Police are continuing a manhunt for an asylum seeker who was mistakenly released from prison on Friday, weeks after being jailed for sexually assaulting a schoolgirl in Essex.

Ethiopian national Hadush Kebatu was meant to be sent to an immigration detention centre from HMP Chelmsford ahead of a planned deportation on Friday but Justice Secretary David Lammy said the 41-year-old is now "at large" in London.

Lammy said officers from the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police (BTP) and Essex Police were working together to trace Kebatu, who was jailed for 12 months in September.

Sir Keir Starmer described the release as "totally unacceptable".

The prime minister said Kebatu "must be caught and deported for his crimes", adding that police are "working urgently to track him down".

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the release was a "level of incompetence that beggars belief".

"Conservatives voted against Labour's prisoner release program because it was putting predators back on our streets," she said on X.

The Prison Service has removed an officer from discharging duties while an investigation takes place.

Essex Police said Kebatu boarded a London-bound train at Chelmsford station at 12:41 on Friday.

The force said it was informed by the prison services about "an error" at 12:57 on Friday.

A statement continued: "We understand the concern the public would have regarding this situation and can assure you we have officers working to urgently locate and detain him."

Lammy said he was "appalled" and "livid on behalf of the public".

He continued: "Let's be clear Kebatu committed a nasty sexual assault involving a young child and a woman. And for those reasons this of course is very serious."

A Prison Service spokesperson said: "We are urgently working with police to return an offender to custody following a release in error at HMP Chelmsford.

"Public protection is our top priority, and we have launched an investigation into this incident."

Kebatu's arrest in July sparked protests outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, where he had been living after arriving in the UK on a small boat.

In September, Chelmsford Magistrates' Court heard Kebatu tried to kiss a teenage girl on a bench and made numerous sexually explicit comments.

The following day, he encountered the same girl and tried to kiss her before sexually assaulting her. He also sexually assaulted a woman who had offered to help him draft a CV to find work.

During the trial, Kebatu gave his date of birth as December 1986, making him 38, but court records suggested he was 41.

He was found guilty of five offences and sentenced to 12 moths. He was also given a five-year sexual harm prevention order, which banned him from approaching or contacting any female, and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years.

The court heard it was his "firm wish" to be deported.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: "He is now walking the streets of Essex. Britain is broken."

A report from His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service said 262 prisoners in England and Wales were released in error between April 2024 and March 2025, up from 115 in the previous 12 months.

So many lives in Gaza still hang in the balance.

In different wards of Nasser Hospital lie two 10-year-old boys, one shot by Israeli fire and paralysed from the neck down, another with a brain tumour.

Now that a fragile ceasefire is in place, they are among some 15,000 patients who the World Health Organization (WHO) says are in need of urgent medical evacuations.

Ola Abu Said sits gently stroking the hair of her son Amar. His family says he was in their tent in southern Gaza when he was hit by a stray bullet fired by an Israeli drone. It is lodged between two of his vertebrae, leaving him paralysed.

"He needs surgery urgently," Ola says, "but it's complicated. Doctors told us it could cause his death, a stroke or brain hemorrhage. He needs surgery in a well-equipped place."

Right now, Gaza is anything but that. After two years of war, its hospitals have been left in a critical state.

Sitting by the bedside of her younger brother, Ahmed al-Jadd, his sister Shahd says her brother was a constant comfort to her through two years of war and displacement.

"He's only 10 and when our situation got so bad, he used to go out and sell water to help bring some money for us," she says. A few months ago, he showed the first signs of ill health.

"Ahmad's mouth started drooping to one side," Shahd explains. "One time he kept telling me: "Shahd my head hurts" and we just gave him paracetamol, but later, his right hand stopped moving."

The one-time university student is desperate for her brother to travel abroad to have his tumour removed.

"We can't lose him. We already lost our father, our home and our dreams," Shahd says. "When the ceasefire happened it gave us a bit of a hope that maybe there was a 1% chance that Ahmed could travel and get treated."

On Wednesday, the WHO coordinated the first medical convoy to exit Gaza since the fragile ceasefire began on 10 October. It took 41 patients and 145 carers to hospitals abroad via Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing, with ambulances and buses taking the group on to Jordan. Some have stayed for care there.

