At least 56 people have been killed after flash flooding hit a remote, mountainous village in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Estimates suggest at least 80 people are still missing in the devastated Himalayan village of Chasoti, in the Jammu and Kashmir region, according to local officials.

Rescue teams have brought 300 people to safety, they added.

Chasoti, around 85 miles (136km) northeast of Jammu, is the last village accessible to vehicles on the route of an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a mountainous shrine, the Machail Mata temple.

The devastating floods swept away the main community kitchen, where more than 200 pilgrims were gathered, as well as dozens of vehicles and motorbikes, officials said.

Abdul Majeed Bichoo, a local resident from a neighbouring village, said he witnessed the bodies of eight people being pulled out from under the mud.

The 75-year-old said Chasoti had become a “sight of complete devastation from all sides”.

“It was heartbreaking and an unbearable sight,” he continued. “I have not seen this kind of destruction of life and property in my life.”

India’s deputy minister for science and technology, Jitendra Singh, said the floods were triggered by torrential rains.

Sudden, intense downpours over small areas – known as cloudbursts – are increasingly common in India’s Himalayan regions, which are prone to flash floods and landslides.

Last week, floodwater crashed through an entire Himalayan village in India’s Uttarakhand state.

Television footage showed pilgrims in Chasoti crying in fear as water flooded the village.

At least 50 of the rescued people were badly injured and were being treated in local hospitals, local official Susheel Kumar Sharma said.

Officials said the Hindu pilgrimage, which began in July and was scheduled to end on 5 September, has been suspended. More rescue teams were on the way to the area, they added.

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Ramesh Kumar, the divisional commissioner of Kishtwar district, told news agency ANI that local police and disaster response officials had reached the scene.

“Army, air force teams have also been activated. Search and rescue operations are underway,” Mr Kumar said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “the situation is being monitored closely” and offered his prayers to “all those affected by the cloudburst and flooding.”

Cloudbursts can cause intense flooding and landslides, and have increased in recent years, partly due to climate change.

Damage from the storms has also been exacerbated by unplanned development in mountain regions.

Israel’s far-right finance minister has announced plans to build a new settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which he said would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.

Palestinians and rights groups said the settlement would effectively cut the West Bank into two separate parts and rob them of any chance to build a Palestinian state.

This comes as several countries, including the UK, said they would recognise a Palestinian state in September, unless Israel meets several conditions, including agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza.

“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise,” finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said as he announced the construction plans.

“Anyone in the world who tries today to recognise a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground.”

The settlement is planned to be built in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, and includes around 3,500 apartments to expand the existing settlement of Maale Adumim, Mr Smotrich said.

E1 has been eyed for Israeli development for more than two decades, but plans were halted due to pressure from the US during previous administrations.

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Now-US President Donald Trump and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, were praised on Thursday by Mr Smotrich as “true friends of Israel as we have never had before”.

Mr Smotrich, himself a Jewish settler, told Sky News’ international correspondent Diana Magnay that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Trump had agreed to the revival of the E1 scheme. There was no confirmation of this claim from either leader.

The E1 plan has not yet received its final approval, which is expected next week.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said the UK strongly opposes the plan, calling it a “flagrant breach of international law and must be stopped now”.

Construction of homes ‘within a year’

Peace Now, which tracks settlement activity in the West Bank, said some bureaucratic steps remain before construction could begin, including the approval of Israel’s high planning council.

But if the process moves quickly, infrastructure work could start in the next few months, with the construction of homes to follow in about a year.

“The E1 plan is deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution. We are standing at the edge of an abyss, and the government is driving us forward at full speed,” Peace Now said in a statement.

It added that the plan was “guaranteeing many more years of bloodshed”.

Mr Smotrich was also criticised by an Israeli rights group established by former Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers, who accused the far-right politician of encouraging West Bank settlement activity while the world’s attention was on the Gaza war.

As well as official, government-approved settlements, there are also Israeli outposts, which are established without government approval and are considered illegal by Israeli authorities.

But reports suggest the government often turns a blind eye to their creation.

In May, Mr Netanyahu’s government approved 22 new settlements, including the legalisation of outposts that had previously been built without authorisation.

Since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s subsequent military bombardment of Gaza, more than 100 Israeli outposts have been established, according to Peace Now.

Settler violence against Palestinians has also increased, according to the UN, with an average of 118 incidents each month – up from 108 in 2023, which was already a record year.

Smotrich’s dreams of West Bank annexation never been closer to reality

Diana Magnay

International correspondent

@DiMagnaySky

Bezalel Smotrich is pumped. His dreams of resettlement and annexation of the West Bank have never been closer to fruition. 

The E1 settlement plan, which would cut the West Bank from East Jerusalem, was first conceived back in 1995 by then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Thirty years later, the extremist settler contingent within the government seems to be on the verge of making it a reality.

The prime minister’s office has yet to confirm Benjamin Netanyahu’s backing, but according to Smotrich, both he and President Trump are on board.

E1 (or T1 as they say they will call it, in honour of Donald Trump) would be another symbolic blow to the very notion of Palestinian statehood, as is every settlement and piece of related infrastructure which Israel builds in the occupied West Bank.

At a time when the UK, France and others all say they will recognise a Palestinian state unless Israel pushes for a ceasefire in Gaza, Netanyahu’s government is doubling down.

Per Smotrich, their response will come through roads, buildings, neighbourhoods, the spread of Jewish life across Palestinian lands in the West Bank – the creation of facts on the ground. 

The UK, France and many others in the international community may not like it, but the real power-broker here, certainly as far as Netanyahu is concerned, is Donald Trump.

