About 10 researchers typically stay at the South African-run base, which sits about 170km (about 105 miles) from the edge of the ice shelf and is difficult to reach.

But a spokesperson for the South African government told the BBC “there was an assault” at the station, following earlier allegations of inappropriate behaviour from inside the camp.

In a further message seen by the BBC, the South African environment ministry said it was responding to the concerns with “utmost urgency”.

South Africa’s Sunday Times, which was first to report the story, said members of the team had pleaded to be rescued.

The ministry also said that those in the team had been subject to “a number of evaluations that include background checks, reference checks, medical assessment as well as a psychometric evaluation by qualified professionals”, which all members had cleared.

The Sanae IV research base is located more than 4,000km from mainland South Africa and harsh weather conditions mean scientists can be cut off there for much of the year.

The current team were expected to be at the Sanae IV base until December.

South African research expeditions have been taking place since 1959. The team to the Sanae IV base typically comprises a doctor, two mechanics, three engineers, a meteorological technician and a couple of physicians.

These expeditions, with harsh weather conditions mandating a lot of time spent in a confined indoor space, normally run without incident, and team members have to undergo a range of psychological assessments before travelling.

But on Sunday, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported that one member of the team had sent an email warning of “deeply disturbing behaviour” by a colleague and an “environment of fear”.

A South African government spokesperson told the BBC that the alleged assault was triggered by “a dispute over a task the team leader wanted the team to do – a weather dependant task that required a schedule change”.

Incidents in Antarctica are rare, but not unprecedented. In 2018 there were reports of a stabbing at the Russian-operated Bellingshausen research station.

Psychologists point to the effect that isolation can have on human behaviour.

“One thing we know from these rare occurrences, when something bad happens in enforced isolation or capsule working, is that it’s often the small things, tiny things that can blow up into conflict,” said Craig Jackson, professor of workplace health psychology at Birmingham City University, and a chartered member of the British Psychological Society.

“So issues about hierarchy, about workload allocation, even small things about leisure time or rations or food portions can rapidly flare up to become something much larger than they typically are,” he told the BBC.

Gabrielle Walker, a scientist and author who has been on expeditions to Antarctica, said working in such close proximity to a small group of colleagues had risks.

“You know exactly how they put their coffee cup down and what direction the handle points in; you know that they scratch their nose three times before they sit down; you know everything about them.

“And in the bad circumstances, it can start to irritate you… because there’s nothing else – there’s no other stimulus and you’re with people 24/7,” she said.

Sources within the Antarctic research community have told the BBC that South Africa has access to an ice-capable ship and aircraft if needed.

But any rescue operation would have to contend with the harsh climate, with temperatures well below freezing and the possibility of strong winds.

In a post on X, Rubio accused Ebrahim Rasool of hating America and President Donald Trump and described him as a “race-baiting politician”.

The office for South Africa’s president on Saturday called the decision “regrettable”, adding that the country remained committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with America.

The rare move by the US marks the latest development in rising tensions between the two countries.

In his post on Friday, Rubio linked to an article from the right-wing outlet Breitbart that quoted some of Rasool’s recent remarks made during an online lecture about the Trump administration.

“What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilising a supremacism against the incumbency, at home… and abroad,” Rasool said at the event.

He added that the Maga movement was a response “to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate… is projected to become 48 percent white”.

In response, Rubio called Rasool “PERSONA NON GRATA,” referencing the Latin phrase for “unwelcome person”.

The post from Rubio came as he departed Canada from a meeting with foreign ministers.

Ties between the US and South Africa have been deteriorating since Trump took office.

The US president signed an executive order last month that freezes assistance to South Africa. The order references “egregious actions” by South Africa and cites “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners – those who descended from Dutch settlers.

The South African government has repeatedly denied this.

The order also references a new law, the Expropriation Act, that the order claims targets Afrikaners by allowing the government to take away private land.

“As long as South Africa continues to support bad actors on the world stage and allows violent attacks on innocent disfavored minority farmers, the United States will stop aid and assistance to the country,” according to a statement from the White House.

The government in South Africa denies its law is related to race, the Associated Press reported.

A fact sheet from the White House states the country “blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority descendants of settler groups”.

