Operations have been suspended at Kenya's main airport after thousands of mourners turned out to receive the body of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, a day after he died in India.

Large crowds of mourners carrying twigs and palm branches breached security at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) immediately after the body of the former leader arrived on Thursday morning.

Authorities said mourners gained access to restricted areas, prompting a "precautionary closure" to allow security teams to restore order and ensure safety.

"Members of the public and travellers are advised to remain calm and avoid the airport area until further notice," the aviation agency said.

Because of the unexpectedly huge crowds, the public viewing ceremony for his body has been moved to Nairobi's Moi International Sports Centre, rather than inside Parliament.

• Obituary: A founding father of Kenya's multi-party democracy
• How Odinga's court challenges have improved Kenya's elections

The 80-year-old former prime minister collapsed during a morning walk in India on Wednesday morning and he was taken to Devamatha Hospital, about 50km (30 miles) east of the port city of Kochi.

The hospital said he had suffered a cardiac arrest, did not respond to resuscitation measures and was "declared dead at 09:52" local time (04:22 GMT).

Kenyan politicians and world leaders have been sending their condolences, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who described Odinga as a "towering statesman and a cherished friend of India".

Kenya's President William Ruto said the veteran politician was a "beacon of courage" and "father of our democracy".

A seven-day period of mourning has been declared. Odinga will also be accorded a state funeral with full military honours, Ruto said.

Odinga spent many years as an opposition leader, losing five presidential campaigns, most recently three years ago.

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The government has published witness statements submitted in the now-collapsed case against two men accused of spying for China.

Deputy national security adviser Matthew Collins provided three witness statements to prosecutors - one in 2023 and two earlier this year - on whether China had been regarded as a threat to national security at the time of the alleged offences.

Last month, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) unexpectedly dropped charges against the two men, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, both of whom deny the allegations.

Mr Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Mr Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act in April 2024, when the Conservatives were in power.

They were accused of gathering and providing information prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state between December 2021 and February 2023.

The director of public prosecutions has said the case collapsed because evidence could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat.

He said while there was sufficient evidence when charges were originally brought against the two men, a precedent set by another spying case earlier this year meant China would need to have been labelled a "threat to national security" at the time of the alleged offences.

The Conservatives have claimed the government did not provide sufficient evidence because it does not want to damage relations with Beijing.

However, the Labour government has argued that because the alleged offences took place under the Conservatives, the prosecution could only be based on their stance on China at the time.

Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions earlier, Sir Keir Starmer said: "Under this government, no minister or special adviser played any role in the provision of evidence."

The publication of the documents followed pressure from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, who had called for them to be released.

On Tuesday, senior government figures had suggested that the CPS had told them publishing the witness statements would be "inappropriate".

But the CPS later made clear it would not stand in the way if ministers chose to put the government's evidence in the public domain.

The witness statements published by the government last night are hefty, detailed and shed more light than ever before on what the two men were accused of.

The disclosure followed a political row over the sudden collapse of the case against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, who were accused of spying for China.

• The controversy over the collapsed China spy case explained

It is worth at the outset stressing that Cash and Berry have consistently denied wrongdoing, the claims against them have never been tested in court and the government's witness statements proceed explicitly on the basis that the allegations levelled by counter-terror police are true.

The publication of the evidence has raised a series of new questions for the government and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to answer about the case, in addition to what might come next.

Here's an examination of the key ones:

Questions for prosecutors

Firstly, the witness statements provoke more questions for the CPS, which carries out criminal prosecutions on behalf of the state and ultimately took the controversial decision to drop the case.

In the first witness statement Matthew Collins, the government's deputy national security adviser, said that there are areas where the Chinese state poses "a threat to our people, prosperity and security".

In the second, he describes various ways in which the government believes it has been hacked by Chinese state actors.

In the third, he talks of the "active espionage threat" posed by China to the UK, identifying specific activities they had carried out.

Why was that not enough for the CPS to proceed with the case? Did they really believe that on that basis they would be unable to convince a judge to proceed, and a jury of the severity of the threat posed by China?

Is the CPS position that the government's witness statement did not quite use the right formulation of words to make its point about the challenge of China? If so, did they specifically ask the government to use a different form of words? Would it even be appropriate to seek to shape a witness's evidence in such a way?

These are questions that senior MPs asked the head of the CPS - Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Stephen Parkinson - about in a private meeting yesterday. It seems they were unimpressed by his answers.

