Tom Edgington
BBC Verify senior journalist

We’ll be wrapping up this live page shortly. Here’s a quick recap of the key stories we’ve covered:

• Our team fact-checked claims about the real-terms fall in pay for resident doctors
• We investigated footage of yesterday’s deadly Israeli air strike which killed people queuing for water
• And we looked into Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s recent claim that the UK government had “returned” 30,000 migrants.

Into this evening, we’re expecting full details of President Donald Trump’s new US military aid package for Ukraine - and how it’s being paid for. Our BBC Verify reporter in Washington is on hand to analyse what's being supplied. There’s continuing live coverage of the story here.

In the meantime, you can find more BBC Verify content on the BBC News website.

On Sunday, an Israeli air strike killed Palestinians waiting for water in central Gaza, local emergency services say.

Unicef has called the water shortages “a man-made drought”. The Israeli military said there had been a "technical error" with a strike that caused the munition to fall dozens of metres from the target.

BBC Verify’s Merlyn Thomas has been examining the footage as well as the wider issue of water supply in Gaza.

Kumar Malhotra
BBC Verify senior journalist

A number of videos have been circulating in the last 24 hours showing fighting between different groups in southern Syria. One shows armed men , externalwalking on a long stretch of road with others driving along in pick-up trucks - one of which has a heavy weapon mounted on the back.

It’s said to be from an area some 6km (4 miles) south-west of the city of Suweida called Kanakir. This helped us home in on where it was filmed. The road layout, some of the nearby buildings, and the position of trees in the video matched what we could see on Google Earth imagery.

Although the post referred to the men as Druze fighters, we were not able to confirm their identities.

At least 30 people have been killed in armed clashes between Sunni Bedouin tribal fighters and Druze militias in southern Syria, according to the Syrian authorities.

Image source, X

Robert Cuffe
BBC Verify head of statistics

Image source, Getty Images

We’ve been looking into a row over how much resident doctors’ (who used to be called junior doctors) pay has fallen in real terms - and it centres on what measure of inflation is used.

Inflation is the increase in the price of something over time. The Retail Prices Index and Consumer Prices Index are two commonly used measures.

Each index typically produces very different results (RPI is usually higher) because they include different things.

The doctors’ union the BMA argues that resident doctors’ pay has fallen 20% since 2008, once adjusted for RPI inflation.

However this falls to 5% if CPI inflation is used (the government’s preferred measure), according to analysis from the Nuffield Trust, external - a health think tank.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the BMA’s Emma Runswick defended using RPI to support its pay claim.She said RPI was “the measure of inflation the government uses for our debt… for train fares… for car taxes”.

She’s correct to say the government still uses RPI for things like annual train fare increases - although it is due to be phased out by 2030.

Other things, however, like increases to state pensions and benefits are usually based on CPI and the body which makes recommendations to the government on doctors’ pay says it uses CPI as its “benchmark”, external when looking at how pay has changed over time.

Olga Robinson
BBC Verify assistant editor

Image source, X

In the past few weeks we have seen numerous examples of AI-generated videos being passed off as news content on social media.

A few of them - like this fake video of a protest in Ukraine - have been created using Veo, Google’s AI video generator.

The videos often contain some of the tell-tale signs of generation. For example, unnatural light and inconsistencies like a protester in a grey hat missing a face in the fake Ukraine video.

With videos created using Veo length can also serve as a giveaway.

Professor Hany Farid of GetReal Security, which specialises in detecting malicious digital content and deepfakes, said that videos currently being created by Veo are “either exactly eight seconds in length or composed of short (eight seconds or less) clips composited together”.

“This is the current maximum length that Veo 3 can generate a continuous shot.”

Even though the eight-second limit alone is not a definitive proof of fakery it “should be a good reason to give you pause and fact-check before you re-share”, Farid added.

We’ve approached Google for comment.

Merlyn Thomas
BBC Verify senior reporter

The Israeli army has said that a “technical error” caused the munition used in Sunday’s deadly air strike in Nuseirat, central Gaza, to fall dozens of meters from its target, which emergency workers say killed at least 10 people.

Normally, we would look at footage we’ve verified and ask experts to tell us what munition may have been used. This might mean analysing the sound of the weapon at the moment of the strike or looking at the crater it makes.

But in this case, we’ve not yet seen any visuals that allow us to do this.