While lower-ranking diplomats are sometimes expelled, it’s highly unusual in the US for it to happen to a more senior official like a foreign ambassador, the Associated Press reported, noting neither the US nor Russia took such actions against one another even amid tensions during the Cold War.

Rasool previously served as the country’s ambassador to the US from 2010 to 2015 before being tapped again for the post in 2025.

He was born and grew up in Cape Town. When he was nine, he and his family were forcibly removed from an apartment that was declared only for white people. As he grew older, he became more interested in politics and said the eviction was a significant moment in his upbringing that guided his future.

The gift to the Jesus Winner Ministry in the Roysambu suburb of Nairobi of 20m shillings ($155,000; £120,000) drew criticism from some young Kenyans struggling with the high cost of living.

Ruto has defended his donation and has offered a similar gift to another church in Eldoret.

Last year, both Kenya’s Catholic and Anglican leaders rejected donations, arguing that there was a need to protect the church from being used for political purposes.

At least 38 people were arrested during the clashes before being released without charge.

The clashes saw protesters try to get into the church and light fires and use rocks to block nearby roads.

But the church service went ahead with tight security for worshippers, local media reported.

Bishop Edward Mwai said that unnamed people had mobilised “thugs” to disrupt the church service, reports the Star website.

Ruto, an evangelical Christian, defended the donation, saying it was an attempt to address the country’s moral decay.

“Kenya must know God so that we shame the people who are telling us that we cannot associate with the church,” the Nation site quoted him as saying at another church, in Eldoret.

Kenyans have been angered by a series of tax rises introduced since Ruto was elected in 2022.

He says they were needed to pay off the huge debts he inherited from the previous government but many Kenyans argue that he should first tackle public waste and corruption.

Last year, a wave of nationwide protests forced Ruto to withdraw his Finance Bill, which contained a series of tax rises.

Unita said it had invited the politicians, including Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu, Mozambique’s Venancio Mondlane and Botswana’s former President Ian Khama, to a summit on democracy.

“The action of the Angolan government to prevent us from entering Angola is inexplicable and unacceptable,” Lissu said on X.

The BBC has asked the Angolan government to comment.

But according to a source from the Migration and Aliens Service (SME), “the expulsion was due to irregularities in the visa procedure, which prevented Mondlane and 13 other members of his entourage from entering Angolan territory”.

At least 20 leaders and representatives from various political parties across Africa were denied entry, said Lissu.

“The government of this country is ruling a dictatorship while pretending that Angola is a democratic country,” he said.

Kenyan senator Edwin Sifuna, from the opposition Orange Democratic Movement, said on X he was among those denied entry into Angola.

Others included Colombia’s former President Andres Pastrana and Zanzibar’s first Vice-President Othman Masoud Othman.

Tomas Viera Mario, a Mozambican political analyst, told the BBC the move was “strange” as Angola’s President Joao Lourenco has positioned himself as a kind of mediator on the continent.

Lourenco is currently the chair of the African Union (AU), and is hosting peace talks over the DR Congo conflict next week.

Mr Mario added that barring these figures showed “total contempt and “little respect” for the pan-African spirit of the AU.

All the deported leaders were part of a delegation invited by Unita to participate in a political event in Benguela province.

Unita lawmaker Nelito da Costa Ekwiki also condemned the decision not to allow them entry to the country.

The Angolan government has long been accused of shutting down dissent in order to maintain its hold on power.

Corneille Nangaa, a former head of DR Congo’s electoral commission, now leads the Congo River Alliance, which includes the M23 rebel group. He has addressed large rallies in the cities under the group’s control.

The bounty is also on offer for M23 leaders Sultani Makenga and Bertrand Bisimwa.

Last year the three men were prosecuted in absentia by a military court and given death sentences for treason.

A reward of $4m (£3) was also offered for the arrest of their accomplices.

But the chances of them being arrested appear slim.

In recent weeks the army has been no match for the Rwandan-backed rebels who have captured large parts of the mineral-rich eastern DR Congo, including the region’s two largest cities – Goma and Bukavu.

So President Félix Tshisekedi has instead focused on trying to build international pressure for Rwanda to face sanctions for backing the rebels.