He is the president who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem; his ambassador has said there is no such thing as the West Bank.

For the likes of Smotrich, that is all the encouragement they need.

Plans criticised as ‘extension of genocide’

The Palestinian foreign ministry called the settlement plan an extension of the crimes of genocide, displacement and annexation. Israel has long disputed accusations of genocide and rights abuses, saying it is acting in self-defence.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the Palestinian president’s spokesperson, called on the US to pressure Israel to stop the building of settlements.

Hamas said the plan was part of Israel’s “colonial, extremist” policies and called on Palestinians to confront it.

Qatar, which has been acting as a mediator between Hamas and Israel in a bid to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, said the move was a flagrant violation of international law.

“The EU rejects any territorial change that is not part of a political agreement between involved parties. So annexation of territory is illegal under international law,” European Commission spokesperson Anitta Hipper said.

Today, an estimated 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There is also a growing movement of Israelis wanting to build settlements in Gaza.

Settlers make up around 5% of Israel’s population and 15% of the West Bank’s population, according to data from Peace Now.

Settlements are illegal under international law and have been condemned by the UN. They are, however, authorised by the Israeli government.

According to the Israel Policy Forum, the settlement programme is intended to protect Israel’s security, with settlers acting as the first line of defence “against an invasion”.

Mr Smotrich’s settlement announcement comes after the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand on Mr Smotrich and his fellow far-right cabinet member, Itamar Ben-Gvir, for “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian civilians” in the West Bank.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in June that the ministers had been “encouraging egregious abuses of human rights” for “months”.

Last year, Mr Smotrich, whose National Religious Party largely draws its support from settlers, ordered preparations for the annexation of the West Bank.

His popularity has fallen in recent months, with polls showing that his party would not win a single seat in parliament in elections were held today.

Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been in a high-security prison for more than 1,600 days.

The 77-year-old was arrested over his role in pro-democracy protests in 2019 and has since been charged with various offences, including collusion with foreign forces, as well as sedition under colonial-era laws.

His trial for alleged national security offences has faced lengthy delays, but is due to restart in Hong Kong this month.

Here is everything you need to know about the “world’s most famous prisoner of conscience” and his trial, as it draws ever closer to a long-awaited conclusion.

Who is Jimmy Lai?

Lai was born in mainland China but fled to Hong Kong at the age of 12, after stowing away on a fishing boat. Here, he began working as a child labourer in a garment factory.

He went on to build a fortune with the fashion empire Giordano and, after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when thousands of people protested for political reforms in Beijing, he became a democracy advocate and turned his hand to newspapers.

Ahead of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China, he started the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily in an attempt to maintain freedom of speech.

The paper was staunchly pro-democratic and did not shy away from criticising authorities in Beijing.

Around the same time, in 1994, he became a full British citizen. He has never held a Chinese or Hong Kong passport, but is seen as a Chinese citizen by Hong Kong authorities.

Why is he in jail?

It was his pro-democratic beliefs that led to Lai becoming a key figure in the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, spurred by Beijing’s tightening squeeze on wide-ranging freedoms. Lai’s Apple Daily newspaper backed the protesters, criticising the government reforms.

Lai and his sons were arrested in August 2020 after police raided the offices of the Apple Daily publisher, Next Digital. He was granted bail, but this was overturned in December of the same year, when Lai was charged with fraud.

He was charged under the very national security laws, put in place in 2020, that he had protested.

The charges include collusion with foreign forces, as well as conspiracy to print and distribute seditious publications.

Lai has been in solitary confinement for most of his imprisonment. During this time, he has lost a significant amount of weight and his son, Sebastien Lai, has consistently raised concerns for his father’s declining health.

His legal team has claimed he has been denied independent medical care for diabetes, is only allowed out of his cell for 50 minutes a day and, as a devout Catholic, has been denied the Eucharist.

However, this week the South China Morning Post has reported a Hong Kong government spokesman saying that Lai had received appropriate treatment and welfare in prison.

What has happened during his trial so far?

After years of delay, Lai’s national security trial started in December 2023.

Prosecutors allege that Lai conspired with senior executives at Apple Daily to publish 161 seditious articles intended to incite hatred toward the central or Hong Kong governments.

They labelled him a “radical political figure” and accused him of asking the US and other foreign countries to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and mainland China.

The charges he faces under the territory’s national security law could see him handed a life sentence.

But Lai has always denied the charges against him.

Nearly a year after the trial started, in November 2024, Lai took to the stand to testify. During his 52 days on the stand he faced questions about his editorial control over Apple Daily, links to activists in Hong Kong, the UK, and US – and about alleged meetings with US politicians.

Closing arguments in the trial were due to start on 14 August but has been postponed due to a “black” rainstorm warning – Hong Kong’s highest level of warning – as a typhoon swept the city.

How is the British government involved?

As he is a British citizen, the UK government expressed concern when Lai was first charged under the national security law in 2020.

Subsequent British governments, including the current Labour one, have said Lai’s imprisonment is a breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration – the 1984 agreement which set out the conditions of the transfer of Hong Kong from the UK to China.

Three months after winning the general election, Sir Keir Starmer said securing Lai’s release was a “priority” for his government and said his government would “continue” to raise the case with China.

Most recently, during a January trip to China, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she raised the question over Lai’s imprisonment with every minister she met. Foreign Secretary David Lammy said he has also pressed Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on Lai’s detention during previous visits.

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In March, Lai’s son, Sebastien, delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street asking for a meeting with Sir Keir to get his father released immediately.

He said he was worried his father might die in prison and the case is a “litmus test” for the government to see if it will stand up to China for a British citizen who is in jail “for peaceful campaigning and journalism”.