The UN agency has called for numbers of medical evacuations to be rapidly increased to deal with the thousands of cases of sick and wounded. It wants to be able to bring out patients through Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt as it has done previously.

However, Israel has said it is keeping the crossing closed until Hamas "fulfils" its commitments under the terms of the Gaza ceasefire deal by returning the bodies of deceased hostages. Israel has kept the Gaza side of the Egyptian border closed since May 2024 when it took control during the war.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, the head of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said "the most impactful measure" would be if Israel could allow Gazan patients to be treated in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as happened before the war.

Top EU officials and foreign ministers of more than 20 countries - including the UK - have previously called for this, offering "financial contributions, provision of medical staff or equipment needed."

"Hundreds of patients could be treated easily and efficiently in a short time if this route reopened to the East Jerusalem Hospital Network and the hospitals in the West Bank," says Dr Fadi Atrash, CEO of the Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives.

"We can at least treat 50 patients per day for chemotherapy and radiation and even more than that. Other hospitals can do a lot of surgeries," the doctor tells me.

"Referring them to East Jerusalem is the shortest distance, the most efficient way, because we have the mechanism. We speak the same language, we're the same culture, in many cases we have medical files for Gazan patients. They've been receiving treatment in East Jerusalem hospitals for more than a decade before the war."

The BBC asked Cogat, the Israeli defence body which controls Gaza's crossings, why the medical route was not being approved. Cogat said it was a decision by the political echelon and referred queries to the Prime Minister's Office which did not offer further explanation.

After the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023, Israel cited security reasons for not allowing Gazan patients in other Palestinian territories. It also pointed out that its main crossing point for people at Erez had been targeted by Hamas fighters during the assault.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says that in the year to August 2025, at least 740 people, including nearly 140 children, died while on waiting lists.

At Nasser hospital, the director of paediatrics and maternity, Dr Ahmed al-Farra, expresses his frustration.

"It's the most difficult feeling for a doctor to be present, able to diagnose a condition but unable to carry out essential tests and lacking the necessary treatments," Dr al-Farra says. "This has happened in so many cases, and unfortunately, there's daily loss of life due to our lack of capabilities."

Since the ceasefire, hope has run out for more of his patients.

In the past week in the hospital grounds, a funeral took place for Saadi Abu Taha, aged eight, who died from intestinal cancer.

A day later three-year old Zain Tafesh and Luay Dweik, aged eight, died from hepatitis.

Without action, there are many more Gazans who will not have a chance to live in peace.

When Sarel presses record on her phone, there's no script, no set and no meticulous plan for what she's about to say.

"I'm usually wearing my bonnet, no makeup and I just pick up the phone and start yapping," she says.

"I believe in maximum output for minimal effort, so if I have to do more than the bare minimum, I likely won't do it. That's why I just talk to the camera and post."

In only a few years, Sarel's unfiltered style has turned her from an ordinary voice online into one of TikTok's most distinctive personalities, with more than one million followers on the platform.

Famous for her Love Island debriefs, Sarel is among the nominees at the second annual TikTok awards - a celebration of the creators shaping online culture in the UK.

There are 72 nominees across 12 categories including education, beauty, comedy, food and sport. The nominees have a combined following of more than 83 million followers.

From breakout comedians to beauty innovators, this year's nominees include jacket potato entrepreneurs, tap dancing brothers, a bus loving aunty, a BookTok aficionado and a film location fangirl.

Coco Sarel

Sarel can't quite believe that the thing she does most naturally - talking - has gained her millions of followers and likes.

"It's mad people want to watch me yap," she says. But the simplicity of her process is part of the appeal and "you really do see 100% of me on the camera".

Her journey has also taken her beyond the screen, and in 2023 she performed at the Edinburgh Fringe festival with fellow TikTok stars.

"I've got a whole new respect for comedians after doing that," she says. "With content, if people don't like it, they scroll away, but if you bomb on stage, the whole room is looking at you like, 'That's terrible'".

With visibility comes scrutiny, and Sarel says it's not always easy dealing with the darker side of social media.

"The hate is always louder than the love," she says. "Five years ago, I'd clap back in the comments, but I'm 31 now and I'm too tired for that so I just block it out and ignore it."

Because she started sharing later in life, Sarel is still figuring out how much of herself to put online.

