Some held aloft posters of the two well-known Lebanese war correspondents, holding cameras and wearing their press body armour.

A number of women were sobbing. "They're killing the messengers of this war," one said.

Elsy Moufarrej of the Union of Journalists in Lebanon has already described the killings of the journalists as a war crime.

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"We've seen this in Gaza where they tried to undermine Palestinian journalists by linking them to Hamas.

"Now they're trying to do the same to Lebanese journalists by linking them to Hezbollah. Let's be in no doubt. This is a war crime."

The journalists - Ali Shoaib who worked for the Hezbollah-owned TV channel Al-Manar; Fatima Fatouni, who worked for Al Mayadeen; and her brother Muhammad Fatouni, who was a freelance cameraman - were covering the ongoing invasion of Israeli troops inside south Lebanon.

They were travelling together in a vehicle near Jezzine on the highway between Nabatieh and Sidon when an Israeli bomb hit them.

Witnesses said as colleagues ran to help, a second strike hit. The Lebanese health ministry said an ambulance filled with first responders sent to help was also hit.

An Israeli military spokesman admitted they'd targeted the journalists but attempted to justify the killings by claiming one of the senior correspondents - Ali Shoaib - was a member of Hezbollah's elite Radwan force and was passing on information about Israeli troops' movements inside Lebanon.

He provided no evidence for this claim.

The Committee for the Protection of Journalists said journalists doing their jobs are protected under the rules of war, as laid out under the Geneva Convention.

CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah said: "We have seen a disturbing pattern in this war and in the decades prior of Israel accusing journalists of being active combatants and terrorists without providing credible evidence.

"Journalists are not legitimate targets, regardless of the outlet they work for."

The journalist killings came as Israeli troops intensified their attacks on Lebanon.

Many of these attacks appear to be directed against health facilities and healthcare workers.

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A health care centre in the eastern border town of Deir Kifa was struck early on Sunday.

No one was injured, but the centre has been put out of action.

This was followed by another Israeli attack on an ambulance which had just picked up a casualty.

One paramedic and the patient who'd just been rescued were killed. More than fifty medics have been killed in less than a month.

The Israeli military once again insisted on Sunday that Hezbollah is "using ambulances extensively for military purposes" and continued, "if this practice doesn't stop Israel will act in accordance with international law against military activity".

But the Lebanese health ministry has angrily denounced these claims saying there's no evidence any ambulances are being used for any activity apart from rescuing humanitarian work.

The health ministry is compiling a list of Israeli attacks against health facilities and first responders to present to the UN.

It maintains the Israeli attacks follow a pattern of repetitively targeting medics and hospitals.

"These are war crimes," the health minister Dr Rakan Nassereddine told Sky News.

Lebanon is embroiled in a huge humanitarian crisis caused by the war, with more than a million displaced.

There are daily casualties, with more than fifty killed in the last 24 hours, although the ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

The Hezbollah militant group continues to fire volleys of rockets into northern Israel.

There has been hand-to-hand fighting between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops in some of the southern border villages and communities, but it's difficult to ascertain how much control the Israeli military has of these areas or how much ground they have taken.

There have been sightings of Israeli troops in a number of communities several kilometres inside Lebanese territory and the Israeli Army Chief has been filmed by the military addressing troops on the Lebanese side without any details about exactly where this position was.

Israeli ministers have made it clear their plan is to seize a vast expanse of Lebanon's south in order to create what it calls a 'security buffer zone'.

The government has signalled it intends to occupy this territory right up to the Litani River and potentially beyond (an area which takes up about 10% of Lebanese land) until the Israeli military deems it to be safe from the threat of Hezbollah.

Across the petrol station's price board in giant lettering reads Reform Refuel: 25p off with Farage. A gaggle of journalists, TV cameras, and photographers have gathered, alongside some curious locals.

Alan Graves, Reform's Derbyshire County Council leader, arrives to fill up in his turquoise Bentley. Reform's most prominent Conservative defector, Robert Jenrick, is hanging around the forecourt waiting for Nigel Farage, who arrives soon after us, swarmed by cameras as he steps out of a Land Rover in flat cap, barbour jacket and cords.

Soon, Jenrick is up the ladder changing the petrol prices as Farage stands below. For one day only, Reform had struck a deal with the owner of this independent garage to take 25p off a litre of fuel.

The duo brought the national media to this small forecourt in the Peak District in Derbyshire to demand the government reverse planned fuel duty rises by cutting green spending: "We will spend the next few months trying to shame Rachel Reeves into cancelling [the 5p] rise in fuel duty in September. But if she doesn't - whether because she's running scared of the Greens or in hock to her far-left backbenchers - then Reform will reverse it in our first budget."

