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Fifty-three Britons were onboard, along with 169 Indians, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian

Tributes are being made to the passengers who died on the Air India flight bound for London Gatwick airport that crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad in western India.

There were 242 passengers and crew onboard the plane, including 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian.

One passenger, the 40-year-old British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh,survived the crashand was treated in hospital for injuries.

Here are some of those reported to have died:

Ajay Kumar Ramesh was sitting alongside his brother, Vishwash, on the opposite side of the aisle. The brothers had been travelling home after visiting family in India.

Joshi, who worked at the Royal Derby hospital, is believed to have been travelling back from India, where his wife and children were based.

The Derby Hindu Temple paid tribute to the family on its Facebook page, saying: “Dr Joshi [and his family] were devotees of our Mandir and supported us through their sincere service and dedication.”

Neil Ryan, who lived next door to them for two years, also described them as “the nicest family”.

Akeel Nanabawa, 36, lived in Gloucester.

The businessman built up a recruitment company, Rec2go, before establishing Iceberg Recruitment Services. The company’s head office is in Gloucester but it also has a branch in Ahmedabad, its website states.

His business partner, Shoyeb Khan Nagori, told MailOnline: “I had dinner with them last night. They were a lovely family and Akeel and his wife were extremely successful people.”

Vorajee, 30, a trained midwife, was the head of finance at Rec2go.

In a statement paying tribute to the family, their imam, Abdullah Samad, said: “Together, [Nanabawa and Vorajee] were committed advocates for humanitarian causes – particularly the suffering of innocent Palestinians and the urgent need for accessible medical care in parts of India.

“They were widely loved and deeply respected. His quiet generosity, her warmth and kindness and their daughter’s bright, joyful spirit made a lasting impact on everyone who knew them.”

Their neighbour Safeer Shah, 47, said the family had been on holiday in Malaysia and Indonesia before heading to the Gujarat state of India to surprise Nanabawa’s father for Eid al-Adha festivities.

The family had moved from Newport, south Wales, about 10 years ago. Nanabawa travelled to India regularly for business, he added.

Nanabawa had three brothers who lived in the Tredworth area of Gloucestershire, as well as his mother, Shah said. “They had plans for the future,” he said.

Next-door neighbours Henry and Ros Rickards, who have lived in the street for about 30 years, said the family were the best neighbours. “Sara was the loveliest girl; she loved our dog,” said Ros. “The dog never barked at her – she was so lovely. She was a gorgeous little girl.”

Fiongal, 39, and Jamie Greenlaw-Meek, 45, ran the Wellness Foundry in south London and Ramsgate, Kent, a business offering psychic readings, tarot, reiki and yoga, and had partnered with major brands such as Netflix, Google and Dior.

The couple married in 2022, with Jamie praising his “wonderful husband” in a Facebook post, and thanking him for “keeping me calm in times of stress (sunshine after the rain)”. He added that his heart was “so full of love and gratitude”.

A former fashion designer, Fiongal founded the Wellness Foundry in late 2018 after experiencing a spiritual awakening following a mysterious illness, according to its website.

His husband, a former professional dancer, joined the team in March 2023 as co-director and head of events. He also offered psychic readings and life coaching. Both were alumni of the College of Psychic Studies.

The couple were returning home after a 10-day wellness retreat. The couple captured the happy time they had in India in a series of social media posts, including getting henna tattoos, shopping for fine fabrics and other gifts and driving through chaotic traffic in a tuk-tuk.

They arrived in Ahmedabad just a day before flying back. Fiongal had posted in a video: “So, it’s our last night in India and we’ve had a magical experience. Some mind-blowing things have happened. We are going to put all this together and create a vlog. It’s my first ever vlog about the whole trip and we want to share it.”

In the airport before takeoff, the pair filmed a video of themselves joking before the 10-hour flight back to London. Fiongal said the pair were “going back happily, happily, happily calm”.

Adam Taju, 72, and his 70-year-old wife, Hasina, were flying with their son-in-law, Altafhusen Patel, 51, who lives in London with his wife.

The couple’s granddaughter, Ammaarah Taju, spoke of her shock and disbelief at her parents’ home in Blackburn. She said her father, Altaf Taju, had driven to London to be with his sister as they received updates about the crash from Air India and government officials.

Javed Ali Syed, a hotel manager at the Best Western Kensington Olympia hotel in London, and his wife, Mariam, were travelling with their children, Zayn, five, and Amani, four. Syed was an award-winning hotelier and had previously worked for the Comfort InnLondon. Mariam worked at Harrods.

Friends of the couple, who lived in the the Belgrave area of Leicester, told Leicestershire Live of their shock at losing two people they described as “lovely”.

Margi, 30, a close friend, said: “It’s devastating. They were very good people. I can’t believe it’s happened.”

