in the door to say goodbye. He waves. I ask who calls him Rock Star. He grins. “It’s my cousin. He’s being facetious.”

Israel is in effective control of Gaza’s entire land border after taking control of a buffer zone along the border with Egypt, Israel’s military has said, a move that risks complicating its relationship with Egypt.

In a televised briefing on Wednesday, chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces had gained “operational” control over the Philadelphi Corridor, using the Israeli military’s code name for the 14km-long corridor along the Gaza Strip’s only border with Egypt.

Hagari did not spell out what “operational” control referred to, but an Israeli military official earlier said there were Israeli “boots on the ground” along parts of the corridor. The border with Egypt along the southern edge was Gaza’s only land border that Israel had not controlled directly.

“The Philadelphi Corridor served as an oxygen line for Hamas, which it regularly used to smuggle weapons into the area of the Gaza Strip,” Hagari said, claiming that troops had “discovered around 20 tunnels” in the area.

Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported a “high-level Egyptian source” as saying that Israel was using claims of tunnels under Egypt’s border with Gaza as cover for its Rafah offensive.

“There is no truth to Israeli media reports of the existence of tunnels on the Egyptian border with Gaza,” the source told Al-Qahera, which is linked to state intelligence. “Israel is using these allegations to justify continuing the operation on the Palestinian city of Rafah and prolonging the war for political purposes.”

Egypt has previously said it has destroyed hundreds of cross-border tunnels with Gaza since 2013.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said seizure of the Philadelphi Corridor would be consistent with the “limited” ground operation Israeli officials briefed President Joe Biden’s team on for the city of Rafah.

“When they briefed us on their plans for Rafah it did include moving along that corridor and out of the city proper to put pressure on Hamas in the city,” Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

The Philadelphi corridor is part of a larger demilitarised zone along both sides of the entire Israel-Egypt border. Under a peace accord, each is allowed to deploy only a tiny number of troops or border guards in the zone. At the time of the accord, Israeli troops controlled Gaza.

Earlier this month, Israel and Egypt became embroiled in a diplomatic row after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seized control of the Rafah crossing. The capture of the corridor signals that Israel has deepened its offensive in southern Gaza and further threatens relations with Egypt.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, Israel sent tanks on raids into Rafah, after moving into the heart of the city for the first time on Tuesday despite an order from the top United Nations court to immediately halt the assault on the city.

As Israel expanded its offensive in Rafah, a top Israeli official said that Israel’s war with Hamas is likely to last through to the end of the year.

National security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told Kan public radio he was “expecting another seven months of fighting” to destroy the military and governing capabilities of Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group.

“The army is achieving its objectives but [it] said from the first days it was presenting its plan to the cabinet that the war will be long,” he said. “They have designated 2024 as a year of war.”

Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report

It took nearly half an hour for the first ambulances and firefighters to reach the stretch of blazing tents in the Kuwait peace camp in Rafah on Sunday night. The crowding and rubble that slowed the passage of emergency vehicles fuelled the spread of flames through the temporary homes of the displaced.

Zuhair, a 36-year-old lawyer, had been sitting on a road near his own tent, watching the news with friends as the last glimmers of twilight faded from the sky, when an explosion shook the area at about 8.45pm.

He raced towards the sound, terrified for his wife, children and friends. A vision of hell lay ahead, so gruesome he started shaking from shock. “I saw bodies everywhere. Children burning. I saw heads without bodies, the injured running around in pain, some alive but trapped inside burning tents.”

There had been no warning, and for many long minutes, there was no help.

He said people tried at first to drag the injured from tents with their bare hands, loading them on to donkey carts or cramming them into ordinary cars to seek help.

Sharif Warsh Agha, a driver, was among the crowds trying to help. He too shook as he stepped around bodies burned and mutilated by the initial explosion, and the fires that followed, trying to help the people he could.