Last year, a report by UN experts said up to 4,000 Rwanda troops were working with the M23 in DR Congo.

Thousands of people have been killed during the fighting and hundreds of thousands left without shelter after fleeing their homes.

The Congolese government is also seeking US support in exchange for access to its minerals.

DR Congo accuses Rwanda of trying to take control of its minerals, which include gold and coltan, used in consumers electronics such as mobile phones and computers.

In response to the reports that DR Congo was offering access to the minerals in exchange for military help fighting the M23 rebels, presidential spokeswoman Tina Salama said on X last month that President Tshisekedi was inviting the US “whose companies source strategic raw materials from Rwanda, materials that are looted from the DRC and smuggled to Rwanda” to instead buy them from the Congolese – the “rightful owners”.

Rwanda denies looting minerals from DR Congo.

It no longer denies backing the M23 but says it is trying to prevent the conflict in DR Congo from spilling over into its own territory.

Rwanda also accuses the Congolese government of working with a different armed group in DR Congo, which is linked to those responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which some 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis were massacred.

Both the M23 and Rwanda’s government are led by Tutsis.

The Congolese government denies working with the FDLR group accused by Rwanda of being a “genocidal militia”.

The cyclone struck on Friday, making landfall in the north of the Indian Ocean island east of Madagascar, blowing away roofs and cutting power and access to drinking water for many residents.

It exited the southwest of the island several hours later, French weather office Meteo-France said, adding that the worst of the storm had passed.

A red alert, ordering the population to stay indoors, was lifted on Saturday morning after Garance was downgraded to a severe tropical storm.

The body of a man was found trapped under a tree in the capital, Saint-Denis, authorities said on Saturday.

The other victims, two women and a man, were carried away by flash floods, trapped in a mudslide or killed by an electrical fire, authorities said on Friday.

Around 160,000 people were still without electricity, while more than 950 were staying in temporary accommodation centres on Saturday.

More  than 310,000 residents had no access to drinking water and nearly 140,000 were without internet access.

Patrice Latron, the central government representative on the island, said “a lot of work” would be needed, with many roads blocked by fallen trees.

“Roads are flooded, roads are cut off and some washed away,” he added.

During the passage of the cyclone on Friday, Meteo-France recorded winds of up to 230km (143 miles) per hour in Piton Sainte-Rose on the island’s eastern coast.

“The cyclone is still a threat for the island, I call on all to follow local authorities’ instructions,” French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said on X on Friday. “Our thoughts are with them and their loved ones who have been hit hard.”

The nearby tourist island of Mauritius shut its main airport on Wednesday, while La Reunion shut down flights on Thursday. Its international airport was to reopen late on Saturday.

Residents said the force of the cyclone was frightening.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a cyclone this powerful, and also the first time I’ve been afraid,” Vincent Clain, 45, who lives in Sainte-Marie on the northern coast, told the AFP news agency.

He said the storm uprooted trees in his garden. “I thought they would crash onto the house,” he said.

Clain, his wife, their son and dog hid in their kitchen, “the safest area of the house”.

Aline Etheve, a resident of Sainte-Suzanne on the coast, said she was worried the roof of her house would collapse after the storm destroyed her garden fence.

“I must admit I’m a little scared,” she told AFP, adding that her power and Wi-Fi access were gone.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday night that Uganda’s Ministry of Health reported a positive Ebola case at Mulago Hospital, the country’s only referral centre for the virus, and it was discovered in a four-year-old who died on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Uganda confirmed it had recorded 10 cases of a new strain of the virus. The first fatality from the latest outbreak was a male nurse who died before the outbreak was declared on January 30.

In February, the Health Ministry said all eight Ebola patients under care had been discharged, but at least 265 contacts remained under strict quarantine in Kampala.

The  latest outbreak is the sixth time Uganda has detected cases of Ebola. The cause of this new outbreak has been referred to as the Sudan Ebola strain, which does not have an approved vaccine yet.

The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people – the virus’s largest death toll.

The The virus is transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids and tissues. Its symptoms include fever, vomiting and muscle pain.

Ebola surveillance work in Africa has come under threat as NGOs that used to be funded through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have been forced to stop as President Donald Trump is essentially dismantling the US government’s aid agency.