Margi said she knew Avaiya, 27, and Patel, 28, through her husband, who had been travelling to Gatwick airport to collect the couple when he learned of the crash. She said: “My husband was on his way to pick them up yesterday from Gatwick but halfway he got the news.”

Avaiya worked with Margi’s husband, where they had built a close friendship over several years, she said. “The couple were also active members of their local temple community, where they were known for their kindness and generosity,” she added. Avaiya also volunteered at the temple.

Raxa Modha, 55, from Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, and her two-year-old grandson, Rudra, were believed to have been flying back to England for a cremation and memorial service for Modha’s late husband.

Modha had been in India for some time, fulfilling the dying wish of her husband, Kishor, who had wanted to live out his last days in his homeland. He died there in April. They were returning to the UK to organise a prayer meeting later this month at the Highfield community centre in Wellingborough.

The couple, who ran an Indian food catering firm called Pooja Caterers, had three children and one grandchild. It thought that Kishan, Modha’s son, was taking another flight home.

Speaking to MailOnline, a family friend said: “It’s incredibly sad, the whole family is already grieving Kishor’s death.”

Jaya Tailor, who lives in Wellingborough, said she knew Modha personally and that she was “a real people’s person”.

“She helped her husband build a business,” she said. “She loved having people around her. She was kind, generous [and] loving.”

The sisters, in their 20s, were on their way back to London after having made a surprise trip to visit their grandmother for her birthday.

Dhir was doing a degree in fashion design while Heer worked as a product manager in the investment and renewable energy sector.

The Baxis’ elder brother, Ishan, told the Telegraph: “I can’t express what my complete family is going through – shell-shocked … is what I can say right now.

“Both had a natural aura of helping and always cared about family values. They both had aspirations to be successful enough to roam around the world, tension-free. Along with their parents, they both had a proclivity towards modernisation without changing traditional values.

“Both my sisters know what is right and what is wrong, thus whatever work they carried out, in academics or fashion, they always got success with no conflicts amongst peers or seniors.”

Renjitha Gopakumaran Nair was returning to the UK after a holiday to see family in her home country. The nurse and mother had just left her job at Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and is thought to have been in the UK for a year.

Her former colleagues at the NHS hospital said she was a “beautiful lady” who showed her patients and co-workers “so much love and care”.

Gopakumaran, said to be in her 40s, “had the biggest heart and brightest smile”, one former colleague said.

Arjunbhai Patoliya, 37, had travelled to India from London to scatter the ashes of his late wife, Bharatiben Patel, in a river in the village that they both grew up in. She had died just three weeks earlier from cancer.

The pair are survived by their two daughters,eight and four years old. The children had been left with Patel’s sister while their father flew to Vadiya in Gujarat. A close friend and neighbour of Patoliya told the Telegraph: “He is just like my son. He was a nice person, a very nice person. It’s an accident. I don’t know what to say, I’m speechless – such a lovely neighbour. He was such a lovely character, he looked after me as well from time to time.”

Patoliya was a furniture designer and was described by the neighbour as being a “family” person who was very active in the community.

Sayedmiya Inayatali, 48, had flown over to India to visit his 90-year-old mother with his wife, Nafisabanu, 46, and their children.

Shahid Vhora, 52, a relative, had texted the family before the flight to let them know he would pick them up at Gatwick when they arrived.

He told Metro: “I can’t believe this has happened. I was preparing to pick them up. They had been visiting Sayedmiya’s mother.

“They took a picture as they were about to board. They were so happy to be coming home … When I received the news of the crash I was devastated. We are a very close family, we all live together. My life has been torn apart.”

Sayedmiya was an IT programmer who lived in Wembley with his family. Vhora described the family as “perfect” and very hardworking, adding that Taskin was studying to be a doctor and Waqueeali had been working in IT like his father.

He said: “Sayedmiya and myself did everything together. We have had so many happy times. Now I have to go to India to try to sort things out.”

Adnan Master, 30, was visiting relatives in India with his wife and child. It is understood he was travelling back to London by himself; his family live in Forest Hill.

A friend of Master told the Telegraph that he was “probably one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet”. They added that he had two jobs, both as a delivery driver and working in a DIY shop in east London.

They said: “He was just one of the hardest-working people you’d ever meet. He just didn’t stop, and everything he did was for his family. Everything he spoke about was for his family: ‘I want to make my child have a good life.’”

Israel says Iran has fired up to 100 missiles in retaliation for surprise assault while fresh explosions reported at airport in Tehran

Middle East crisis – live updates

Iranian missiles have rained down on Tel Aviv in retaliation for Friday morning’s surprise aerial assault byIsrael, as Tehran vowed to open the “gates of hell”, while fresh explosions were heard in the Iranian capital early on Saturday.