"I go off how I feel in the moment, and my audience respects that," she says. "I started off like I was just talking to friends, but now I protect parts of my life I don't want everyone's opinion on."

While social media is full of people turning major life events into months-long content strategies, Sarel isn't interested in that and even significant milestones tend to pass with little fanfare on her feed.

"I recently got married and I did two videos, then I was like, 'Let's talk about The Traitors.' I've got ADHD, so I move on quickly."

Henry Rowley

Best known for his "husky posh girl" sketches, Henry Rowley has become one of TikTok's sharpest comedy voices.

The Leicester-born performer discovered his now signature characters while studying at Bristol University, where he found himself "surrounded by a whole new world of posh" and he couldn't resist turning it into material.

"Some of those posh people were my friends and I found everything they said hilarious, so I started making videos about things they'd say on nights out."

His sketches, which more recently include impressions of Harry Potter characters as if they were Scottish, has earned him more than a million followers on TikTok.

He's also tried to carve a space in stand-up - a move he admits has been challenging.

"It's entirely different doing content and comedy on stage," he says. "Stand-up takes a lot of work and before the Fringe and my tour, there were so many pubs and awful gigs where I did a 20-minute set to zero laughs. It's certainly humbling."

Despite his rising profile, Rowley protects much of his life from the public eye.

"I mainly post characters and sketches so people who follow me don't know that much about me, which is really nice. I like having that balance," he says.

His advice for other people starting out creating content is similar to what most of the nominees said: "Don't try and go viral but instead focus on doing something you are genuinely interested in."

Bemi Orojuogun

If London has an unofficial ambassador for its buses, it might just be Bus Aunty.

Often seen smiling beside a passing double-decker, she's turned her lifelong love of the capital's transport network into a viral celebration of city life.

"My love for buses comes from a long time ago, from the early 90s," she says. "I have always taken a picture of myself with buses and one random day I chose to post one on TikTok and it went viral, and now here we are."

One of her videos, which is nominated for best video of the year, has been viewed amost 50 million times and Bemi now has collaborations with Burberry and Ikea.

The mental health nurse has become one of TikTok's most unexpected success stories and she admits "it's slightly overwhelming that everyone recognises me".

"I get recognised in the streets sometimes and people say, 'Oh, hello, Bus Aunty.' I never thought people would be stopping me in my wildest dreams and it's taken some getting used to."

"To be nominated is amazing," she says of her TikTok Awards nod.

"If I'm nominated, it means I deserve to be here, and I really do love buses and love London and hopefully that shows."

She's also proud to represent a different side of the app's community.

"You're never too old," she says firmly. "I would never have thought I could do TikTok and be nominated for awards, but here I am, having only posted for just over a year.

"Never give up on your dream because what I love about London has got me here."

Jack Edwards

If TikTok has a resident librarian, it's Jack Edwards, who has built a devoted following by sharing his love of reading. But he says his journey into social media stardom began with rejection.

"It was lockdown and I was looking for a job in publishing and no-one wanted to hire me," he recalls. "My inbox was snorkelling in a sea of rejection and every email started with the word unfortunately.

"So I started talking about the books I was reading on social media."

What began as a side project quickly turned into a full-time career, and Edwards ended up leaving the job he'd eventually secured in publishing.

He says his advice to would-be creators is finding what makes their content personal.

"You have so many interests," he explains. "If you were to create a Venn diagram of them all, the crossover in the middle is what you should make content about. For me, the cross-section is books, travel and pop culture."

Edwards adds that he's careful about how much of himself he reveals to his audience. "I talk about the books and art I love, but never the people I love," he says.

"But of course when you talk about books, you end up talking about everything from trauma, to politics, to sexuality."

That openness has seen him create a community that stretches far beyond the screen.

"People say, 'Hi' in the street and it's the best thing ever. We have a mini book club right there on the pavement, an instant Jane Austen love-fest, and I know it's so strange but honestly it's really special for me."

Still, internet fame brings its odd moments.

"Sometimes you get a message saying, 'Oh, hi, I just saw you at the urinal,'" he laughs. "Being spotted in those kinds of places never gets normal."

As the clocks go back and the darkness draws in, spare a thought for those living with the longest nights in the UK.

In the depths of winter, Scotland's northern isles will see barely six hours of daylight from morning till night.