Soon the stunt was plastered over social media and Farage's typically bombastic news conference ran on live television.

Meanwhile, over on the X platform, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch was busily taking a similar position on fuel duty, posting: "Labour know exactly what a fuel duty hike will do to hardworking families, but they're doing it anyway. It's wrong. That's why last week the Conservatives put down a motion in parliament to force a vote to stop them".

Two parties pushing the same policy, but the Conservative leader was outdone by her arch rival Farage and arch nemesis Jenrick as their publicity stunt caught all the eyeballs. Reform UK has made it its business to capture the attention economy as it tries to put the oldest party in the world out of business for good. Welcome to the battle for the right, in which the Conservatives and Reform appear to be in a fight to the death.

It wasn't always this way. Back in 2019 Farage's Brexit Party did an electoral pact with the Conservatives - deciding not to contest the 317 seats the Tories won in the 2017 election in order to get Boris Johnson into government and Brexit across the line.

In 2023, Farage attended Conservative Party conference, receiving a hero's welcome from right-wing Tories at a Liz Truss fringe event before partying with Priti Patel, the now shadow foreign secretary, later in the evening. Back then, there was open talk that Farage might rejoin the party after decades of campaigning against it.

But then, before the 2024 general election, Farage announced he was taking over Reform and went on to win five seats, with 14.3% of the vote, as the Tories had their worst ever result and saw their parliamentary ranks reduced to 121.

The die was cast; since then Reform has gone on to win a by-election, and take control of a dozen councils across England and two mayoralties. Reform has also seen its own ranks swell as disaffected Tories jump ship.

It leapfrogged the Conservatives as the insurgent party of the right, leading in over 240 polls since the general election: Farage no longer toys with joining the Tories or doing an electoral deal; he wants to destroy them.

So does Jenrick, who I have come to Buxton to interview. This former young Tory once campaigned to remain in the EU and sat in Rishi Sunak's cabinet. Now he's Farage's right-hand man and undoubtedly the Reform leader's biggest Tory scalp.

When I ask him about this political journey, he says quitting the Tories was hard: "If anyone thinks it's an easy thing to do, to leave a party that you've been a part of since you were 16 years of age, then they don't understand what this is about.

"I came to the conclusion over a long period of time that the Tory party hadn't really learned the lessons of the mistakes they made in office. It wasn't changing.

"There have been millions of people who have always voted Conservative - out of force of habit, or because they thought the party was the best placed to do what they wanted to do, [and] shared their values - who have deserted the Conservative party and concluded it's failed."

A former Conservative leadership contender, his betrayal has left a bitter taste in his former party; his former colleagues are adamant that Jenrick's defection was driven by ambition rather than principle. He quit the shadow front bench of a party that risks being gutted in May's local elections and is now Reform's second-in-command - the chancellor of the next government if Reform wins. "I'm not embarrassed to say that I'm ambitious," he says.

He is not the only big name to defect; Reform looks for politicians with ministerial experience to join its ranks as it eyes the prospect of government at the next election. There are now over 20 former or current parliamentarians that have joined Reform and Jenrick insists that the influx of former Conservative cabinet ministers is not putting Reform voters off. "Reform voters and supporters time after time are saying to me 'Rob, why didn't you do this months ago? You share our values. You have been on our side for a long time'."

They may share values - but Jenrick is less keen on sharing voters, and outright rejects the prospect of any accommodation, merger, or pact between Reform and the Conservatives, saying the only way to unite the right is "behind Reform and Nigel".

"People who say there should be some kind of pact or deal misunderstand why people are voting Reform or are drawn to Reform. There are millions of people who feel incredibly angry and disillusioned and frustrated... and those people don't want to see Nigel Farage doing a deal with the Tory party."

Analysis from Sky News and exclusive polling with Ipsos appears to back up Jenrick's argument. At first glance, the combined polling of Reform and the Tories points to a right-wing coalition that could take power at the next general election. Latest polls from YouGov put the former on 23% and the latter on 17%.

But dig deeper and it seems that a Reform-Conservative pact isn't very popular among supporters, according to new Ipsos polling for Sky News. Nearly as many of their own supporters are against a pact as are for it. Sky's election analysts say that a Tory-Reform pact could risk losing votes from their own supporters; just one in four Reform and Tory supporters say they are open to voting for each other's parties. And that could cause problems.

The polling reveals another possibility - that a right-wing challenge could throw up a stronger alliance on the left to stop Reform.

Our polling shows that pacts on the left are much more popular with their supporters than ones on the right - with +2% net support among right-wing supporters, and +23% net support on the left. So there is a real risk that if the liberal-left were to join up - that's Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens - they could overtake a divided right.

