Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

We will be closing this live page shortly, but you can find more from our teams in London and Washington DC across the BBC this evening. Take a moment to scroll back on this page to read about what we’ve been working on today.

US President Donald Trump has suggested he’ll send National Guard troops to Chicago - although he hasn’t said how many and when. We’ve looked into what legal powers the president has to do this and the limitations he may face. We’ve dug into the data to see how violent crime in Chicago compares with other US cities and examined how the city’s murder rate has changed over the last decade.

As the UN and other aid groups travel by donkey to reach the remote Sudanese settlement swept away by a landslide, we’ve assessed what satellite images and on-the-ground footage can tell us about the extent of the damage and the possible death toll.

Plus, we’ve been monitoring satellite images of Gaza to track the destruction of buildings there as a new Israeli offensive intensifies.

We’ll be back with more from BBC Verify on Monday morning.

Sherie Ryder and Fridon Kiria
BBC Verify and BBC Monitoring

We’ve been investigating a video posted by the Russian defence ministry on its Telegram channel yesterday of a strike, claiming to be targetting the ‘preparation and launch of a long-range UAV of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Chernihiv region’.

A UAV is an unmanned aerial vehicle, better known as a drone.

The footage shows a group of at least eight stationary white vehicles at a road junction before there is a large explosion nearby.

We’ve pinpointed the road on Google maps, along with fields and forest surrounding the immediate area, to establish the exact location.

The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) says two of their Ukrainian employees were killed in a strike in the same area. We’ve shown the Russian footage to the DRC and its country director for Ukraine, Julian Zakrzewski, has confirmed it shows their vehicles at the scene as his staff were clearing mines.

He went on to describe the strike as a “serious violation of international humanitarian law”.

A photograph of the scene shared by Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, head of the Chernihiv City Military Administration, shows the aftermath of the strike. White vehicles can be seen in the foreground andwith black smoke in the background. The logo of the DRC is visible on the bonnet of one of the vehicles.

Head of the Chernihiv Regional State Administration Chaus Viacheslav has posted on Facebook that two employees of the Danish Council of Refugees Humanitarian Mining Mission were targeted.

Peter Mwai and Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify

Earlier on today we brought you a comparison of satellite images taken before and after Sunday’s landslide in Sudan's Darfur region.

This comparison allowed us to assess the impact of the landslide which appears to have destroyed a group of about seven buildings at the convergence of two channels of mud flow in the village of Tarseen.

Pictures posted on social media by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) show how this destruction looks on the ground.

We can clearly see where the two channels of mud flowed down a steep incline leaving significant amounts of rock and earth at the bottom of the channels where the seven buildings once stood.

Image source, Sudan Liberation Movement/Army

This area of the Marra Mountains is very hilly and prone to landslides.

Through further analysis of satellite images from March 2025 and this week after the rainfall, we have identified two further locations where landslides have occurred.

There do not appear to have been any settlements in these areas.

UN deputy humanitarian co-ordinator for Sudan Antoine Gérard, told BBC Verify that representatives are still travelling to the Marra Mountains and will not arrive until tomorrow at the earliest. The village is sufficiently remote that it can only be reached by donkey or on foot. Until then, Gérard says the UN cannot update its previous estimated death toll of 370 people.

A further 150 people have been displaced from Tarseen and neighbouring villages as a result of the landslide, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Sebastian Vandermeersch and Matt Murphy
BBC Verify

Israeli strikes and demolitions have destroyed dozens of buildings in areas of Gaza City, satellite images show, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its offensive has established control over 40% of the city.

Satellite images show that significant damage has already occurred in Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun and Tuffah neighbourhoods in recent weeks. The photos show that dozens of buildings in the city were levelled between August and September.

In Sheikh Radwan - a neighbourhood located about three kilometres from Gaza City centre - a number of buildings have been wiped away. BBC Verify previously geolocated footage of strikes carried out by the IDF to the area on 29 August.

BBC Verify also geolocated footage of an explosion which levelled dozens of high-rise buildings as part of a demolition in the adjacent Jabalia area.

And in the Tuffah neighbourhood images also appear to show fresh tracks left by armoured vehicles crossing through a cemetery, where more than 3,000 troops killed fighting for the British Empire in World War One are buried. The cemetery has already been heavily damaged by bombardments earlier in the conflict, with a crater left by a previous strike also visible.

In a statement to BBC Verify, the IDF said it was "locating and destroying terror infrastructures embedded, among other things, inside buildings".

• You can read the full story here

Jake Horton
BBC Verify senior journalist

US President Donald Trump has called Chicago a “killing field” - so how many homicides have there been in the city in recent years?

For the whole of 2024, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) recorded 591 homicides, external.

So far this year, through to the end of August, it has recorded 278 homicides, external - down by a nearly a third compared with the same period last year.

The FBI reported a lower number of homicides - 461 last year - which US crime analyst Jeff Asher says is because the CPD has under-reported this type of crime to the federal agency.

FBI data also shows Chicago’s homicide rate declining in recent years - although it has fluctuated over the last decade.

Last year there were about 17 homicides per 100,000 people - down from about 19 in 2023 and 23 the year before that.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Earlier we reported on what we can see from satellite images showing the impact of last Sunday’s landslide in western Sudan.

Click play below to see how using images taken before the landslide and afterwards helped us report on the impact on people living near where it happened.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Since Israel announced plans to occupy Gaza City we've been monitoring satellite imagery around the city for any signs of military activity.