Benjamin Netanyahu threatened that “more is on the way” and said Israel’s attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme was just beginning.

Iran and Israel began reporting a new wave of Iranian missile attacks that continued into early Saturday, with explosions heard over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In northern Tehran, residents reported fresh explosions as Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, said Israel had launched further strikes.

The Fars news agency said two projectiles had hit Tehran’s Mehrabad airport, and Iranian media said flames were reported there. Close to key Iranian leadership sites, the airport hosts an air force base with fighter jets and transport aircraft.

An Israeli military spokesperson said earlier that Iran had fired up to 100 missiles in waves earlier in the evening, and that most had been intercepted or missed their intended target, but several appeared to penetrate Israel’s multi-tiered defences.

At about 9pm in Tel Aviv, sirens sounded and phones buzzed with urgent alerts. Half an hour later the city echoed with the mid-air explosions of the Arrow missile defence systems taking out some of the Iranian arsenal, debris smashing into the ground and the blasts of several Iranian warheads that struck their targets.

Smoke from one impact site rose up in columns so thick they obscured the city skyline including nearby skyscrapers, as bright fragments of intercepted missiles arced above. One missile hit a high-rise residential building near the heart of Tel Aviv, shattering windows down most of the facade, and reducing the worst-hit areas to a tangle of exposed, twisted steel bars.

On the ground floor, fire fighters picked their way through the rubble beside the crumpled remains of a car caught in the blast, a report on Israeli TV showed.

Israel’s ambulance service said 34 people were injured on Friday night in the Tel Aviv area, most with minor injuries. Police later said one person had died. Another two people were confirmed killed in a direct missile strike on central Israel on Saturday morning.

The barrage began after a televised address from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who pledged: “The armed forces of the Islamic republic will inflict heavy blows upon this malevolent enemy.” He warned the consequences of Israel’s attack “will bring it to ruin”.

Earlier, the new head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Pakpour – hastily appointed after his predecessor was killed in Israel’s attack – threatened to open “the gates of hell” in retaliation, as the Middle East faced the prospect of a full-scale war of uncertain duration.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, accused Iran of crossing “red lines” by attacking civilian areas, although some of Israel’s own strikes earlier in the day hit residential parts of Iranian cities.

“We will continue to defend the citizens of Israel and ensure that the Ayatollah regime pays a very heavy price for its heinous actions,” Katz said.

The Israeli pre-dawn strikes on Friday hit more than 100 targets in Iran, including nuclear facilities and missile sites, and killed senior military commanders and scientists in what Tehran said was a “declaration of war”.

Iran’s envoy to the UN security council, Amir Saeid Iravani, said 78 people including senior officials had been killed in the Israeli attacks, and that more than 320 were injured, most of them civilians.

In a video statement on Friday night, Netanyahu said: “In the past 24 hours, we have taken out top military commanders, senior nuclear scientists, the Islamic regime’s most significant enrichment facility and a large portion of its ballistic missile arsenal. More is on the way. The regime does not know what hit them, or what will hit them. It has never been weaker.”

More explosions were reported in Iran on Friday evening and early on Saturday, suggesting a secondary phase of Israeli attacks was already under way, in the early stages of a war that has been brewing for a quarter of a century, ever since Iran’s secret underground uranium enrichment facilities were first exposed, and the US and Israel insisted the country would not be allowed to build a bomb.

The focus of much of the Israeli munitions on Friday was the mostly subterranean uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, told the UN security council that the above-ground pilot enrichment plant at Iran’s main nuclear facility in Natanz had been destroyed, although he said the level of radioactivity outside the plant remained unchanged.

Grossi said the UN was still gathering information about Israeli attacks on two other facilities, the Fordow fuel enrichment plant and at Isfahan.

Officers of the Israel Defense Forces made clear their war aims were to seize the opportunity offered by Iran’s flattened air defences to wreak lasting, crippling damage on Iran’s nuclear programme.

“That’s the goal, to remove the threat and to make sure they don’t have a nuclear bomb and that there is not an active existential threat on the Israeli people,” an IDF officer said.

Among the uncertainties hanging over the region was how much of Iran’s arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles were still usable, and whether Tehran would take revenge on the US as well as Israel.

The US role in the attack remained murky. In the run-up to the Israeli 200-plane attack, Donald Trump had publicly urged Israel to give diplomacy more of a chance, before US-Iranian talks that were planned for Sunday. On Friday, the US president insisted he had been well informed of Israel’s plans, and described the Israeli attack as “excellent”.

Asked by the Wall Street Journal what kind of heads-up the US had been given, Trump responded testily: “Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. It was, we know what’s going on.”

