A deadly crackdown on student-led protests in Bangladesh last year was authorised by then prime minister Sheikh Hasina, according to audio of one of her phone calls verified by BBC Eye.

In the audio, which was leaked online in March, Hasina says she authorised her security forces to “use lethal weapons” against protesters and that “wherever they find [them], they will shoot”.

Prosecutors in Bangladesh plan to use the recording as crucial evidence against Hasina, who is being tried in absentia at a special tribunal for crimes against humanity.

Up to 1,400 people died in last summer’s unrest, according to UN investigators. Hasina, who fled to India, and her party reject all charges against her.

A spokesperson for her Awami League party denied the tape showed any “unlawful intention” of “disproportionate response”.

The leaked audio of Hasina’s conversation with an unidentified senior government official is the most significant evidence yet that she gave direct authorisation to shoot anti-government protesters, tens of thousands of whom had taken to the streets by last summer.

The protests began against civil service job quotas for relatives of those who fought in the 1971 war of independence and escalated into a mass movement that ousted Hasina, who had been in power for 15 years. It is the worst violence Bangladesh had seen since the 1971 war.

Some of the bloodiest scenes occurred on 5 August, the day Hasina fled by helicopter before crowds stormed her residence in Dhaka.

The BBC World Service investigation established previously unreported details about a police massacre of protesters in the capital – including a much higher death toll.

Hasina was at her residence in Dhaka, known as the Ganabhaban, for the duration of the call which took place on 18 July, a source with knowledge of the leaked audio told the BBC.

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It was a crucial moment in the demonstrations. Security officials were responding to public outrage at police killings of protesters captured on video and shared across social media. In the days following the call, military-grade rifles were deployed and used across Dhaka, according to police documents seen by the BBC.

The recording the BBC examined is one of numerous calls involving Sheikh Hasina that were made by the National Telecommunications Monitoring Centre (NTMC), a Bangladeshi government body responsible for monitoring communications.

The audio of the call was leaked in early March this year – it’s unclear by whom. Since the protests, numerous clips of Hasina’s calls have appeared online, many of them unverified.

The leaked 18 July recording was voice matched by the Criminal Investigation Department in the Bangladesh Police with known audio of Sheikh Hasina’s voice.

The BBC conducted its own independent verification by sharing the recording with audio forensics experts Earshot, who found no evidence the speech had been edited or manipulated and said it was highly unlikely to have been synthetically generated.

Earshot said the leaked recording was likely to have been taken in a room with the phone call played back on a speaker, due to the presence of distinctive telephonic frequencies and background sounds. Earshot identified Electric Network Frequency (ENF) throughout the recording, a frequency that’s often present in audio recordings due to interference between a recording device and mains-powered equipment, an indicator that the audio has not been manipulated.

Earshot also analysed Sheikh Hasina’s speech – the rhythm, intonation and breath sounds – and identified consistent noise floor levels, finding no evidence of synthetic artefacts in the audio.

“The recordings are critical for establishing her role, they are clear and have been properly authenticated, and are supported by other evidence,” British international human rights barrister Toby Cadman told the BBC. He is advising Bangladesh’s International Criminal Tribunal (ICT), the court hearing cases against Hasina and others.

An Awami League spokesperson said: “We cannot confirm whether the tape recording referenced by the BBC is authentic.”

At least 161 people are still missing in a single Texas county four days after deadly and devastating flash floods hit parts of the state last week, Governor Greg Abbott said, as hope fades for survivors to be found alive.

The missing in the hard-hit Kerr County include five campers and one counsellor from Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls summer camp located on the banks of Guadalupe river.

At least 109 people have died in the disaster, including 94 in the Kerrville area alone, Abbott said in a news conference on Tuesday.

Texas is not alone. New Mexico saw a flash flood emergency as well, with the National Weather Service (NWS) warning of intense flooding on Tuesday night.

In Texas, frantic search and rescue efforts continue, with Abbott vowing emergency crews “will not stop until every missing person is accounted for”.

Abbott added that it is very likely more missing will be added to the list in the coming days, and urged people to report anyone they think is unaccounted for.

General Thomas Suelzer from the Texas National Guard said search efforts include Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters with rescue hoists.

He said there are 13 Black Hawk helicopters helping in the search effort, including four that arrived from Arkansas. He added that authorities were also using reaper drones.

Responders from various agencies are working together on rescue efforts, including agents from border patrol, the FBI and the National Guard.

More than 250 responders from various agencies have been assigned to the Kerrville area alone to help with search and rescue.

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One of those rescue volunteers, named Tim, told the BBC he has never seen any destruction at this scale before.

“I’ve done the floods down in East Texas and Southeast Texas, and hurricanes, and this is a nightmare,” he said.

Another rescue volunteer, named Justin, compared the effort to “trying to find a single hay in a haystack”.

“There’s a wide trail of destruction for miles, and there’s not enough cadaver dogs to go through all of it,” he told the BBC.

“It’s hard to access a lot of it with heavy machinery. Guys are trying to pick at it with tools and hands, and they’re not even putting a dent in it – not for lack of effort.”

Questions have been raised about whether authorities provided adequate flood warnings before the disaster, and why people were not evacuated earlier.

Experts say there were a number of factors that contributed to the tragedy in Texas, including the extreme weather, the location of the holiday homes and timing.

The governor, who had spent part of the day surveying the flood zone, said authorities had issued a storm warning and knew about a possible flash flood, but “didn’t know the magnitude of the storm”.

No one knew it would lead to a “30-foot high tsunami wall of water”, he said.

The governor responded to a question about who was to “blame” for the enormous death toll, saying: “That’s the word choice of losers.”

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He made a sports analogy, saying American football teams make mistakes; champion teams are the ones who don’t “point fingers”.

Most of the victims died in Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River was swollen by torrential downpours before daybreak on Friday, the July Fourth public holiday.

Camp Mystic had earlier confirmed at least 27 girls and staff were among the dead.

Those who survived are now focused on trying to rebuild.

Justin Brown has lived along the Guadalupe River for more than 25 years.

A week ago, he lived in his mobile home at the Blue Oak RV Park with his two young daughters and dog. Now, there is a huge puddle where his home once stood – his RV swept away in the floods.

“We were one of the few parks that got almost everybody out,” Mr Brown told the BBC as he described the efforts of his landlord and emergency workers, who evacuated almost all of the park’s residents.

Looking out over the empty lot where his home once stood – now just debris – he said he hopes to move back in as soon as he can.

President Donald Trump will travel to the flood-ravaged areas with First Lady Melania Trump on Friday.

Separately, in New Mexico, the NWS declared a flash flood emergency on Tuesday and told residents of Ruidoso to be on high alert for flooding.

Officials there are already working to rescue people trapped in floodwaters and houses are reportedly being washed away.

A flood wave on the Rio Ruidoso has reached 15 feet (4.5m), the NWS in Albuquerque said in a post on X.

The waters receded about two hours later, according to CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

Officials had to perform some swift boat rescues and some people were unaccounted for as of Tuesday evening.