Questions for the government

There are questions for the government thrown up by the witness statements too. The first witness statement, which is by far the most extensive, was prepared and submitted when Rishi Sunak was prime minister. But the latter two were filed earlier this year after Labour came to office.

Sir Keir Starmer's position over the past few weeks - and remember he used to run the CPS - has been that the only relevant point to this case is what the government's posture towards China was at the time of the alleged offences, which is to say when the Conservatives were in office.

Yet, the very final paragraph of the third witness statement, from this August, says: "It is important to emphasise that the UK government is committed to pursuing a positive relationship with China… we will co-operate where we can, compete where we need to; and challenge where we must."

That final part is copied and pasted, essentially, from the Labour manifesto of 2024. It is, in other words, the Labour government position on China.

If the government was constrained in the way that the prime minister has repeatedly said, then why was that in there?

The answer from government sources on that is that Collins was merely offering wider context about the government's approach to China given that the case was set to be heard in open court in 2025 - nothing more than that.

They argue that as a matter of law it is still the case that all that mattered to the case was the Conservative government's position at the time of the alleged offences and this paragraph does not change that.

Other questions

As interesting as these witness statements are, it's worth remembering that the core allegation being made by the Conservatives in recent days - furiously denied by the government - is that the latter two witness statements supplied by Collins were influenced by Labour ministers or Labour advisers in such a way as to make the case more likely to collapse.

The witness statements do not do anything to substantiate that claim.

That said, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, is arguing today that the inclusion of the Labour policy towards China raises the question of whether this was suggested to Collins by a government minister or adviser.

Again, government sources are adamant that the answer to this is no.

It is worth remembering again that the first witness statement was filed under the Conservatives. The Conservative position now is, implicitly, that ministers should have tried to make the latter two witness statements as strong as possible because of the seriousness of the allegations.

It would be interesting to know what involvement, if any, Conservative ministers or advisers had with the original witness statement.

What happens next?

It seems inevitable that Mr Parkinson will be called to give evidence to a parliamentary select committee so that MPs can pursue in public view the question of why he decided to drop the case.

It also seems likely that somebody from government will have to give public evidence to a select committee about this case, beyond a private evidence session scheduled for late November with Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser.

The most significant ramifications of this row may prove to be unrelated to the specifics of this case.

It has provoked serious allegations from Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's former chief adviser, about Chinese penetration of sensitive British data - which have only been partially denied.

It has precipitated the publication of witness statements describing at length serious concerns held by the UK government about China's activities and intentions.

Questions about the threat posed by China are now at the heart of British political debate in a way they have not been for some time.

All this while Olly Robbins, the head of the diplomatic service, is in China for long-planned meetings, months after Chancellor Rachel Reeves led a trip to the country to seek deeper trade ties, with Starmer still expected to become the first prime minister to visit the country since Theresa May in 2018, and with a decision looming over China's application to build a new embassy in central London.

Has this row made the government's intended diplomatic and economic approach to China politically unviable - is a hardening of the UK's stance now inevitable?

That may be the most important unanswered question of the lot.

MI5 is contending with near-record volumes of terrorist investigations and fast-rising state threats, the intelligence agency's boss has warned.

The security service is operating in a "new era", Ken McCallum said in an annual speech, forcing the "biggest shift in MI5's mission since 9/11".

He said state threats from Russia, China and Iran are escalating, with MI5 seeing a 35% increase in the number of individuals its investigating in the last year.

Mr McCallum added that Chinese state actors in particular present a daily national security threat to the UK, revealing that MI5 had intervened operationally to disrupt Chinese activity of national security concern in the past week.

Addressing a row over the collapse of a case involving alleged spying on behalf of China in the UK, Mr McCallum said the alleged activity was disrupted by MI5 and that it was "frustrating when prosecutions fall through".

The government and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are facing questions over the collapse of the case.

In the wide-ranging speech, Mr McCallum talked about MI5 operating in "a new era" with terrorism remaining an "ever-present threat".

He revealed MI5 and police had disrupted 19 late-stage attack plots and intervened in "many hundreds of developing threats" since the start of 2020.

The "aggregate scale of the terrorist threat remains huge", he said, explaining how his teams were mostly focused on individuals or small groups, rather than larger established networks.

One in five of the 232 terrorism arrests last year were of children under 17, he said.

He also said al-Qaeda and Islamic state group were "once again becoming more ambitious" and "taking advantage of instability overseas to gain firmer footholds".

Speaking about threats from state actors including China, Russian and Iran, the director-general said as well as methods of espionage, state actors are "descending into ugly methods MI5 is more used to seeing in our terrorism casework".