Speaking separately to ABC News, he praised the attacks and linked the timing to a 60-day ultimatum he had given Tehran in the spring, to negotiate a deal. “I think it’s been excellent. We gave them a chance and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come. A lot more,” Trump said.

On his own Truth Social online platform, Trump urged Iran to make a deal or face further planned attacks that would be “even more brutal”.

ABC quoted a “source familiar with the intelligence” as saying the US had provided “exquisite” intelligence and would help defend Israel as needed.

Iravani told the UN security council that the US was complicit in the attack, saying “by aiding and enabling these crimes, they share full responsibility for the consequences”.He accused Israel of seeking “to kill diplomacy, to sabotage negotiations and to drag the region into wider conflict.”

The US website Axios quoted two Israeli officials as suggesting the apparent disagreement with Israel had been a ploy, aimed at convincing Iran that no attack was imminent so the generals and scientists on the target list would not move to new locations. “We had a clear US green light,” one of the officials said.

Israel’s first wave of airstrikes took place soon after 8am Iranian time. About 200 Israeli warplanes hit 100 wide-ranging targets.

In a televised address recorded in English for the benefit of foreign audiences, Netanyahu declared: “We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme. We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear weaponisation programme. We targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz. We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile programme.”

Iranian state media said the head of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), Gen Hossein Salami, the army chief of staff, Maj Gen Mohammad Bagheri, and the commander of the Khatam al-Anbia joint forces headquarters, Maj Gen Gholam Ali Rashid, were killed in the strikes, as well as six nuclear scientists, including Fereydoun Abbasi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization from 2011 to 2013.

Israel said its assault had killed most of the senior leadership of the IRGC’s air force.

IDF officers said that operation, codename Rising Lion, had involved the infiltration of Mossad commandos before the strikes, as well as drones, to target air defences and Iran’s ballistic missiles.

Later in the day, the Mossad released grainy footage that it said showed agents on Iranian soil. Another video showed what the agency said was an attack on an Iranian defence system, while a third appeared to show an Iranian long-range missile being targeted.

Iranian civilians described a night of terrifying explosions. Golnar, a resident of Saadat Abad, in northern Tehran, said she woke to loud explosions just after 3am.

“I woke up to the first explosion and rushed to the windows to check. Then, minutes later, back to back I heard four explosions. The windows were shaking and people in the building started screaming,” she said. “Everything happened so quickly. We were scrambling for information on whether this was an attack or a natural disaster. This morning there’s debris all over the explosion site and surrounding streets.”

Ahmad Moadi, 62, said: “How much longer are we going to live in fear? As an Iranian, I believe there must be an overwhelming response, a scathing response.”

Additional reporting by Deepa Parent

Marines deployed to Los Angeles detained a civilian on Friday, the US military confirmed to Reuters after being presented with the news wire’s images.

This is the first known instance of active-duty troops deployed byDonald Trumpdetaining a civilian.

The incident took place at the Wilshire Federal Building, where marines took charge of the mission to protect the building earlier on Friday, in a rare domestic use of US troops after days of protests over immigration raids.

Footage purported to show spy agents launching missiles inside Iran is marked contrast to the intelligence service’s history of secrecy

Israelis were celebrating on Friday what many see as a stunning new success by their country’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

Hours after launching 200 warplanes in a wave of strikes against Iran, Israeli officialsreleased footagethey said showed the Mossad agents deep inside Iranassembling missiles and explosive drones aimed at targets near Tehran.

According to unnamed security officials who briefed Israeli media, similar precision weapons were launched from trucks smuggled into the country and a “drone base” hidden somewhere near Tehran. This was established well in advance of Friday’s attack and used to destroy Iran’s air defences, the officials said.

The Mossad, an abbreviation of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations in Hebrew, has scored many such victories in almost 80 years of undercover operations, earning a unique reputation for audacious espionage, technological innovation and ruthless violence.

The new operation in Iran comes just 10 months after the service managed tosabotage thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operativesin Lebanon, an attack that killed 37 people and injured about 3,000 others while crippling the militant Islamist organisation.

The service then contributed to the air offensive thatwiped out Hezbollah’s leadershipin a matter of days.

Over decades, the Mossad has built up deep networks of informants, agents and logistics in Iran. This has allowed a series of operations includingthe assassination with a remote-controlled automatic machine gunof a top Iranian nuclear scientist travelling at speed in a car on a remote road,the infection with malware of computers running key parts of Iran’s nuclear programmeand the theft of an archive of nuclear documents. Last year, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, wasassassinated with a bomb placed in his favourite roomin a government guesthouse in Tehran.

“This most recent operation is impressive, of course, but Iran has been an open book for Israeli intelligence for a decade or more,” said Yossi Melman, a veteran Israeli security reporter and author.