In London and the south, people will have about two more hours of light than islanders in Orkney and Shetland.

During these shorter days more than a million people in the UK experience symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (Sad), according to the Royal College of Psychiatry.

These can include lowered mood, emotional difficulties and feelings of anxiety.

What is Seasonal Affective Disorder?

• Sad is a recurring seasonal depression, common in winter, that is typically brought on by shorter days with reduced hours of daylight.
• It was identified in the early 1980s by Prof Norman Rosenthal, a South African psychiatrist working in the United States, who began using light therapy as a treatment.
• Symptoms of Sad described by the NHS can include low mood, irritability, a loss of interest in everyday activities and feeling sleepy during the day.
• Sufferers can also have feelings of despair, guilt and worthlessness, have difficulty concentrating and a decreased sex drive.

Life in remote locations, in the countryside or on islands, can be particularly challenging in the darker months, says Professor Hester Parr.

She leads the 'Living with Sad' project at the University of Glasgow.

"People with Sad routinely feel very depressed and sluggish," she told BBC Scotland News.

"They find it difficult to socialise because they just don't have the energy and motivation at this time of year.

"We work with those people to provide creative and cultural resources to encourage a more outdoor life, and give tips to build new 'light routines'."

Prof Parr points out that people in rural communities often have limited access to social and medical support to help them through winter.

So for the first time this year, islanders on Orkney are being offered therapeutic lamps to help them cope with Sad and counter the effects of low light.

These will be handed out from libraries as part of 'Wintering Well' boxes.

The lamps come alongside an activity guide and tools to help people develop a routine for good mental health when daylight is in short supply.

Prof Parr says: "We're pitching our resources at an attitudinal shift, a psychological mind-shift towards winter.

"So that we get out and enjoy winter, no matter what the weather.

"We've put that into a book and a CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) course in partnership with a psychiatrist."

Tools in the box include a winter sky frame.

It's a simple cardboard cut-out, that people are encouraged to hold for 10 minutes to observe a small patch of sky, to help lift their mood.

Prof Parr says the UK can also learn from Scandinavian nations where there is "a different cultural attitude to winter".

She says creating an interior light environment that is cosy and comforting can help people cope with Sad.

"We tend to walk into winter thinking it is going to be one long dark season and that's not actually true.

"If we do go outside there are large amounts of daylight available that does help our mental health.

"But it is not just about going outside and getting light, it is about redesigning our interior spaces.

"Using natural light through windows, but also using candles and fun lights to make the winter spaces in our homes more welcoming."

Why are nights longer in the north?

• The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year in the UK - with the fewest hours of daylight and longest night. This year it falls on 21 December.
• In northern Scotland the sun rises later and sets much earlier than southern England based on the Earth's tilt away from the Sun
• On the winter solstice the difference is more than two hours of daylight between the most northern and southern parts of the UK.
• On 21 December at Penzance in Cornwall, the sun will rise at 08:18 and set at 16:21. That's eight hours and three minutes of daylight.
• In Lerwick in Shetland it will rise at 09:08 and set at 14:57 - just five hours and 49 minutes of daylight.

The Orkney scheme is the next step in a project that was piloted in East Dunbartonshire in Scotland last winter.

It's a joint project from the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, funded by UKRI (UK Innovation and Research).

About 100 Wintering Well boxes were made available, which were borrowed more than 200 times and renewed 349 times.

Orkney Library's mobile van - known as Booky McBookface - will help distribute the light lamps across the islands.

Former librarian Stewart Bain, now a presenter on Radio Orkney, says the boxes will be welcomed by locals.

He says there is "no denying it can be a dark place" as the clocks go back.

"It's getting to that stage that its dark when I'm going into work, dark when I'm coming home," he says.

"Come the depths of winter it'll be dark after three, at four o'clock pitch black.

"The lack of sunshine combined by the lack of exercise I think can have an impact.

"I think it definitely affects my mood. One of the key things for mental health is being able to get outside for a walk."

Stewart says using the Orkney library system to offer light lamps is the ideal solution.

"It's great as another strand of what the library does," he adds.

"The library is such a good thing for mental health anyway, it might be miserable and grey on Orkney, but you can be transported anywhere within the pages of a book."

In Ireland, libraries in Dublin are also preparing to trial the scheme.