“I heard a woman screaming for help for her sister. When I went into the tent, I found her seriously injured in the foot and her mother lying dead next to her,” he said. He did basic first aid, got her to the car, then someone called to say his young nephew – who has special needs – had lost his feet.

“I turned the car around to get my injured nephew but when we started moving someone was brought to me with an open chest wound. We put him in too,” he said.

Eventually nine people were loaded into the small car, which would normally take two people to hospital, with some in the boot.

He had been with his family in their tent, resting after the Maghrib twilight prayer, when a red flash and an explosion ripped the night apart. Black smoke and a deadly hail of shrapnel followed, then the sound of screaming.

He raced out to help the injured, not realising that his sister-in-law had been killed and nephew injured in their tent, which was just 70 metres from where the missiles hit. A sliver of shrapnel pierced her lungs and heart, killing her instantly. “She never did anyone harm,” he said.

Busy with his nephew, he didn’t count the dead, but believes he saw nearly 20 bodies, many of them women and children. “The Israeli army claims they were targeting militants, but it is not an excuse to strike an area full of tents and the displaced.”

The target was at the edge of rows of tents, set up by Kuwait earlier this year to shelter displaced people. The camp was outside a “humanitarian zone” along the coast that Israel had announced in early May, as it launched the operation into Rafah.

But it was not in an area of Rafah covered by specific evacuation orders that the Israeli military issued through social media, phone calls and leaflets as troops moved in, so the people living there thought it was safe.

Agha said: “The missile hit near a medical point surrounded by a lot of tents, in an area with more than 4,000 people.” It seemed unusual because there were no large impact craters on the ground and it sparked the large fire, he added.

The attacks were likely caused by US-manufactured GBU-39 missiles, which carry an explosive payload of 17kg, CNN and the New York Times found in investigations that looked at missile remnants photographed on site. This matched Israeli military claims about the amount of explosives that had been used. Overall the GBU bombs weigh 110kg, including the metal casing that can turn in part to shrapnel. They can penetrate 3 metres of concrete.

The Israeli military spokesperson, Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, said the strike narrowly targeted senior Hamas commanders and said the fire might have been caused by a secondary explosion. He suggested there may have been Hamas weapons stored in the area and said the military is investigating without providing further evidence.

Refugee camps are full of flammable objects that could explode and cause a fire, including cooking gas cylinders.

A large number of Sunday’s victims were originally from Beit Lahia, because many communities stayed together as they fled across Gaza. They included Zuhair’s close friend Ahmed Zayed, who left behind one cherished young child, born after a 10-year struggle with infertility.

He wants his cheerful, ambitious friend to be remembered. “I love mentioning his name so we can assure the world that our dead were not just numbers. They had lives and goals.”

Intense bombardment continued through the night, even after the flames died down, and so the next morning they packed and left again. “I remembered the first exodus from my city [in the north],” he said.

A million people have already left Rafah, and many more are likely to take to the road again in coming weeks as Israeli troops press forward.

Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said on Wednesday that fighting would last at least through the rest of 2024, signalling the country would defy fierce international criticism to continue with its operation.

“The fighting in Rafah is not a pointless war,” he said, adding that it aimed to dismantle Hamas to prevent future attacks on Israel.

Palestinians who survived attacks on Rafah this weekend, after months of flight and hunger, disagree. “They robbed us of everything. What do they want from us any more?” said Fida Al-Din Abu Jarad, a 40-year-old barber who was sheltering with his wife and children just a few hundred metres from the site of Sunday’s blaze.

On Monday evening they had been kept awake by hunger, so he heard the explosion of a missile landing nearby around 3am, and then watched shrapnel from the blast tear his family apart. In a few seconds, he saw his 18-year-old daughter, Nouira, collapse dead into her mother’s lap and heard his son scream with pain after shrapnel severed his foot.

“I felt that time had stopped,” he said, but the family’s ledger of pain was not complete. The bomb had landed even closer to the nearby tent housing his father and siblings and their families.