Melman said those pictured setting up missile launches in the grainy videos released by the Mossad were likely to be Iranians. “The boots on the ground inside Iran are not Israeli, so they have to be recruited, trained, equipped, and deployed. Then all the components of the weapons have to be smuggled in. It all needs a lot of professionalism and skill.”

Unusually, Israeli officials have highlighted the role of Aman, the military intelligence service, in building up targeting information for the Israeli offensive.

Though Aman and the Mossad often work closely, it is the foreign service, much smaller, that gets most of the attention. Even then, most of the Mossad’s work is never known outside tightly restricted circles.

For decades, few had even heard of the Mossad, which was formally established in 1949. Former agents were ordered not to tell even their family or their previous employment and the service never admitted its involvement in any operation.

Yossi Alpher, who took part in some of the service’s best-known operations in the 1970s, told the Guardian last year: “Everything the Mossad did was quiet, no one knew. It was a totally different era. The Mossad was just not mentioned. When I joined, you had to know someone to be brought in. Now, there is a website.”

The Mossad’s senior officials have long been more likely to spend their time on sensitive diplomatic missions, briefing senior Israeli decision-makers on regional political dynamics or building relationships abroad than recruiting spies or running operations such as that targeting Iran this week.

For decades, the Mossad oversaw years-long clandestine efforts to build up “enemies of Israel’s enemies”, such as Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Syria, and Christians in what is now South Sudan. As with many of its efforts, this had mixed success.

The Mossad is blamed by some for ignoring warnings about the reputation of Maronite Christian militia in Lebanon for brutality and ethnic hatred, and encouraging Israel’s disastrous invasion of that country in 1982, in which thousands of civilians were killed.

The Mossad also played a significant, though still little-known, role in the covert supply of arms to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran to help fight Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, as part of the Iran-Contra scandal during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

The mythical reputation of the Mossad has been bolstered by films and TV series, with screenwriters attracted to some of the service’s best-known exploits.

One of the most famous isthe 1960 capture in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi officer who was a key organiser of the Holocaust. Others includestealing warships from the French navy in 1969, warning of impending attack by Egypt and Syria in 1973 and providing key intelligence for the famousraid on Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976 that freed Jewish and Israeli passengershijacked by Palestinian and German extremists.

In 1980, the service set up and rana diving resort on Sudan’s Red Sea coastas a cover for the clandestine transport of thousands of members of Ethiopia’s Jewish community to Israel. The Mossad spies lived among tourists before being forced to close down the operation after five years.

After a deadly attack by Palestinian extremists on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, the Mossad led a campaign to disrupt the networks and groups responsible. The effort ended when a Mossad team shot dead a Moroccan waiter in Norway in the mistaken belief he was a Palestinian Liberation Organization security official, and then made further errors leading to their arrest and trial by local authorities.

In 1997, an effort to kill Khaled Meshaal, a powerful Hamas leader, went badly wrong when the Mossad team was caught in Amman by local security forces. Israel was forced to hand over an antidote and relations with Jordan were badly damaged. In 2010,agents were caught on CCTV camera in Dubaiduring another assassination.

Then there is thefailure to learn anything that might have warned of the Hamas raids into southern Israel on 7 Octoberthat killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and led to the abduction of 251. The attack prompted the Israeli offensive in Gaza, the current war with Hezbollah and, indirectly, the new confrontation with Iran.

Former Mossad officials say the service only gets noticed when things go wrong. This is not quite true, though – as the release of the Iran videos shows.

Melman said one of the Mossad’s aims – particularly with the publicity – is to sow fear among Iranians. “The aim is psychological. The Mossad is telling the Iranian regime: we know everything about you, we can wander into your home when we like, we are an omnipotent force,” said Melman. “It’s also a very good way to boost the morale of the Israeli public.”

Details emerge of how 21-year-old planned school attack in which teacher and nine pupils were killed

A gunman who killed 10 people at his former school in the Austrian city of Graz was an “obsessive online first-person shooter”, according to police, who gave detailed information for the first time about how he had planned the attack.

The 21-year-old Austrian, whoshot dead 10 peopleand then himself on Tuesday morning after going on a rampage at the school close to the city centre, had spent much of his free time playing what were described by police as “ego shooting” online video games, in which participants typically use virtual firearms to kill enemies.

Police said they believed the online community of players had formed his main social contacts and that he had otherwise been a loner who kept to himself.

It emerged that among the people killed by the man, identified by the Austrian and German media as Arthur A, was one of his former teachers. Police said it was unknown if he had deliberately targeted her.

The 59-year-old teacher was killed along with nine pupils – six female and three male – aged between 14 and 17. Nine people are still being treated in hospital for their injuries, including a male teacher, but all were stable and the last two in intensive care were to be moved out during the course of the day, health officials said.

