Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

We’ll be closing this feed shortly but thanks for joining us today.

We analysed claims made in Nigel Farage’s speech as he set out Reform UK’s crime and justice plans.

Separately, we geolocated footage from Bangladesh of a plane that crashed into a school campus.

In Gaza, we analysed the Israeli military’s evacuation notices as it launched an assault in parts of Deir al-Balah that have never before been subject to a major ground operation in this war.

This evening we are looking for new videos coming out of the strip to feed into the BBC’s reporting of the war.

We’ll be back tomorrow with the latest developments.

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

We've been monitoring evacuation notices issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The latest, issued last night, calls on people to leave an area in Deir al-Balah they were told to move to less than three weeks ago.

On 1 July the IDF asked people to move to an area, external for “safety” with an arrow drawn on a map to indicate exactly where they should move to.

In the IDF-issued orders below you can see the arrow pointed to block 134, which is among the nine blocks south-west of Deir al-Balah.

In its latest evacuation order of 20 July,, external the IDF has now instructed Palestinians to leave this same area.

Since the ceasefire the IDF has not issued any notices specifically telling people they can return to areas they have previously evacuated.

We've approached the IDF for comment but haven’t received a response. It has previously told us a QR code on evacuation notices directs people to an online map which "is continuously updated in accordance with ongoing assessments of the situation on the ground". This map no longer shows block 89 as solid red.

As we’ve been reporting, Israel has launched its latest ground offensive in a part of Gaza previously untouched by Israel’s major ground operations.

We’ve been tracking evacuation orders issued by Israel across the Gaza Strip since the ceasefire ended in March.

For the full details explained by Merlyn Thomas, watch the video below.

Benedict Garman & Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify

Image source, TikTok

We’ve been looking at videos posted to social media said to show people killed and injured while trying to get aid in Gaza. There have been almost daily reports of Palestinians killed while seeking provisions since the end of May.

In one video - a compilation of four short clips - large crowds of people lie and crouch on the ground, some holding empty bags, taking cover behind sandbanks.

Towards the end of the compilation men carry filled sacks on their shoulders near lorries which people have climbed onto. In the distance, an Israeli tank is positioned on top of a mound of earth.

We’ve geolocated these scenes to an area in northern Gaza, close to al-Rashid coastal road. In another section of the video someone is filmed lying on the ground, unmoving, their face bloodied. It has not been possible to geolocate this part of the video because the person filming is taking cover under concrete and rubble.

The footage was first shared online on Sunday. The geolocated sections were filmed less than 4km (2.5 miles) from the Zikim Crossing - an area near to where Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 67 people seeking UN aid were killed by Israeli gunfire on Sunday morning.

The Israel Defense Forces has disputed the number of reported deaths and said its forces fired warning shots to remove “an immediate threat”.

Robert Cuffe
BBC Verify head of statistics

With the PM set to face committee questions on poverty shortly, we’ve taken a closer look at how it’s measured in the UK.

Families are generally defined as being in poverty if their income is at least 40% lower than the income of the average family in the UK.

That average depends on the size and structure of your family.

So, for example, most single-parent, two-child families in poverty in the UK lived on less than £25,000 last year., external

About 4.5 million children live in families in poverty.

About two-thirds of them have two parents in the household and about three quarters have at least one person earning.

Shruti Menon
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, X

We’ve been verifying videos circulating on social media that show the aftermath of an air force jet that crashed into the Milestone School and College campus in north Dhaka, Bangladesh.

One video is a wide angle shot where we can see a smoke plume rising from one of the buildings. It is located near the playground and hundreds of people can be seen running away from the vicinity of the crash.

Based on the location of that smoke plume along with nearby buildings and close-up footage that shows uniformed men and firefighters dousing the fire, we were able to find the exact place where the crash happened - the Haider Ali hall. The buildings also matched on Google Earth imagery and with the images available on the official website of Milestone College.

Another video we’ve verified shows a chaotic scene unfolding as school children in uniform and parents can be seen running away from the crash site. We’ve also verified a video that shows a rescue operation where injured people are being put into an army helicopter in a playground on the campus.

At least 19 have died and hundreds are injured - most of them children - according to reporting by BBC Bangla service.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

During his press conference on Reform UK’s crime and justice plans, Farage also claimed that certain types of shoplifting go unpunished:

“Since 2014 you can shoplift up to £200 and frankly nothing is going to happen to you”, he said.

It’s a claim he’s made several times before.