Charles Olaro, the director of health services at Uganda’s Ministry of Health, told The Associated Press that the aid cuts affect some NGOs that help nations respond to infectious diseases.

“There  are challenges, but we need to adjust to the new reality,” Olaro said.

Until recently, King Thutmose II’s tomb was the last undiscovered royal tomb of the 18th Egyptian dynasty.

But a British-Egyptian team located it in the Western Valleys of the Theban Necropolis near the city of Luxor. Researchers had thought the burial chambers of the 18th dynasty pharaohs were on the other end of the mountain, near the Valley of the Kings.

The crew found it an area known for the resting places of royal women, but when they got into the burial chamber they found it decorated – the sign of a pharaoh.

“And part of the ceiling was still intact – a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars on it. And blue-painted ceilings with yellow stars are only found in king’s tombs,” said the field director of the mission Dr Piers Litherland.

He told the BBC’s Newshour programme he felt overwhelmed in the moment.

“When I came out, my wife was waiting outside and the only thing I could do was burst into tears,” he said.

“When you come across something that you’re not expecting to find, it’s emotionally extremely turbulent really.”

He said the discovery solved the mystery of where the tombs of early 18th dynasty kings are located.

Researchers found Thutmose II’s mummified remains two centuries ago but its original burial site had never been located.

Thutmose II was an ancestor of Tutankhamun, whose reign is believed to have been from about 1493 to 1479 BCE. Tutankhamun’s tomb was found by British archaeologists in 1922.

He is best known for being the husband of Queen Hatshepsut, regarded as one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs and one of the few female pharaohs who ruled in her own right.

Dr Litherland said the “large staircase and a very large descending corridor” of the tomb suggested grandeur.

They had to crawl through a 10m passageway, through a roughly 40sq cm opening, before making it into the chamber.

There they discovered the blue ceiling and the chamber decorated with scenes from the Amduat, a religious text which was reserved for kings. That was the key sign they had found a king’s tomb, Dr Litherland said.

Artefacts, including fragments of alabaster jars which bore the inscriptions of the names of Thutmose II and Hatshepsut, provided definitive evidence. These are the first objects to be found associated with Thutmose II’s burial.

Dr Litherland’s team has theorised that this tomb was flooded about six years after the burial and so the contents could have been moved to another location during ancient times. He said his team had a rough idea of where that second tomb was and that it could still be intact with treasures.

The discovery of the pharaoh’s tomb caps off more than 12 years of work by the joint team from Dr Litherland’s New Kingdom Research Foundation and Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The team has previously excavated 54 tombs in the western part of the Theban mountain in Luxor, and had also established identities of more than 30 royal wives and court women.

“This is the first royal tomb to be discovered since the ground-breaking find of King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber in 1922,” said Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities Sherif Fathy.

“It is an extraordinary moment for Egyptology and the broader understanding of our shared human story.”

Some people lined the streets to clap and cheer the fighters as they marched and drove into the city centre without resistance. It is the second city after Goma to fall to the rebels in the mineral-rich region in the past few weeks.

The Congolese government has acknowledged its fall and urged residents to stay at home “to avoid being targeted by the occupying forces”.

The UN and European countries have warned that the latest offensive, which has seen hundreds of thousands of people forced from their homes, could spark a wider regional war.

A resident in Bukavu, who asked to remain anonymous because of concerns for her safety, told the BBC on Sunday that most people were still afraid to leave their homes.

“Since yesterday the children and the youth took the weapons. They are shooting everywhere in all directions, they are looting,” she said.

“This morning the M23 entered and they were acclaimed by the people, very happy to see them. We don’t know if it’s because they are afraid or because they found that there were no authorities in the city.

“The place where I live the crackling [gunfire] can still be heard.”

On Friday, the M23 captured Bukavu’s main airport, which is about 30km (18 miles) north of the city – and then began advancing slowly towards the city, which is the capital of South-Kivu province.

The provincial governor, Jean-Jacques Purusi Sadiki, confirmed to the Reuters news agency the fighters were in Bukavu city centre by Sunday morning, adding that Congolese troops had withdrawn to avoid urban fighting.