It also emerged on Thursday in a report by the state broadcaster ORF, which was confirmed by a spokesperson for Austria’s military, that the killer had recently failed a psychological test to enter the armed forces.

However, he had even more recently passed the psychological checks required to be in possession of the weapons he used to carry out the killings, which he carried legally, police said.

The man, who had attended the school and dropped out three years ago, was an apprentice at an industrial school. He lived alone with his mother and was not previously known to police.

The shooting rampage, the worst in Austria’s history, has sparked an emotional debate over the state of the country’s gun laws, which critics have said are too lax.

During a visit to Graz on Wednesday evening, Austria’s president, Alexander Van der Bellen, said it was necessary for politicians to review the laws and to “look into how it is possible for a 21-year-old to own handguns and long weapons and have the opportunity to purchase the appropriate ammunition for them and to cause this mayhem”.

Austria’s national security council, set up in light of the 9/11 attacks in the US, was due to address the issue when it met on Thursday afternoon. Discussions have also begun about tightening security in schools, with some calling for the installation of metal detectors at school gates.

Michael Lohnegger, the head of the Styrian state criminal police office, said the man planned the attack in minute detail. He described how the man entered the main entrance of the BORG Dreierschützengasse school at 9.43am on Tuesday carrying a backpack containing his weapons and ammunition. Between 350 and 400 pupils were present on site at the time.

“He went into a toilet on the third floor and took various objects out of his rucksack. He put on a weapons belt with a hunting knife, a pair of shooting glasses and a headset, took out a Glock 19 pistol, a sawn-off Mercury shotgun and loaded the weapons.

“At 9.47 he proceeded to carry out a seven-minute rampage through the school, going from the third to the second floor, and opened fire randomly on people in the school, who were from the 5th class.

“He finally went to the third floor where pupils of the 7th class were … fired at the closed doors of the classrooms until he was able to open them and then randomly shot at the people he found there.”

He finally returned to the toilet cubicle on the third floor where he subsequently shot himself in the head at 10.07am, Lohnegger said.

Owing to the fact that the first team of armed police entered the school building at 10.06am and heard no shots, investigators are working on the assumption that Arthur A might well have planned to carry out more killings, as he had plenty more ammunition on his person, but his knowledge that police were in the building may have prompted him to stop.

There was no evidence that the killer knew the pupils he shot, Lohnegger added, but it had been established he had been taught by the teacher who was killed. There was no evidence that this was a motive behind the killing, he said.

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Lohnegger said Arthur A had worked out a “very detailed plan of action. He had informed himself extremely precisely and given a lot of thought as to when he would approach each floor.” There was no information as to when he abandoned plans to deploy ahomemade pipe bomb, found at his home, after it proved to be dysfunctional, although Lohnegger said it “in theory contained all the components necessary” to work.

Arthur A bought the shotgun in mid-April and the handgun several weeks later. He had been attending shooting practice at a range in Graz since March, Lohnegger said.

He said people at the school had reacted “very well” to the incident, after recent training in what to do in case of a shooting, by shutting doors and barricading themselves into classrooms.

Police said they had yet to rule out that the killer may have had an accomplice who helped him in his planning or in his execution of the attack.

Lohnegger described Arthur A as someone who lived a “very reserved” life and “was not very willing to participate in real life”.

A search of the flat where he lived with his mother in a suburb south of Graz had uncovered a suicide note “directed as an apology towards his family”.

The first details of some of the victims began emerging on Wednesday evening. A 15-year-old Bosnian-Austrian girl called Hana was one of the first to be killed, her family said. She had been preparing to give a lecture to her class.

Speaking on behalf of her Bosnian Muslim family, Sabahudin Hasić, a local imam, said they were “utterly destroyed, as is our whole community. This deed is completely unimaginable.” Hana had wanted to study medicine, he said, describing her as a “sunshine”.

In a post on social media, her father wrote: “My little mouse, may God give you paradise”.

Standing next to her in class had been Lea B, who was also killed. The 15-year-old’s family had come to Austria from Kosovo, and she was born in Austria. Sokol Haliti, the mayor of Viti, the family’s home town in Kosovo, told Austrian media that the community where her father was born and where her grandparents still live was in mourning.

“It is a terrible tragedy. Not only for Austria. Lea was also one of us,” he said.

Pressure grows for snap election as judge finds ‘firm evidence’ of Santos Cerdán’s possible role in kickbacks

Spain’s prime minister,Pedro Sánchez, has apologised to voters but ruled out a snap election after a senior member of his Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) resigned hours after a supreme court judge found “firm evidence” of his possible involvement in taking kickbacks on public construction contracts.