State threats include espionage against the UK's Parliament, universities and critical infrastructure.

He warned that would-be "proxy" actors are viewed by Russia as disposable, saying "when you're caught, you'll be abandoned".

While on Iran, he also said MI5 had tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in the last 12 months.

The government has published witness statements submitted in the now-collapsed case against two men accused of spying for China.

Deputy national security adviser Matthew Collins provided three witness statements to prosecutors - one in 2023 and two earlier this year - on whether China had been regarded as a threat to national security at the time of the alleged offences.

Last month, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) unexpectedly dropped charges against the two men, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, both of whom deny the allegations.

Mr Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Mr Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act in April 2024, when the Conservatives were in power.

They were accused of gathering and providing information prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state between December 2021 and February 2023.

The director of public prosecutions has said the case collapsed because evidence could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat.

He said while there was sufficient evidence when charges were originally brought against the two men, a precedent set by another spying case earlier this year meant China would need to have been labelled a "threat to national security" at the time of the alleged offences.

The Conservatives have claimed the government did not provide sufficient evidence because it does not want to damage relations with Beijing.

However, the Labour government has argued that because the alleged offences took place under the Conservatives, the prosecution could only be based on their stance on China at the time.

Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions earlier, Sir Keir Starmer said: "Under this government, no minister or special adviser played any role in the provision of evidence."

The publication of the documents followed pressure from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, who had called for them to be released.

On Tuesday, senior government figures had suggested that the CPS had told them publishing the witness statements would be "inappropriate".

But the CPS later made clear it would not stand in the way if ministers chose to put the government's evidence in the public domain.

Motorists who drive sports utility vehicles (SUVs) or other large vehicles could be charged more to park in Cardiff, if changes to parking permits are approved.

The city would be split into three new zones with resident permits in the city centre scrapped and students entitled to fewer permits.

Students have said they are worried about their safety in the dark if they cannot park near their homes.

The 10-year plan affects residents, commuters and visitors but new permits for carers and NHS workers would be created. A decision will be made by Cardiff council on Thursday but the cost of permits would be decided at a later date.

The plan is aimed at cutting congestion and encouraging people to walk, cycle or use public transport when travelling in and around the city.

It is hoped the plan would also reduce air pollution. Drivers of diesel cars would have to pay a surcharge to encourage them to switch to less polluting vehicles.

Resident permits in the city centre would be scrapped and existing permits would be phased out when the holder moves.

But students Beca Hughes, 19, Anna Griffith, 20 and Erin Parry, 19 said cars are essential for some.

"I think a lot of people are reliant on permits," Beca said.

But she believes fewer students would bring their cars to university if there were fewer permits.

"You notice a lot more people parking on double-yellow lines, you can struggle getting a parking space."

Erin said: "We've got a medical student in our house, so she uses her car to go back and forth to the hospital."

Beca said people may feel unsafe in the dark.

"They might not be guaranteed that safety if they can't park right outside their house," she said.

"You can't really park outside your house you have to park two streets down," said Joe Liston, 19, a sports coach and student.

Joe said he is "not really a fan" or visitor permit allowances being halved for students.

"I think it's a bit unfair really, I need my car for a job, I work in schools as well as being a student, one day I may be in Caerphilly the next in Newport," he said.

"How do you expect me to do that without a car.

"You can't quickly find a train, or I can't really afford to pay for a taxi, there's so many other people who do the same as me."

Cardiff would be split into three zones - known as parking management areas.

• The City and Civic Centre
• The Inner Area
• The Outer Area

Each will have its own rules.

• The City and Civic Centre would have no residential permits
• The Inner Area would be a mix of permits and permitted bays, although not for businesses
• The Outer Area would allow all permits, but the times you would need a permit may vary

'Double-whammy' in car tax and parking charges

"I think they need to have the infrastructure in place," said Kathryn Williams, managing director of KEW Planning consultancy.

She said people may not like the "double-whammy" of being charged more for their SUV, when they are already charged more in car tax.

"Is it going to be a deterrent ? I think people will need to be extremely careful when they're coming into the city," she added.

"I think there'll be concern from retailers and people with businesses in the city centre.

"I don't think the communication around the consultation has been that successful, as somebody who works in the industry, we haven't been notified."

Ms Williams said there needs to be improvements to public transport.

She said: "I think we really need to look at improving things like our bus services, run a little bit longer, bit more frequent, same with the trains.

"I would use the train far more if they ran a bit later."

