Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Our live updates here will be ending shortly but we’ll continue to monitor the Israel-Iran conflict throughout the evening and there’s continuing coverage over on the main BBC News live page.

If you want to know more about Iran’s nuclear programme our visual guide to its secretive mountain site is here.

On Friday our fact-check team will be looking out for claims to check around the Assisted Dying Bill as it returns to the Commons, and we’ll also be analysing the latest government borrowing figures.

See you then. In the meantime you can read more BBC Verify content on our section of the BBC News website here.

Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Maxar Technologies

New high-resolution satellite images published today by Maxar Technologies shows damage to Iran’s heavy water reactor complex near the city of Arak, about 230km (140 miles) southwest of the capital, Tehran.

Before and after images captured on 18 and 19 June show severe damage to the main dome of the reactor with a large hole clearly visible in the top of the structure.

Image source, Maxar Technologies

The images released by Maxar also show damage to a number of towers and structures at the complex.

At least two towers appear partially damaged while two structures in their vicinity seem to be almost entirely destroyed.

Image source, Maxar Technologies

Matt Murphy
BBC Verify senior journalist

Our open-source intelligence researchers monitoring recent Israeli airstrikes in Iran have been searching for new footage posted online, but very little new information has emerged from the country over the past 24 hours.

Part of the reason for this could be the ongoing internet restrictions imposed by the communications ministry in Tehran, which says Israel has been using the "communication network for military purposes".

We regularly work to verify material from social media posts to establish what is happening on the ground in Iran as BBC journalists cannot operate freely in the country.

Most mainstream social media platforms - including X, Facebook and YouTube - are banned in Iran. Iranians often try to get around this by using virtual service providers to access the internet, but Netblocks, an internet monitoring organisation, told BBC Verify that authorities have been restricting access to these services for several days.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

BBC Verify is dedicated to examining the facts and claims behind a story to try to determine whether or not it is true - whether that’s a political statement, a video shared on social media, or images from a war zone.

And we’re also keen to hear from you - is there something you think we should investigate? We're particularly interested in claims you have heard or seen that maybe don’t seem right.

Or perhaps you’ve come across something online and want to know if it was created using AI or even a deepfake.

You can send your suggestions to the team here.

Jake Horton
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Reuters

Two experts who were asked by BBC Verify to assess images showing the aftermath of the Iranian missile strike at the Soroka Hospital in southern Israel have told us it looks like the strike was a direct hit.

As we reported earlier, we sent aftermath footage to several munitions experts to assess the damage.

Israel says the hospital took a direct hit from the missile, while Iran says its target was a nearby military site and that the hospital was affected by a “blast wave”.

Trevor Lawrence, explosives expert at the UK's Cranfield University, told us: “The video of the building shows extensive damage to the top but relatively little damage to the sides, which would suggest a direct hit rather than the effect of an adjacent blast.”

Justin Bronk, senior analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, agreed it “looked like a direct impact on the roof”.

Ben Chu
BBC Verify policy and analysis correspondent

Image source, House of Commons

Unveiling the government’s 10-year infrastructure strategy, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones told the House of Commons that Labour is investing an additional £120bn over this Parliament compared with the plans set out by the Conservatives at Spring Budget 2024.

We can check this by looking at the spreadsheet produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), external, the government's official forecaster, showing infrastructure spending plans at each fiscal event.The OBR’s latest forecast in the five years to 2029-30 shows cumulative planned infrastructure spending of £605bn.

For Jeremy Hunt’s final budget for the Conservatives in March 2024, the OBR records cumulative planned capital spending in the four years to 2028-29 of £392bn.

But the OBR does not record a forecast for 2029-30, as this was beyond the forecast period at the time of the March 2024 budget.

Comparing the four years to 2028-29, the new government has allocated an additional £87bn compared with what the previous administration planned.

It’s possible to get close to the government’s estimate of £120bn extra capital spending relative to the last government by assuming that the Conservative would have kept capital spending frozen in cash terms in 2029-30 and comparing the five years.

But this is based on an assumption, not the previous government’s actual plans as recorded by the OBR.

Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

Since first thing this morning we’ve been authenticating footage and images showing the aftermath at a hospital damaged by an Iranian missile in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.

Israel says the hospital took a direct hit from the missile, while Iran says its target was a nearby military site and that the hospital was affected by a “blast wave”.

As usual we reverse image-searched the photos to check they hadn’t been posted online at an earlier date. We did not find any matches when we ran checks on all three of them below.

The first verified image you can see was taken from a video showing smoke billowing from the roof of the hospital. We confirmed this image using reverse search and weather analysis.

The next image shows the damage inside the hospital, which we matched to historic images of the hospital’s interior we found on Facebook.

The bottom one shows people evacuating the hospital following the strike. We identified the location by matching the distinctive purple, white and yellow flower acrylics on the wall with images of the hospital’s interior on Google Maps.

Daniel Wainwright
BBC Verify

Another story being followed by BBC Verify today is the latest data on planning permission for housing in England - which has fallen to another record low.

There were 7,027 permissions for housing granted by local authorities between January and March.