Sánchez, who became prime minister in 2018 after usinga motion of no confidence to turf the corruption-mired conservative People’s party (PP)out of government, is already contending with a series ofgraft investigations relating to his wife, his brother, his former transport minister, and one of that minister’s aides. All deny any wrongdoing. A former PSOE member was recently implicated in an alleged smear campaign against the Guardia Civil police unit investigating the corruption allegations.

The pressure on his administration increased further on Thursday when the judge announced he had “firm evidence” that suggested Santos Cerdán, the PSOE’s organisational secretary, had discussed taking kickbacks on public contracts with the former transport minister, José Luis Ábalos, and one of the minister’s aides, Koldo García. Cerdán stepped down from his party role and resigned his parliamentary seat shortly after the news broke.

Speaking at a hastily convened press conference at his party’s headquarters, Sánchez asked for the forgiveness of Spanish citizens and of PSOE voters but said he had known “absolutely nothing” about the allegations concerning Cerdán until details of the Guardia Civil investigation appeared in the media.

“Until this very morning, I was convinced of Santos Cerdán’s integrity,” he said. “This morning we learned the full extent of the evidence and the evidence is very serious. Very serious. That’s why, as well as asking for Santos Cerdán’s resignation as organisational secretary of the party this afternoon … I will set up an external audit of the socialist party’s accounts.”

The prime minister added: “Like any other person, I have my virtues and I have many shortcomings. Many shortcomings. But I have always believed in working for clean politics and fair play in politics.”

However, Sánchez said there would be no snap general election despite the PP’s repeated calls for a fresh poll in response to the corruption allegations.

“There will be no election until [the scheduled one] in 2027,” he said. “Because this isn’t about me or the socialist party or PSOE MPs; it’s about a political project that’s doing good things for the country.”

In a statement announcing his resignation, Cerdán insisted he was innocent and said he was standing down in order to “focus exclusively on defending myself and on providing relevant explanations that will show … that I have never committed an illegal act nor been complicit in one”. He said he would voluntarily testify before the supreme court, as requested, on 25 June.

Ábalos was sacked from Sánchez’s cabinet in 2021 andsuspended by the PSOEin February last year after refusing to resign when his assistant, García, was accused of taking bribes to facilitate mask contracts during the Covid pandemic. Both are the subjects of ongoing corruption investigations and both have denied any wrongdoing.

The PP,which organised a large demonstration in Madridon Sunday to protest against the Sánchez government and to call for an early general election, said the case against the prime minister and his circle was utterly damning. The party’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, described Sánchez’s response as “insufficient and disappointing” and called again for a return to the polls.

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“If anyone was in any doubt as to why we felt there was a mafia-style plot among the party and the government, we imagine that doubt has been dispelled,” he told MPs earlier on Thursday.

Sánchez’s partners in the socialist-led minority government have also called for urgent action and answers.

Yolanda Díaz, the labour minister and one of the country’s three deputy prime ministers, said the Cerdán allegations were “a very serious matter that needs to be clarified and fully explained as soon as possible”.

Anonymous messages questioned judgment of senior managers in dealing with Greensill, says Swiss regulator

Bosses atCredit Suissewere warned against dealing with the Australian financier Lex Greensill’s eponymous company three years before the collapse of his Greensill Capital, which once employed the former UK prime minister David Cameron as an adviser.

The “character judgment” of senior Credit Suisse managers was challenged in anonymous messages they received as early as 2018, which raised concerns over the Swiss bank’s dealings withGreensill, according to a report by the Swiss regulator Finma, released under a London court order after a request by the Guardian and other media.

The document showed senior managers were warned several times about the risks involved in its business dealings with Greensill and his firm, the 2021 collapse of whichcontributed to Credit Suisse’s shocking demisein March 2023.

A message from an anonymous tipster raised “strong doubts” over the bank’s strategy of packaging up Greensill’s loans into $10bn (£7.4bn) worth of investable funds for wealthy clients.

Greensillappeared at the high court in London this weekas a witness in a month-long trial, in which a former Credit Suisse fund is suing the Japanese tech investor SoftBank for $440m over a complex deal it allegedly coordinated with Greensill Capital before its collapse.

The Finma report, released as part of the trial, detailed the messages sent to Credit Suisse managers. “We also have serious doubts about your character judgment in choosing Greensill Capital as a partner in this field, and even more so in giving them the degree of discretion over your clients’ money which they appear to have,” the message said. The tipster was also concerned that a “large proportion” of those loans were tocompanies in the metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta’s troubled steel empire.

The message added that the recent collapse of another set of Greensill-backed funds offered by rival asset manager GAM “should be taken as a strong warning … you need to take care”.

One senior manager forwarded the 2018 tipoff to Lex Greensill, adding: “People in CS are receiving anonymous mails … seriously, you have to rethink your communication strategy!”