I asked the Israel Defense Forces what munition was used in this strike but it said it “will not elaborate on the type of munitions it uses” and didn’t comment on what “technical error” had occurred.

Kayleen Devlin
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Reuters

Unicef, which through its Wash programme provides clean water in Gaza, estimates that just 40% of the strip’s drinking water facilities are currently functioning.

Before the war with Israel began after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, three pipelines from Israel provided around 13% of Gaza’s water needs.

The latest information we have received indicates that one of these lines has been damaged since January 2025 with no ability to repair it and the other two lines are operating at just 50% of their original capacity.

Desalination - taking the salt out of water from the sea and underground wells - remains the primary, and in many areas the only, reliable source of safe drinking water, according to Unicef.

Gaza’s water utility CMWU said one of the big three desalination plants hasn’t been operational since the start of this year. The others are operating but at reduced capacity due to a lack of fuel needed to run them.

Merlyn Thomas
BBC Verify senior reporter

Image source, Reuters

We’re following up yesterday’s attack in Gaza that local emergency workers say killed 10 people - including six children - as they queued for water to see if we can find out what kind of weapon was used.

The Israeli military said there had been a “technical error” with a strike targeting an Islamic Jihad “terrorist” that caused the munition to fall dozens of metres from the target.

We’re also digging into the lack of access to water in Gaza which has led to Palestinians having to go to distribution points, like the one hit on Sunday, to get supplies.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, UK Government

This morning I’ve been investigating a recent post by Prime Minister Keir Starmer on X about the UK’s new migration returns deal with France.

He said this about the government’s record on returns: “Since the election, we’ve returned 30,000 people with no right to be here.”

The latest figures, external show that between 5 July 2024 (when Labour came to power) and 18 May 2025 there were 29,867 returns of people with no legal right to be in the UK.

But only 7,893 of these were “enforced” returns - these might require an immigration officer to escort an individual on to a flight to ensure that they have left the UK.

The majority were recorded as “voluntary” - while some of these do involve the government in some way (for example, through financial assistance), previous data releases have shown that a significant number leave independently, without notifying officials.

We looked into this issue back in March and asked the Home Office how the government can keep claiming credit for returning individuals who leave of their own accord.

It said it has both a direct and an indirect role in returns and pointed to wider measures that discourage and prevent immigration offending.

You can read our full fact check of similar claims made by government ministers here.

Richard Irvine-Brown and Benedict Garman
BBC Verify

Image source, Telegram

We've verified footage on social media showing the aftermath of a deadly strike which the Israeli military have called a “technical error”. Local emergency services say 10 people were killed, including six children, at a water distribution point in Nuseirat, central Gaza, yesterday.

Based on the length of shadows, we were able to gauge that the video was filmed early in the morning - around the same time as the first local media reports of the strike began to circulate.

These reports gave the approximate location and we were then able to match distinctive features in the footage such as rooftops, trees and telegraph poles with satellite imagery of a road approximately 80m (260ft) south-west of the Nuseirat Junior High School.

Two pictures from the scene added more visual clues which confirmed the location and a satellite photo captured three weeks ago shows a tanker truck - potentially used to supply water - parked across the road in the same spot.

While the video clearly shows victims among yellow jerry cans and bystanders rushing to help it doesn't show what munition caused the explosion.

Rupert Carey
BBC Verify fact-check editor

Image source, PA Media

We’ll be looking into the claim by the doctors’ union – the BMA – for higher pay for resident doctors in England.

The government has offered a 5% rise but the BMA says pay – in real terms (so allowing for the impact of inflation) - is down 20% since 2008 and has voted in favour of strike action.

There was an interesting discussion involving the BMA on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning about how they are getting to that figure and BBC Verify is examining it.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Welcome to the live page where the BBC Verify team shares what it is doing each day. Our team will post their fact-checks, open-source intelligence work and data journalism here.

This morning we’re across these stories:

• Our fact-check team is looking into claims that resident doctors have had a 20% real-terms pay cut since 2008
• BBC Verify will continue to monitor social media posts from the Gaza Strip following yesterday’s Israeli air strike that struck people queuing for water, killing 10, according to local emergency workers
• The Israeli military says there had been a "technical error" with a strike targeting an Islamic Jihad "terrorist"
• We’re also ready to analyse the details - when it’s announced - of a new US military aid package for Ukraine

If you missed it then do check out our most-read story of the weekend - North Korea's Benidorm-style resort welcomes its first Russian tourists - by clicking here.