It has also inspired a new five-part series Winter Well on BBC Radio 4.

Prof Parr says the project has found that use of therapeutic lamps, alongside new outdoor routines and "programmatic encouragement" to notice natural light, really does make a difference for people with Sad.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the US had carried out another strike against a ship alleged to belong to drug traffickers.

The operation took place in the Caribbean Sea, against a group Hegseth identified as the Tren de Aragua criminal organisation.

Hegseth said "six male narco-terrorists" were on board and killed.

The US has carried out a series of strikes on ships in the region, in what President Donald Trump has described as an effort to curtail drug trafficking.

Hegseth posted a video on X showing the operation. The video begins by showing a boat in a crosshairs, before it explodes into a cloud of smoke.

This is the tenth strike the Trump administration has carried out against alleged drug traffickers since early September. Most have taken place off of South America, in the Caribbean, but on 21 and 22 October it carried out strikes in the Pacific Ocean.

Members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have raised concerns about the legality of the strikes and the president's authority to order them.

Trump said he has the legal authority to order the strikes, and has designated Tren de Aragua a terrorist organisation.

Queen Sirikit, the mother of Thailand's King Vajiralongkorn, has died aged 93.

She passed away "peacefully" in a Bangkok hospital at 21:21 local time (14:21 GMT) on Friday night, according to the Thai Royal Household Bureau.

Sirikit had "suffered several illnesses" while in hospital since 2019, including a blood infection this month, it added.

For more than six decades, Queen Sirikit was married to Thailand's longest-reigning monarch King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in 2016.

Queen Sirikit suffered a stroke in 2012, after which she was rarely seen in public.

She met her future husband while studying music in Paris, where her father was stationed as Thai ambassador to France.

The couple married on 28 April 1950, just a week before King Bhumibol was crowned in Bangkok.

As a young couple in the 1960s, Queen Sirikit and King Bhumibol travelled around the world, meeting US presidents Dwight Eisenhower, the late Queen Elizabeth II - as well as Elvis Presley.

During that decade, she frequently made international best dressed lists.

In 1980, Queen Sirikit featured in a BBC documentary about the Thai monarchy, called Soul of a Nation.

In the rare interview, she said: "Kings and queens of Thailand have always been in close contact with the people and they usually regard the king as the father of the nation.

"That is why we do not have much private life, because we are considered father and mother of the nation."

She was seen as a key maternal figure for the country, with her birthday marked as Mother's Day.

In a late-night communique on Thursday, the Cuban Government said that it had extradited a Chinese citizen, Zhi Dong Zhang, to the authorities in Mexico. Hours later, Mexico's security chief then confirmed his subsequent extradition to the United States on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.

It brought to an abrupt end a months-long, audacious escape attempt by one of the world's most wanted fugitives.

Known by various aliases including Brother Wang, Pancho and HeHe, Zhi Dong Zhang is accused by the US Justice Department of masterminding a vast international ring of fentanyl trafficking and money laundering covering numerous nations but particularly China, Mexico and the US.

The list of charges against Mr Zhang is long but in essence US prosecutors and the Mexican Attorney General's office accuse him of being a major player in the global drug trade. They say he has laundered millions of dollars in drug money for both the Sinaloa Cartel and the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG) as part of a worldwide drug distribution network.

"Brother Wang can be seen as a key link between Mexican cartels and Chinese chemical companies in sourcing the pre-cursor chemicals for fentanyl", explains former DEA agent, Mike Vigil, adding that he was also vital in converting drug funds into cryptocurrency.

If convicted, Zhi Dong Zhang can expect to share a similar fate as other drug kingpins like Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman and Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada in a high-security facility in the United States.

But how 'Brother Wang' ended up in custody in Havana is an extraordinary tale involving fleeing house arrest in Mexico City, reportedly through a hole in a wall, taking a private jet to Cuba and an ultimately failed attempt to enter to Russia.

Zhi Dong Zhang was arrested in Mexico City in a joint security operation in October 2024. He was initially held in a maximum-security prison but was later granted house arrest by a judge – a decision that President Claudia Sheinbaum called "outrageous".