“Fear, pain and loss – these words can’t describe my feelings,” he said. “I tried to control my nerves and control my feelings, and I came out to see what happened.”

At his father’s tent, he saw one brother, Abu Ismail, collapsed on the floor beside his wife, who cried out “your brother is dead” as Abu Jarad arrived. Another brother, Emad, had been killed with his wife, Anwar. Their bodies were so badly damaged by the blast that he couldn’t tell one from the other.

One Tuesday he moved what is left of the family to Khan Younis, but is still in shock. Abu Jarad said: “So far I have not been able to comprehend what happened to me. When I took down the tent, I thought of the start of the operation in Rafah. At the time I suggested to my brothers that we move, but they rejected the idea and asked me what I was afraid of.

“I told them I am not afraid for myself, but I am afraid of losing someone from my family. And now it has happened, I have lost them.”

Detectives from France’s cold case unit have ordered DNA analysis of evidence in the unsolved killing of a British family and a French cyclist in a remote Alpine village 12 years ago.

Clothes belonging to one of the victims, cigarette butts found at the scene and pieces of the gun used in the killings are to be tested in the hopes of solving the mystery of the murders, described by the local prosecutor as “an act of gross savagery”.

The bodies of four people – Saad al-Hilli, 50, a British-Iraqi engineer; his wife, Iqbal, 47; her mother, Suhaila al-Allaf, 74; and a French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, 45 – were found in an isolated layby at Chevaline near Annecy in September 2012. Each had several gunshot wounds to the head.

The al-Hillis’ two daughters, then aged four and seven, both survived the attack. The younger child hid under the legs of her dead mother in the rear footwell of the car for eight hours before she was discovered by the gendarmes examining the scene. Her sister was shot and suffered a shoulder and head wound.

The family was visiting the region in a British-registered BMW estate car whose engine was still running when the bodies were found. Examination of the vehicle suggested al-Hilli, who was driving, had attempted to reverse away. Mollier, a local man and father of three who was cycling in the area at the time, was shot five times. Detectives believed he was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

Pieces from the butt of the weapon used in the killings, a vintage Luger P06-29 pistol, were found on the ground near the vehicle. The weapon was identified as a model used by the Swiss army in the 1930s, but its owner has never been traced. Detectives ruled out the possibility of a contract killing, saying a professional killer would not have used such a vintage weapon.

Police examined a number of leads, including interviewing members of the al-Hilli family in the UK, but the crime has never been solved.

On Wednesday, the French radio station RTL reported that prosecutors at the national cold case unit headquarters in the Paris suburb of Nanterre had been working on the case since September 2022 and ordered “new technical assessments” earlier this year.

This included DNA tests on the gun fragments, two cigarette butts found near the layby, Mollier’s clothing, including his cycle helmet and shoes, and clothing worn by one of al-Hilli’s daughters.

A person has died after falling into the spinning turbine blades of a departing passenger jet at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.

The death occurred on the apron outside the busy hub’s terminal as a KLM flight was preparing to depart for Billund in Denmark.

“A fatal incident took place at Schiphol today during which a person ended up in a running aircraft engine,” the Dutch flag carrier, KLM, said in a statement. “Sadly the person has died.” The victim has not yet been named.

Dutch border police, who are responsible for security at the Netherlands’ largest airport, said passengers had been removed from the plane and an investigation opened.

The aircraft involved is a short-haul Embraer jet used by KLM’s Cityhopper service, which operates flights to nearby destinations such as London, Dutch news reports said.

A picture posted by the Dutch public broadcaster, NOS, showed the plane surrounded by fire trucks and ambulances next to the departure terminals.

Safety and security measures are strict at Schiphol and accidents are rare at the airport, which handled about 5.5 million passengers last month alone, according to airport figures.