This is down more than 10% on the same months in 2024 (7,870). Each permission granted can refer to anything from a single home to a large housing development.

However, the proportion of housing applications refused is at its lowest since 2013 with 23.5% turned down. A year earlier, it was 30%.

Data published by the government, external shows the number of individual homes granted permission in the year ending March 2025 also fell below one million for the first time since 2015.

Not all homes granted permission actually get built.

Planning permission is one of the earliest indicators of whether housebuilding in England can ramp up enough to deliver the 1.5 million homes the Labour manifesto promised by the end of this Parliament.

And the overall number of planning applications received by councils in general was up 6% in a year - although this is not broken down into homes and other types of use.

You can see the figures for your area in our interactive housing tracker.

Image source, 2025

Matt Murphy
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Netblocks

Iran’s communications ministry announced yesterday that it had restricted internet access across the country, alleging that Israel had been using the "communication network for military purposes".

Analysts at the internet monitoring organisation Netblocks said that the near complete blackout has continued on Thursday morning, with restrictions on access now approaching 20 hours.

Isik Mater, Netblocks' director of research, told BBC Verify that a limited amount of access has been maintained, but said it was unclear who was able to use it.

Mater also said that the group has had contact with some internet users in Iran who have been evading restrictions by using Starlink - the satellite technology company controlled by Elon Musk.

Starlink provides internet services via a network of satellites, allowing subscribers to bypass restrictions on domestic networks.

However, users need to have access to a dish - or terminal - to connect to the satellite array.

While Tehran has formally banned Starlink terminals, analysts have estimated that thousands of units may have been smuggled into the country by Iranian citizens in recent years.

Jake Horton
BBC Verify

We’ve been assessing footage showing the aftermath of what the Israeli military says was an Iranian missile strike at a hospital in southern Israel this morning.

Israel says the Soroka site was directly hit - but Iranian state media has reported that authorities there say military infrastructure next to it was struck and the hospital was damaged “by the blast wave”.

We’ll be putting verified video and images of the aftermath to munitions experts and asking them to assess what happened.

Our team has verified a video of the site’s exterior that shows smoke rising from the roof which appears to have partially collapsed.

There are also images coming in from picture agencies and the BBC is deploying reporters to the scene who will be sending us more footage of the site.

Once we have expert analysis of what exactly the damage tells us about the strike we’ll bring it to you.

Peter Mwai and Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify

Image source, X

As well as images from Soroka Hospital in Beersheba in southern Israel, we’ve been looking at the moment of strikes and their aftermath in Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv, about 60 miles (100km) to the north.

One video shows multiple trails and explosions over the very identifiable skyline of the city before smoke rises from an impact among the skyscrapers.

Other videos, filmed at street level and a residential balcony, show the degree of damage to several buildings on Zeev Jabotinksy Street, including the Twin Towers.

In every instance, the buildings we can see were matched to images already online to make sure of the location, and each video had frames reverse-searched - essentially asking Google to tell us every copy it has cached of videos with those frames - to make sure they are from this morning.

Image source, X

The Fordo nuclear facility is an enrichment plant hidden away in a mountainside south of Tehran.

Iran insists Fordo is for civilian purposes only but Israel says it threatens its survival. The site is vital to Iran’s nuclear ambitions - and Israel’s attempts to dismantle them.

The plant is believed to be deeper underground than the Channel Tunnel connecting the UK and France. For this reason it’s remained out of reach of Israel’s weaponry and only the US is considered to have a bomb that might be powerful enough to destroy Fordo - a move that could dramatically widen a Middle East war.

Our team has put together a visual guide of the secretive site, mapping its location in the mountains and what’s believed to be the layout inside the facility.

You can scroll through the guide here.

Kayleen Devlin
BBC Verify senior journalist

We’ve been verifying videos posted on social media after the Israeli military said an Iranian missile hit the Soroka Hospital in the city of Beersheba earlier this morning.

Israel says it was a direct hit on the hospital, but Iranian state media reported the main target was a nearby military site. It added that any damage to the hospital was caused by the blast wave. We’re working to verify that statement.

We’ve authenticated videos uploaded from within the hospital which show smashed glass inside the building as well as fallen ceiling tiles and broken doors.

We were able to match some of the design features seen in today’s footage with older images available online of the hospital interior. In one video posted this morning the interior decoration and shape of the walls matched an image taken from inside the medical complex in 2023.

We’ll continue to verify videos that come in throughout the day.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Welcome to BBC Verify Live - our daily page bringing you updates on the work of the BBC's specialists in verification, fact-checking, tackling disinformation and data journalism.

Since first reports began emerging that an Iranian missile had hit a hospital in southern Israel the team has been checking through online sources for verifiable information about the impact of the strike.

Looking through what's been seen so far we know that the strike has caused extensive damage to the Soroka facility in Beersheba - so we'll be assessing the scale of the damage and which parts of the facility have been affected.

The state-run Iranian national news agency has said the missile was aimed at a military complex near the hospital and any damage was the result of the blast wave. We will be working to check this claim.

Despite a near-total internet blackout in Iran we'll also be looking into overnight attacks there by the Israeli Air Force which says it targeted elements of the country's nuclear programme.