Brother Wang's escape had all the hallmarks of another embarrassing episode for Mexico: a man considered a vital cog in the machinery of drug smuggling, able to disappear from under the noses of the Mexican authorities tasked with guarding him. El Chapo Guzman managed that feat twice, much to Washington's frustration, before he was finally put on a plane in handcuffs to the US.

That Mexican authorities were able to recover their prisoner and send him north came down to two things – an apparent stroke of luck in Russia and the strength of Mexico's security relationship with Havana.

When Zhang reached Cuba in July 2025, he set about making his next steps towards reaching a country with no extradition treaty with the US, officials say.

There is a direct commercial flight to Moscow from Havana and Zhang, they allege, was able to secure a seat on it using fake papers. However, the papers didn't get him past the immigration authorities in Russia. It has been reported that the Russians didn't fully appreciate who they had in their custody and, after he was briefly detained, they turned Zhang around and sent him back to Cuba.

On arriving back in Havana a second time, the Cuban security services were now aware of his real identity.

Security analysts believe the authorities in Cuba held onto him for several months to interrogate him at length before sending him back to Mexico and, inevitably, onwards to the US. Mexico's Public Security Secretary, Omar Harfuch, was quick to thank Cuba for their cooperation over 'Brother Wang' – ultimately, for sparing their blushes over another escaped high-profile prisoner.

As always following the arrest of an alleged kingpin, the question becomes how far their removal will affect the global drug trade.

Given Brother Wang has spent the past year either in prison, under house arrest or on the run, the question may be moot, Mr Vigil said, as his absence has already largely been felt in Mexico's criminal underworld:

"It's really not going to have an impact as the cartels already have individuals working for them who can start to replace to Brother Wang", says Mr Vigil. "Even in the case of El Chapo Guzman who was a much bigger figure, it had no impact on the global drug trade", he argues.

Over his first year in office, US President Donald Trump has pressured his Mexican counterpart to do more on the issue of fentanyl trafficking and President Sheinbaum's administration has duly responded in kind. She has significantly increased seizures of the drug compared to her predecessor and her administration has sent dozens of convicted drug cartel members to the US to serve sentences there. They included several high-level drug names like Rafael Caro Quintero, wanted for the murder of a DEA agent in 1985.

Her cooperation on the fentanyl issue, as well as on undocumented immigration, is considered the reason Mr Trump has refrained from imposing the same level of trade tariffs on Mexico as he has on other commercial partners.

Brother Wang's extradition will bring genuine satisfaction in Washington at having taken a key figure in Mexican cartels' financial operations out of circulation. That, in turn, will please the Sheinbaum administration in Mexico and strengthen their claim to be in lockstep with their US counterparts on security.

However, slowing or reducing the movement of pre-cursor chemicals for fentanyl from China to the Americas in any lasting way will take more than the extradition of one man.

The US has placed sanctions on Colombia's left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, accusing him of failing to curb drug trafficking.

"President Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity," US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

Sanctions have also been imposed on Colombia's Interior Minister Armando Benedetti, as well as Petro's wife and eldest son. They include barring them from accessing assets and properties they may have in the US.

Colombia was once a close ally of Washington's war on drugs, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars annually in military assistance. But Petro and Trump have clashed frequently since Trump's return to power.

• US strikes on Latin American 'drug boats': What do we know, and are they legal?

Bessent said that since Petro, a former guerrilla, came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has "exploded to the highest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans".

He added that Trump was taking "strong action" and "would not tolerate" drug trafficking into the US.

The Treasury said Colombia was the world's top exporter of cocaine, which it says poses a "significant drug threat" to the US.

In a separate statement on Friday, the state department said it would will not certify Colombia's counter-narcotics efforts.

Petro denied the accusations. In a post on X, he said he had been fighting drug trafficking "for decades" and had helped the US to reduce its cocaine consumption.

"A complete paradox - but not one step back, and never on our knees," he said.

In recent weeks, the US military has ratcheted up activity in the southern Caribbean, striking vessels in international waters that it has alleged, without evidence, are carrying drugs.

Last week Trump announced the suspension of payments and subsidies to Colombia.

This came after Petro told BBC News in September airstrikes on alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean were an "act of tyranny,", accusing US officials of murdering a Colombian citizen and violating his country's sovereignty.

Imposing sanctions on a head of state is rare but not unprecedented. The leaders of countries including Russia, North Korea and Venezuela have previously been sanctioned.