And while it’s true that the law was changed in 2014 by the Conservatives to make, external , external“low, external value” shoplifting of goods worth less than £200 a less serious offence, external, offenders can still face a maximum six month prison sentence, a fine - or both.

It’s not possible to say how many people have been prosecuted under the law because official figures do not break down shoplifting prosecutions by the value of goods stolen.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, PA Media

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been setting out his party’s crime and justice plans.

He opened the conference by criticising successive home secretaries for claiming crime is falling.

“The crime survey for England and Wales is based on completely false data. If you look at police recorded crime... there are some significant rises in crimes of all kinds, particularly crimes against the person,” he said.

Crime in England and Wales is measured by a survey asking people about their experiences of crime, as well as police recorded offences.

Last year the survey recorded 9.6 million incidents, a 14% increase on the year before but against a backdrop of significant falls over the past three decades. This headline figure doesn’t include domestic abuse, sexual assault, stalking, and harassment.

The category called “violence against the person” in police recorded data is down slightly in the past year but up over the decade, as is overall recorded crime.

The survey is viewed as the better measure of long-term crime trends because it includes incidents that haven’t been reported to the police and is unaffected by police reporting or recording changes.

It’s considered a trusted or “accredited” source of official crime data by the statistics regulator so it’s unclear what Farage means about the survey containing “completely false data”.

Police recorded data does not have this status because of concerns about its quality and consistency.

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

On Sunday an evacuation notice was issued by the Israeli military for parts of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. This is the first time in the 21-month war these neighbourhoods have been told to evacuate.

This latest notice means that more than 301sq km (about 84%) of Gaza is now affected by evacuation orders since the ceasefire ended in March. This includes the entirety of North Gaza and the Rafah region in the south.

The notice affecting Deir al-Balah, external separates nearby al-Mawasi from the rest of the Gaza Strip, reverting this area to a small isolated section much like the original designated ‘humanitarian zone’ that existed prior to May last year.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates between 50,000 and 80,000 people were in the evacuation area at the time the order was issued. Within hours, the IDF launched a ground and air assault.

The BBC’s Gaza correspondent Rushdi Abualouf writes that there are growing fears among local residents that the latest military push could be part of an effort to carve out a new corridor that would isolate Deir al-Balah from the surrounding central Gaza region.

Throughout the war, the Israeli military has issued evacuation notices advising people living there to leave areas where military activity is imminent.

We've been logging and mapping these orders to track which areas of Gaza are deemed particularly high risk danger zones.

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Planet Labs PBC

On Sunday a new evacuation notice was issued for parts of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, hours before the Israeli military launched their air and ground assault there.

Satellite imagery can help give us a sense of how many people have been displaced again by this latest attack.

The image above, captured by satellite company Planet Labs on 17 July, shows densely packed temporary shelters adjacent to the al-Rashid coastal road. One of Gaza's three desalination plants is also pictured.

As well as the thousands of tents, Deir al-Balah still has most - but by no means all - of its buildings intact, because until now, Israel had not conducted a major assault there.

This entire area has now been instructed to evacuate by the Israeli military.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, PA

This afternoon we’ll be following Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as he faces questions about government policy from a committee of MPs.

Poverty in the UK is one of the listed topics and we expect the future of the two-child benefit cap could crop up.

The cap prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children born after April 2017.

The policy was introduced under the Conservatives and now the Labour government is under pressure to scrap it.

There were more than 450,000 households claiming universal credit who were not receiving child benefits for at least one child because of the cap in England, Scotland and Wales in April 2025.

About 1.6 million children were living in these households, according to the latest figures, external.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Getty Images

This morning Israel launched a ground and air attack on Deir al-Balah in central Gaza after issuing an evacuation order for south-western areas of the city on Sunday.

It’s the first time the Israeli military has launched a ground offensive there during the war against Hamas. For updates from BBC correspondents in the region follow our main live page here.

Today our verification team will be monitoring social media feeds on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and X for emerging videos.

Israel restricts international journalists from entering Gaza so verifying content posted online is important in helping us build a picture of what’s happening on the ground.

Tom Edgington
BBC Verify live editor

Good morning and welcome to Monday’s BBC Verify Live. This is what the team is looking at today:

• As Israeli forces launch a ground and air offensive in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, we'll be monitoring the situation and verifying footage. Right now our team is looking at the latest satellite images that show that there were many displaced people in the area
• It's the final week before Westminster breaks for the summer recess, but before that, Prime Minister Keir Starmer will face a committee of MPs. We'll be fact-checking the session, which is expected to focus on poverty and international affairs

Remember, if there's anything you want BBC Verify to look into you can get in touch using this form.