She added there were "safety issues" with cycling in parts of the city.

"It's a good idea," said Thomas Chu who believes it is right to reduce city centre parking.

He used to pay £120 a month for a parking space for his flat.

"It's not suitable for too many cars around here," he said, adding it would cut pollution as well.

"If we didn't have a car park at our office it would be a real inconvenience," said Georgina Lawrence who works in Cardiff.

But she said she does not commute around Cardiff by car "because it is quite a pain".

"I had quite a shock the other day coming in from west Wales way - the congestion was atrocious," she said.

New carer permits

Under the new parking plan new permit types would be created.

• Essential Service Permits for NHS and council staff.
• Community Permits for places of worship and schools.
• Business Permits - but only in the Outer Area.
• Carer Permits for professional and unpaid carers.

A surcharge would be introduced for motorists with "oversized and highly polluting vehicles", said the council.

Motorists with cars weighing more than 2,400kg, such as large Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) will have to pay more for a permit.

Motorists with cars weighing more than 3,500kg will not be eligible for a permit.

Cardiff council said the new plan would "improve the quality of life for residents and visitors" and would "prioritises blue badge holders".

Motorcyclists would now require a permit to park in resident bays.

If the changes are approved on Thursday, there will be another consultation before they are introduced.

A charity that breeds and trains guide dogs has welcomed its largest litter for three years - 13 puppies affectionately known as "the Baker's Dozen".

The 13 new additions to Guide Dogs HQ in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, have been given bakery-themed names, inspired by sweet and savoury treats.

The boys are Biscuit, Crumble, Bagel, Crumpet, Rye, Tiger and Pretzel, and the girls are Apple, Eccles, Cocoa, Chelsea, Custard and Ginger.

Janine Dixon, breeding and welfare operations lead at Guide Dogs said counting puppies during pregnancy was tricky so staff did not know mum Yori "had quite so many buns in the oven".

The cost of breeding, raising and training each guide dog can go up to £77,000, according to the charity, meaning the Baker's Dozen could cost just over £1m.

Leamington Spa has been a national base for the Guide Dogs charity since the 1940s and is now home to the largest breeding programme for assistance dogs in the world.

Katy Wild-O'Neil, Guide Dogs breeding advisor, said: "We breed 1,300 [dogs] a year so we obviously need lots of dedicated volunteers with that, and we do have some amazing volunteers who will continue to puppy-raise for us."

The 13 puppies will now be allocated to puppy raisers around the UK to help turn them into life-changing guide dogs by 2027.

Puppy raiser Morna Farquhar has helped raise 11 puppies in total for the charity.

She admitted it was "difficult" to give the dogs back after spending a year with them but said: "You do it because you know someone else can have a guide dog.

"So if you give one year of your time, someone can have eight years of a dog to guide them."

The litter is the biggest at Guide Dogs since 2022, when German shepherd Unity surprised the charity with a record-breaking 16 puppies.

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Betting firm Paddy Power is to close 57 shops across the UK and Republic of Ireland, after a review of its high street estate.

It has confirmed that 247 staff are at risk of redundancy, with 128 of those in the UK and 119 in the Republic of Ireland.

A total of 29 shops are to close in the UK, including one in Northern Ireland, with 28 to go in the Republic.

Flutter UKI said affected staff would be "offered redeployment opportunities where possible".

"However, the closures will unfortunately lead to a number of job losses," a spokesperson added.

The firm said it was "consulting closely with colleagues and providing support to those affected by these changes".

A spokesperson said the decision was made in light of increasing cost pressures and challenging market conditions.

"We are continually reviewing our high street estate, but it remains a key part of our offer to customers, and we are seeking to innovate and invest where we can as we adapt to different customer trends and needs," they added.

The family of actress Diane Keaton has thanked fans for their "extraordinary messages of love and support" following the actress's death aged 79.

The Keaton family said in a statement to People magazine that the Oscar winner's death was caused by pneumonia.

Keaton shot to fame in the 1970s for her work in The Godfather films, and also starred in Father of the Bride, Something's Gotta Give, First Wives Club and Annie Hall - for which she won an Academy Award in 1978.

The actress's death in California on Saturday led to an outpouring of tributes from Hollywood legends, including co-stars in some of her most popular films.

"The Keaton family are very grateful for the extraordinary messages of love and support they have received these past few days on behalf of their beloved Diane, who passed away from pneumonia on October 11," read the statement to People magazine, which first reported Keaton's death.

The BBC has asked for comment from the actress's representatives.

Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs that can be caused by many different germs, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some people are considered to be at higher risk due to their age, or if they have any underlying health conditions.

The Keaton family statement also asked that any donations or support be directed to causes that were important to the actress, primarily local food banks or an animal shelter.

Among those who have paid tribute to Keaton in recent days are First Wives Club co-star Goldie Hawn, who said Keaton left "a trail of fairy dust, filled with particles of light and memories beyond imagination". Bette Midler, who co-starred alongside the pair in the film, called Keaton "brilliant, beautiful, extraordinary".

Steve Martin, who starred with Keaton in Father of the Bride alongside Martin Short, reposted an excerpt of a magazine article in which Short is quoted asking: "Who's sexier, me or Steve Martin?"

Keaton replies: "I mean, you're both idiots." In his post, Martin wrote: "Don't know who first posted this, but it sums up our delightful relationship with Diane."

Throughout her more than five-decade career, Keaton starred in dozens of other films including The Family Stone, Because I Said So, And So It Goes, as well as a number of Woody Allen films, like Play It Again, Sam, Sleeper, Love and Death and Manhattan.

For Annie Hall, Keaton won the Academy Award for Best Actress along with a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award.

Keaton was nominated for three other Oscars throughout her storied career - all in the best actress category - for her work in Something's Gotta Give, Marvin's Room and Reds.

As well as her acting achievements, Keaton was known for her trademark style, and favoured wearing turtlenecks, hats and thick-rimmed eyeglasses.

That style was even referenced in the film Something's Gotta Give, in which Keaton told Jack Nicholson's character that she's "just a turtleneck kinda gal".

OceanGate's Titan submersible imploded on its journey to the wreck of the Titantic because of poor engineering and multiple failures to test the vessel, according to an official report.

Titan imploded in June 2023, killing all five passengers on board including OceanGate's chief executive.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found the engineering process behind the vehicle was "inadequate", resulting in faults which meant it failed to meet strength and durability requirements.

The NTSB said because the firm did not adequately test Titan it did not know its actual strength. It was also unaware it was damaged and should have been removed from service before its last voyage.

Titan disappeared in the North Atlantic as it attempted to dive to the wreck of Titanic which lies some 372 miles from St. John's in Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada.

In August, the US Coast Guard released a damning report into the implosion which found that the incident was "preventable" and criticised OceanGate's "critically flawed" safety practices.

Stockton Rush, OceanGate's chief executive, operated the Titan on its final journey.

The passengers, who paid $25,000 each to take part in the dive, deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood and Hamish Harding.

Last Friday Grace Jin Drexel received a text from her father in China, the prominent pastor Jin Mingri, telling her to pray for another pastor who had gone missing.

The text said that the other pastor had been detained while visiting the southern city of Shenzhen.

"Shortly after that, I got a call from my mum. She said she couldn't contact my dad," Ms Jin Drexel, who lives in the US, told the BBC.

Within hours her family realised that Mr Jin had also been caught up in what has been described by activists as China's largest arrest of Christians in decades.

Some now fear that last weekend's roundup of 30 Christians linked to the Zion Church network, which Mr Jin founded, marks the start of what could be a wider crackdown on underground churches.

They point to new laws passed in China which appear aimed at curbing underground church activity, and increasing pressure exerted by authorities on church members in recent months.

Despite being ruled by the atheist Chinese Communist Party, China has a sizeable Christian population. Government figures in recent years have stated there are about 38 million Protestants and nearly six million Catholics.

But these figures likely only account for members of churches registered with the officially approved Catholic Patriotic Association and the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement, which emphasise loyalty to China and the Communist Party.

Rights activists and scholars estimate that tens of millions more Chinese attend unregistered churches, also known as house churches, which do not follow state-sanctioned ideologies.

Many of these churches have been impacted by the Chinese government's attempts to increase its control of religious groups over the years. Church buildings have been demolished and crosses have been removed from public view, while religious material has become more tightly policed, with some Christian apps banned in China.

In 2005 and again in 2018, the government revised and tightened regulations on religious groups, while in 2016, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for the "sinicisation" of religion.

Underground churches such as Zion were especially affected by the 2018 rules, which required government approval for worshipping in public. Many were forced to stop public activities and turned to holding online services, or simply shut down.

The following years also saw the arrests and sentencing of a few prominent pastors.

In recent months, there have been signs of Chinese authorities once again tightening the screws.

