Cathay Pacific suspends flights to and from Dubai until end of April – as it happened

This liveblog is closed – follow our new liveblog here. We are closing this blog but you can continue to follow the latest on our new liveblog here. Thanks for reading. Here is a summary of the latest developments: Donald Trump has threatened to “massively blow up” the entire South Pars gas field if Iran carries out any more retaliatory attacks on Qatar’s LNG gas facilities. Trump said that “no more attacks will be made by Israel” on the field – unless Iran “decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar”. The Pentagon “has asked the White House to approve a more than $200bn request to Congress to fund the war in Iran, according to a senior administration official”, the Washington Post reports. The oil price climbed towards $110 a barrel on Wednesday as the mounting threat to the Gulf’s oil and gas infrastructure fuelled concerns of more disruption to global supplies, amid the continuing blockade of the strait of Hormuz. QatarEnergy said “sizeable fires” caused extensive damage at its LNG facilities after Iranian missile attacks in the early hours of Thursday. An attack set a ship ablaze early on Thursday off the UAE coast, authorities said. The