It is a prospect that another Conservative defector to Reform, Danny Kruger, acknowledges as he urges Conservatives to give way and allow Reform to become the party of the right: "There is a real danger that some kind of terrible coalition of the left wins the next election because the right is split.

"I don't think there is a future for the Conservative Party as a national party. I don't think it will disappear altogether but I think that its days as the principal challenger to Labour from the right are over. I regret the split on the right but I think it is necessary now that we move the principal vehicle of centre-right politics.

"I hope it becomes increasingly obvious that if you want to change the government, if you want the centre-right to be in power, Reform is the only option, and that means taking voters from the Conservatives."

But pollster Luke Tryl argues that what is happening on the right of politics is far more complicated than just one party eclipsing the other.

"It's a mistake to assume Tory and Reform voters are just different versions of each other. On some big questions, they're in different places, so Tory voters have much lower approval of Donald Trump. In fact, Tory voters of any party voters - except for the Greens - are the most likely to disapprove of Donald Trump. Reform voters are more mixed.

"On questions about the economy, lots of Reform voters want big nationalisation. Tories are much more sceptical of that. So it's not a case that you can just sort of add them together, they're quite distinctive and I sometimes categorise it as the Tories now are more institutionalist right, Reform are more insurgent right."

Former home secretary, Amber Rudd, thinks the Conservative Party needs to stop fighting on Farage's turf and rebuild in the centre-right. The former home secretary has helped set up a new pressure group for British Conservativism, Prosper, in recent weeks to galvanise voters on the centre-right who feel politically homeless, and to rebuild her party from the centre.

"I think that there are a lot of Conservatives, and I am one of them, who believe that Reform, and Nigel Farage particularly, would be damaging for this country. And so we have to try to give the public an alternative to that choice. I think it is worth trying because I can't just sit it out at the moment and see this terrible choice between Starmer and Farage.

"I totally reject that there's anything centre-right about what Nigel Farage proposes. If you look at something like on immigration, which is a key issue for the public, they have unequivocally said that they want to do something like what has been done in America, where we've seen ICE [and] the Donald Trump removal process for what he considers to be illegal immigrants... which has killed people. Now, the idea of that on the streets of London is horrific."

Current Conservative chairman, Kevin Hollinrake, says the key is putting clear blue water between themselves and Reform when it comes to the economy, welfare, and state intervention.

"There are so many things about Reform's policies that are not Conservative, that are not right of centre. Nationalising industry, increasing welfare by taking off the two-child benefit cap - which they've put back on now of course, temporarily, I don't know when they'll change their policy again... hundreds of billion pounds of unfunded spending promises.

"This is not a conservative party, this is not a battle for the right, as they say. This is conservatism versus populism. We need to make the case where there's only one choice on the right."

Our research suggests that choice is currently not the Conservatives. A Reform Voting Index created by Sky News' election analysts, gauging which of the two right-wing parties currently holds the advantage in each constituency across Britain, finds that Reform has a clear lead in three times as many seats as the Conservatives - ahead in 316 seats, with the Tories leading in just 93, with a further 223 seats too close to call.

When you look at Reform and the Conservatives, the personalities, the politics, and the polling all point to a prolonged fight. A pact doesn't look like it would resolve the battle for the right, and blood spilt between the two sides makes a peace deal look near-impossible to secure anyway.

The Conservatives think their best hope is that the Reform surge will burn itself out - be that through a patchy record in local government, divisive culture wars, or Farage fatigue - and lapsed Tory voters will look again at Badenoch and the Conservatives.

Our polling shows she is more popular among the current set of Reform supporters than Farage is amongst current Conservative backers, suggesting she might have a better chance of winning back lost voters.

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But Reform very clearly has the upper hand - be it in the attention economy at the rural petrol station, or the polls - and Farage will want to press home that advantage in the May elections.

It is very unclear how this feud will end, but what is more certain is the battle for the right looks set to run right up the next general election - and it could prove to be Labour's best chance of getting back in.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips the public should listen to trade bodies, such as the RAC, as the cost of petrol climbed above an average of 150p per litre - an increase of more than 17p since the Iran war started at the end of February.

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"They've been absolutely clear that if you go to the pump, just fill up as normal, continue as you are," she said.

"We've got the security of what is coming in, and production isn't affected.

"I think people should take note of what those trade bodies are saying."

She insisted the government "will always plan for what we need to do" in the event of any disruption, adding: "We are well prepared."

However, energy economist Nick Butler told Sky News there will be shortages due to Iran blocking tankers from the Strait of Hormuz, and said the government cannot leave it "to the anarchy of the open market" so they will need to intervene.