Rachel Keenan’s account of the rapid and ongoing destruction of her home town of Inverbervie, Aberdeenshire, is stark, but sadly she is not alone (‘The fear has properly set in’: how it feels to watch my home town disappear into the sea, 21 May).

Here in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the tidal surge resulting from December 2013’s Storm Xaver left 158 homes and 233 commercial properties flooded, with many people made homeless. In response, improved floodwalls were completed in 2023, but in January 2024 the plug was pulled on the construction of a tidal barrier due to the emergence of a £124m funding gap. Instead of a flood defence system, Lowestoft has therefore been left with what worryingly looks a lot like a funnel.

Coastal communities have always been exposed to the forces of nature. However, more recently climate change has intensified risks along the UK’s North Sea coast, leaving low-lying communities and infrastructure with inadequate and outdated sea defences more vulnerable than ever.

We in the Use Your Voice Lowestoft group are convinced that the metric the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) uses to make its capital investment decisions perversely disadvantages smaller communities and ignores the economic benefits of improved flood protection. The metric should be reviewed and changed. Some 500 protection schemes have fallen foul of the metric. But only one of those has been revealed by Defra: Lowestoft.

It is true that government funds are available for flooding and coastal erosion projects. For example, on the north Norfolk coast, the villages of Bacton and Walcott, due to their proximity to the Bacton gas terminal, benefited from a sandscaping scheme, with £5m from central government. Elsewhere, many places such as Inverbervie, and Hemsby and Happisburgh in Norfolk, have been left to fend for themselves.

We who live in coastal areas need to promote a united front and demand that governments north and south of the border take action to protect our precious east coast.
Kate Stott
Use Your Voice Lowestoft, Suffolk

By increasing its use of renewable energy, the US has not only slashed its planet-warming emissions but also improved its air quality, yielding hundreds of billions of dollars of benefits, a new report has found.

The study, published in Cell Reports Sustainability on Wednesday and based on publicly available data, focuses on uptick of renewable energy in the US from 2019 to 2022.

“From 2019 through 2022, wind and solar generation increased by about 55%,” said Dev Millenstein, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “By 2022, wind and solar provided roughly 14% of total electricity needs for the US.”

During that time period, by reducing the use of fossil fuel power plants, the nation’s use of wind and solar power cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 900m metric tons, the authors found. That’s the equivalent of taking 71m cars off the road every year.

Those major climate benefits can obscure the air quality benefits renewable power yielded, wrote the authors, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and renewable consulting firm Clean Kilowatts. To illuminate those co-benefits, the researchers quantified how much the use of wind and solar reduced toxic air emissions, focusing specifically on sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxides (NOx), which are both produced during fossil fuel combustion.

They found emissions of SO2 and NOx – both linked to increased asthma risk and a variety of other health issues – decreased by a total of 1m metric tons over that three-year period.

To determine the impact of that reduction on public health, the authors “used air quality models to track the population exposed to pollution from power plants”, Millstein said. They also employed epidemiological research to examine the effects of those emissions, and quantified the benefits by using an Environmental Protection Agency dollar value establishing the value of reducing the risk of early death across the population, he said.

All told, the emission reductions from SO2 and NOx provided $249bn of climate and health benefits to the US, the authors found – a figure Millstein said he found was “noteworthy”.

The study went on to examine the benefits wind and solar offer to particular regions of the United States. Wind power, for instance, is particularly beneficial to the across the Central states due to the displaced emissions on the local power grids; the same is true of solar power in the Carolinas. It’s an aspect of the research that Jeremiah Johnson, a climate and energy professor at North Carolina State University, who did not work on the study, applauded.

“These findings can help us target future wind and solar development to provide the greatest climate and health benefits,” said Johnson, whose work is cited in the study.

He said he hopes the paper helps the public focus on the benefits wind and solar are already creating.

The public “is often focused on the challenges we face” when it comes to ecological damage, he said. “But it is also important to recognize when something is working.”