This left a security vacuum in the city on Saturday with chaotic scenes playing out, including a reported prison break from the central prison.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said a warehouse with nearly 7,000 tonnes of food was looted.

The city of around two million people on the southern tip of Lake Kivu borders Rwanda and is an important transit point for the local mineral trade.

Its fall represents an unprecedented expansion of territory for the M23 since their latest insurgency started in late 2021 – and is a blow to the government of President Félix Tshisekedi.

Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said Rwanda was violating DR Congo’s territorial integrity through expansionist ambitions and human rights abuses.

The Congolese government accuses Rwanda of sowing chaos in the region – as well as having troops on the ground – so it can benefit from its natural resources, something Kigali denies.

President Tshisekedi wants his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame to face sanctions over the latest unrest.

But President Kagame has dismissed such threats – and has repeatedly pointed out that Rwanda’s main priority is its security.

He has long been angered by what he sees as the failure of the Congolese authorities to deal with the DR Congo-based FLDR rebel group, which he sees as a danger to Rwanda.

The group is made up of some members of the ethnic Hutu militia accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda when over 100 days around 800,000 people, mainly from the Tutsi ethnic group, were killed.

Troops from the Tusti-led M23 gathered at the Place de l’Indépendance in central Bukavu on Sunday, where one of its commanders, Bernard Byamungu, was filmed chatting to locals and answering their questions in Swahili.

He urged government forces “hiding in houses” to surrender – and accused the withdrawing military of spreading terror by arming local youths who had gone on a looting rampage.

The African Union (AU) – which has been holding a heads of state summit in Ethiopia this weekend – again urged the M23 to disarm.

“We are all very, very concerned about an open regional war,” Reuters quotes the AU’s peace and security commissioner Bankole Adeo as saying.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance which includes M23 rebels, told Reuters news agency the rebels had entered the South Kivu provincial capital on Friday evening and would continue their advance on Saturday.

The Rwandan-backed militants’ progress comes despite international calls for a ceasefire and a resumption of peace talks.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes in recent weeks as a result of the rebel advance.

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Last month, the Tutsi-led M23, which is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, seized Goma, the main city in the mineral-rich east. The Congolese government accuses Rwanda of sowing chaos in the region in order to benefit from its resources, a claim Rwanda has denied.

The M23 briefly captured Goma in a previous conflict in 2012, but the taking of Bukavu, which is the capital of South Kivu province, would represent a new phase in the turbulent recent history of the region.

The city, which borders Rwanda, is on the southern tip of Lake Kivu and is an important transit point for the local mineral trade.

Earlier on Friday, rebel fighters had entered the airport some 30km (19 miles) north of Bukavu, as the Congolese army and a militia allied with it withdrew without putting up much resistance.

But there were heavy clashes on the outskirts of Bukavu, South Kivu’s Deputy governor Jean Elekano, had told the BBC.

In a village further north – Mayba – 70 bodies were found in a church, according to local media reports.

A local community coordinator in North Kivu, Vianney Vitswamba, told the DR Congo news agency 7Sur7 that the bodies were found tied up. Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels – an Islamic State-linked group – were blamed, but the BBC has not confirmed the report.

• The DR Congo rebel leader whose fighters have created turmoil
• What’s the fighting in DR Congo all about?

Residents of Bukavu contacted by the BBC said the authorities advised residents to remain indoors.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, DR Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi called for Rwanda to be sanctioned, accusing it of having “expansionist ambitions”, the AFP news agency reports.

“We will no longer put up with our strategic resources being plundered for the benefit of foreign interests under the complicit gaze of those who feed on chaos,” he is quoted as saying.

As well as being accused of backing the rebels, which Rwanda has denied, the country is also said to have its own troops in eastern DR Congo.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has said his country’s priority is security. He has said Rwanda is in danger from Hutu rebels in DR Congo and has dismissed any threat of sanctions.

The news of the latest advance comes as the continent’s heads of state are due to meet at an African Union (AU) summit in Ethiopia on Saturday.

The head of the AU commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat is quoted by AFP as saying that a ceasefire “must be observed” adding that “military campaigns are not going to solve these problems. There is a general mobilisation of Africa today on this issue and I hope that we will be able to impose this ceasefire”.