Ms Phillipson said the most important issue is to de-escalate the Iran war and noted that the energy price cap is coming down in April.

However, it is only set until June and Ms Phillipson could not give any guarantees after that.

"We will take a view closer to the time, but what we hope will happen between now and then is that we do see a de-escalation of the conflict," she added.

The Conservatives, Reform and the Lib Dems have been calling for the government to scrap fuel duty rises due to come in from September because of the situation in Iran.

But Ms Phillipson said there is "no need to take action" at the moment and refused to "commit months ahead of time".

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Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips she did not think fuel should be rationed right now, but said the government should firstly start drilling in the North Sea.

She brushed off suggestions it would take years for North Sea oil and gas to come on stream and insisted "gas will be coming out of Jackdaw before winter", in reference to the Shell-owned gas field east of Aberdeen.

Last year, the Labour government banned new oil and gas licensing to focus on homegrown renewable energy, but Ms Badenoch said "the right thing right now is not to bankrupt the country".

"What we need is cheap, abundant energy, it should be clean," she said.

"And that means doing everything we can - nuclear, renewables and oil and gas."

Sir Keir Starmer's former chief of staff had his work phone stolen last autumn, leading to the government saying it may be unable to publish all his messages with sacked US ambassador Peter Mandelson.

Mr McSweeney, who was key in getting Lord Mandelson's role approved, did not tell police he was the PM's chief of staff and also gave them an incorrect road name, the transcript of his 999 call released by the Met Police has revealed.

The government has promised to release correspondence relating to Lord Mandelson's appointment after he was sacked last September over his relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, and the fact those message are missing has prompted suggestions it was not just a mistake.

Ms Badenoch told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips it was "extremely fishy" and called on Mr McSweeney to come to parliament and give an explanation.

She said: "Why didn't he tell the police that he was the prime minister's chief of staff?

"It's a government phone. The prime minister's chief of staff.

"What if Iran had stolen that phone? What if Russia or China had stolen that? The chief of staff did not tell the police who he was - that is extremely fishy."

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She said she does not know if Mr McSweeney is lying, but said: "The whole situation stinks.

"Why is it that when they knew we were going to be asking for documents and all the messages that he sent, his phone mysteriously disappeared and he didn't tell the police at the time who he was. That is extremely fishy. I stand by that.

"It is not a conspiracy theory. Questions need to be answered, and he should come into parliament and explain what happened."

Sir Keir earlier this week dismissed speculation Mr McSweeney's account of the theft could be untrue and the government is covering it up.

"Unfortunately, there are thefts like this," he said.

"It was stolen. It was reported at the time, the police have acknowledged and confirmed that. That is what happened.

"The idea that somehow everybody could have seen that some time in the future there'd be a request for the phone is, to my mind, a little bit far-fetched."

The test likely indicates Kim's plans to expand and modernise an arsenal of missiles capable of reaching the US mainland.

The report on Sunday from Korean Central News Agency came days after a speech at North Korea's parliament in which Kim pledged to irreversibly cement his country's status as a nuclear power.

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He accused the US of global "state terrorism and aggression," apparently referencing the war in the Middle East.

Kim observed the ground jet test of the newly upgraded engine using a composite carbon fibre material, KCNA reported.

The engine's maximum thrust is 2,500 kilotons, up from around 1,971 kilotons reported in a similar solid fuel engine test in September, according to the agency.

A push to increase engine power is likely connected with efforts to place multiple warheads on a single missile to increase chances of defeating US defences, observers say.

KCNA did not report exactly where or when the test took place.

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The test is part of the nation's five-year military escalation programme.

Objectives include upgrading "strategic strike means," KCNA reported.

The reference is understood to mean nuclear-capable, intercontinental ballistic missiles targeting the continental US.

Kim said the engine test had "great significance in putting the country's strategic military muscle on the highest level," KCNA reported.

In recent years, North Korea has test-fired a variety of ICBMs demonstrating the potential range to strike the US mainland, including missiles with solid propellants that make detection ahead of liftoff more difficult.

The country's older liquid-fuel missiles must be fuelled before liftoffs and are not long-lasting.

Some foreign experts say North Korea still faces technological hurdles before it has a functioning ICBM, such as ensuring warheads survive atmospheric reentry.

But others dispute that assessment given the number of years the nation has spent on its nuclear and missile programmes.

North Korea has made a big push to expand its nuclear arsenal since Kim's high-stakes diplomacy with Donald Trump collapsed in 2019.

In a ruling Workers' Party congress in February, Kim left open the door for discussions with the US president but urged Washington to drop demands for the North's nuclear disarmament as a precondition for talks.