In May, pastor Gao Quanfu of the Light of Zion Church in Xi'an was detained on charges of "using superstitious activities to undermine the implementation of law". The following month saw several members of the Linfen Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi sentenced to years in prison for fraud, which rights groups have criticised as false convictions.

Then in September, authorities announced a new online code of conduct for religious personnel, which only allows online sermons to be conducted by licensed groups. This has been widely seen as an attempt to curtail underground churches' online services.

In the last few months, Zion church members have also faced increasing questioning by police officers, Ms Jin Drexel said.

Many in Zion saw the stepped-up pressure as a prelude to a crackdown, but few anticipated it would be as large as it turned out to be, she said.

Last Friday and Saturday, Chinese authorities launched what's been described as a sweeping crackdown across at least 10 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. Besides Mr Jin who was taken from his main base in Beihai city in Guangxi province, they arrested other pastors, leaders and members of the congregation, according to the church.

The BBC has obtained a copy of what appears to be an official detention notice for Mr Jin, issued by the public security bureau in Beihai. It states that Mr Jin is currently held in the Beihai Number Two prison and that he is suspected of "illegal use of information networks".

The BBC has asked local authorities to confirm the detention.

Some of the arrested church members have since been released, but the majority are thought to still be in detention, with some housed in the same prison as Mr Jin.

Corey Jackson, founder of Christian advocacy group Luke Alliance, said the nationwide scale and co-ordination of the arrests across China were unprecedented.

"We anticipate that this is just the beginning of a larger crackdown," he said, adding that other underground churches in China were now preparing themselves for arrests.

Another Christian advocacy group, Open Doors, said the arrests were significant. "Zion Church was very well known and outspoken and it may have reached the level of organisation that authorities are getting nervous about organised social entities they do not control," a spokesperson said.

He warned that China's "policy of acting against house churches will continue" and that authorities may accuse more church members of fraud and economic crimes "as a strategy of intimidation".

Sean Long, a Zion Church pastor and spokesperson based in the US, said other churches will be targeted as there is "a new wave of religious persecution emerging quickly across China".

He called the latest arrests a "systematic roundup" to "unroot Zion", and quoted the Chinese idiom "killing the chicken to scare the monkeys".

"Zion is the chicken, we are the most influential... it's to scare other Christians and house churches in China."

When asked by the BBC for a response, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London said: "We would like to stress that the Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of religious belief in accordance with law. Meanwhile, all religious groups and religious activities must comply with the laws and regulations of China."

Earlier this week, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said it "firmly opposes the US interfering in China's internal affairs with so-called religious issues", in response to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's condemnation of the Zion church arrests.

Zion's story began with Jin Mingri, also known as Ezra Jin.

Born in 1969 during the Cultural Revolution in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, he was a believer in the Chinese state while growing up.

That changed in 1989 when, as a student in the prestigious Beijing University, he began taking part in the pro-democracy movement that was eventually crushed in the Tiananmen Massacre.

While he did not happen to be at Tiananmen on 4 June, the events at the square changed his life. "It was a pivotal moment. For his whole life, he had faith in the state. When that was betrayed, it shattered his entire world view. It was a big come-to-Jesus moment," Ms Jin Drexel said.

At first Mr Jin pursued his new Christian faith at a Three-Self church. In 2002 he moved to the US with his wife and daughter to study at a seminary in California, where his two sons were born.

The family moved back to China in 2007 for Mr Jin to continue his work. But he decided to set up an independent church, said Ms Jin Drexel, as he could no longer accept the Three-Self doctrine which calls for allegiance to the Chinese state. "He couldn't be a pastor there as it was not a God-pleasing church... you can't serve two masters."

Zion began as a small house church in Beijing with just 20 followers. But over the years it expanded and began holding services in a large hall in an office building.

As it grew in influence, so did the scrutiny. In 2018, Chinese authorities asked the church to install CCTV cameras in the building, saying it was for "security".

When it refused, followers began facing what church leaders say was harassment. Later that year, the church was shut down.

An exit ban was imposed on Mr Jin, who was placed under close surveillance. His family was able to leave for the US, as did some other church members such as Mr Long.

Zion then pivoted to what Mr Long called a "hybrid model" where they would hold large online church services coupled with small offline meetings in person. The church grew to about 100 branches across 40 cities in China, and has more than 10,000 followers now.

It is why, while the fate of Mr Jin and the other arrested church members remains uncertain and the possibility of a wider crackdown looms, Mr Long is confident that Zion and China's underground churches will survive.

"Persecution cannot destroy the church," he said. "If you look back to history, where there is repression, there's a revival."