Greensill Capital, founded in 2011, offered corporate loans, giving companies advances on their invoices in exchange for a fee. But its founder, the Australian melon farmer turned City banker, entered into a series of complex financial agreements and marketed his lender as a tech firm stacked with high-profile advisers including Cameron.

Greensill went on to attract a series of large investors including General Atlantic and SoftBank, whose investments were purportedly meant to expand Greensill’s activities.

“However, as it later turned out, these funds were primarily used to pay out private investors and to provide Greensill Bank, which was increasingly coming under regulatory scrutiny, with additional capital,” the Finma report stated. “Under the management of Lex Greensill, the company provide[d] customised suits for its employees, elegant business premises and its own fleet of business jets.”

Finma’s report, which was compiled in December 2022 after nearly two years of investigations, showed Credit Suisse bosses continued to receive warnings over their dealings with Greensill as late as June 2019.

Greensill was, at the time, still on the rise and had hoped to launcha £22bn stock market flotationbefore the Covid pandemic put its clients and investors under severe financial strain.

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Greensill eventually collapsed in March 2021, after insurers refused to renew contracts that underpinned its loans. It came amid growing concern over the firm’s management and its outsized exposure to Gupta’s metals empire, which ultimately sparked astring of financial and political scandals.

It forced Credit Suisse to close its $10bn Greensill-backed funds, leaving wealthy customers nursing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of losses and further eroding confidence in Credit Suisse. That led the Swiss regulator, Finma, to launch what became a near two-year investigation into its dealings with Greensill.

The full resulting Finma report was never previously released. But key findings, released in February 2023, declared that Credit Suisse “seriously breached its supervisory obligations” and would face additional oversight for senior managers and important business relationships. The 167-year-old bank collapsed a month later, leading to its emergency rescue by rival UBS.

UBS is still trying to recoup money for former investors of the Greensill-backed Credit Suisse funds.

Commenting on the Finma report, UBS said: “This is a legacy Credit Suisse matter. The conduct described in the report pre-dates UBS’s acquisition of Credit Suisse.”

A representative for Lex Greensill declined to comment.

Transaction tax ‘acceptable’ to EU is part of deal to allow greater freedom of movement and link with customs union

Gibraltar will apply a 15% sales tax on goods to avoid unfair competition with Spain, as a result of the agreement on the post-Brexit future of the British overseas territory, it has emerged.

The territory has agreed to ensure a 15% minimum “transaction tax” on goods within three years of the ratification of the agreement, according to a senior European official.

“For Gibraltar, it was a big ask, they have always claimed … that this taxation will create for them a serious economic problem,” the official said. The European Commission insisted the British territory had to align its taxation policies with the EU in order to join a customs union, an integral part ofthe deal struck on Wednesday.

“The agreement that we have reached is that they will, in a period of three years, reach a level [on a transaction tax] that is acceptable for us,” the person said.

The agreement, hailed as “historic”, will erase the border separating the British overseas territory from the rest of the Iberian peninsula. Gibraltar will be connected to the EU’s border-free Schengen zone, meaning Gibraltarians can move freely in the surrounding region, although without rights to work and settle elsewhere in the EU.

Passport checks will be carried out at the port and airport by British and Spanish border guards. Spanish officers will be empowered to deny entry to the British overseas territory to any British national who has already exceeded their 90-day stay limit. Under Schengen rules, UK citizens are limited to stays of 90 days within a 180-day period.

Spanish customs officials will check goods entering Gibraltar via the land border, the main entry point for nearly all items. The British overseas territory will eventually enter into a customs union with the EU, which requires a further agreement.

Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, welcomed “the tax convergence process that will ensure that everybody is treated fairly”. He said: “Now Gibraltar is linked to the customs union. There will be fair competition for everybody.”

Madrid has long been concerned that cigarettes from Gibraltar were being illegally sold in Spain, while European anti-fraud investigators havewarned about cross-border smuggling by organised crime.

The Gibraltar agreement came weeks after the UK and EUagreed a wider reset. EU sources said completing the unfinished business of Brexit for Gibraltar was necessary to move forward in other areas, such as defence and a veterinary agreement.

Spain has been blocking British participation in defence projects and could have proved an obstacle to future deals if the status of Gibraltar had not been agreed. “Everyone wanted to find compromises, solutions etc, and it was the right moment to do that,” the official said.

A spokesperson for Gibraltar’s government, which is responsible for setting taxation on the British overseas territory, said: “Gibraltar will now move to a de-facto import duty rate, to be called a transaction tax, which will be ‘no lower than the lowest in the EU’. That is currently 17% in Luxembourg. Gibraltar will start at 15% on the day the treaty comes into effect [and] rising 1% each year for the next two years.”

The foreign secretary, David Lammy,told the House of Commonsthis week that Gibraltar “will not be applying VAT and will maintain its fiscal sovereignty”.