New images provided by the specialist satellite firm Planet yesterday show that several groups of Israeli military vehicles stationed near Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood have moved in recent days and a large number of buildings in the area have been demolished.

Yesterday Israel announced it now controls 40% of Gaza City having said it will seize and occupy the Strip’s largest urban area.

The image also shows that a school building which had been surrounded by tanks and diggers has now been demolished. Footage of the detonation was shared on social media by prominent Palestinian X user Younis Tirawi earlier this week.

Around 1.5km to the north-east two other smaller groups of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armoured vehicles can be seen. The image above shows the demolition of nearby buildings has taken place in recent days.

The arrival of the IDF vehicles last month coincided with the dismantling of several camps for displaced people in the immediate vicinity.

It is not immediately clear from the imagery where the Israeli military has moved on to.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

As well as examining whether US President Donald Trump is legally allowed to deploy federal troops to Chicago, BBC Verify has also been looking into his claim that the city is a “killing field”.

We’ve been examining what the figures show about crime in Chicago and how it compares to other US cities.

There were about 540 violent crimes recorded per 100,000 people in Chicago in 2024, which is the last full year of data published by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), external.

Homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault are all included in the FBI’s measure of violent crime.

Chicago’s violent crime rate has roughly halved compared with the years leading up to the Covid pandemic and fell 11% last year from 2023 levels.

By comparison, Chicago’s violent crime rate last year ranked near the bottom of US cities with populations larger than 500,000 (29th out of 37 cities), according to FBI data.

Detroit, Baltimore and Kansas City had the highest rates with more than 1,500 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

In Washington DC last year - the first city Trump has targeted for his crime crackdown - it was 926 per 100,000.

However, some crime analysts have cautioned against ranking cities’ crime and murder rates.

Jeff Asher, the co-founder of a US-based data analytics firm, told us: “Because of the way different city borders are drawn can make it very challenging to compare and not every agency reports crime data the same way each year”.

The FBI also cautions against using its crime statistics to create rankings.

Peter Mwai and Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify

We have been analysing satellite imagery of western Sudan to get a better idea about the impact of a landslide on Sunday.

Uncertainty remains over how many people were killed in the remote Marra Mountains of Sudan's Darfur region. The armed group in control of the area, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), initially said more than 1,000 people died. The United Nations has estimated there were 370 deaths.

Sudan’s Ministry of Health has since issued a statement, external saying it believes only two people were killed.

Independently verifying the landslide’s impact and death toll has been made more challenging by the remote location where it happened near to the village of Tarseen.

By comparing satellite images taken in March with those captured after the landslide this week, we’ve identified about seven buildings, along with two additional structures without roofs, that were washed away at the convergence of two channels of the mud flow.

Two groups of buildings on either side of this settlement appear to have been unaffected.

Pictures and videos posted on social media by the SLM/A show that rescue efforts have been concentrated in this area.

We have also confirmed an image shared by the armed group showing people gathered around what appears to be freshly dug burial mounds. We have counted about 40 freshly dug areas of soil of a size consistent with a grave. It’s possible that more than one body has been buried under each of these mounds. In a corresponding video, the people gathered around seem to be saying prayers.

Using the satellite imagery we can see the spot where these mounds are now located was not disturbed by the landslide, which further suggests this is a burial site dug in the days after it occurred.

The scale of this presumed burial site suggests the death toll may be lower than SLM/A’s 1,000 figure, although we can’t confirm whether there are additional gravesites in the area or whether there are more bodies yet to be recovered.

Additional verification by Emma Pengelly

Image source, Sudan Liberation Movement/Army

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.

US President Donald Trump has said "we're going in" when asked about a possible deployment of the National Guard to Chicago.

The president has claimed crime is out of control in the city, even though FBI data shows the murder rate has been falling in recent years.

Trump has already deployed the National Guard to Washington DC - BBC Verify's Nick Beake looks at whether he can do the same in Chicago.

Nick Beake
BBC Verify correspondent, reporting from Washington DC

Image source, Reuters

US President Donald Trump has suggested he’ll send National Guard troops to Chicago - without giving details of timings or troop numbers.

We’ve been talking to some top US law professors about what powers he could use there and the limitations he may face.

Trump can’t replicate what he did in Washington DC where he was able to declare a “crime emergency” because DC is not a US state.

Chicago, though, is in the state of Illinois.Legal experts say a state’s governor may be expected to request the National Guard during severe civil unrest but Illinois’ current governor - Democrat JB Pritzker - has said troops are not welcome.

The president’s powers are limited by a 150-year-old law called the Posse Comitatus Act.

This says he cannot generally use federal troops for domestic policing and may only do so in “cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress”.

This week a federal court in California warned Trump ran the risk of "creating a national police force with the president as its chief" as it ruled that the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles in June after ICE protests was unlawful.

The judge also blocked the Trump administration from using the military to fight crime in the state. So any White House plan for Chicago could be tested in the courts.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Good morning and welcome to the live page where we post updates on our role verifying material, checking facts, analysing data and tackling disinformation.

Friday on BBC Verify looks like this:

• Our US team has been examining what authority President Donald Trump has to send National Guard troops to Chicago. We've spoken to legal experts about whether he has the power to do so and if the data backs up his claim that crime in the city is out of control
• BBC Verify specialists have been looking into an apparent Russian strike yesterday in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region that the Danish Refugee Council says killed two people working on one of its de-mining operations. Russia said it struck a launch point for drones
• Elsewhere we’re continuing to analyse satellite imagery from Sudan after Sunday’s landslide. By comparing images taken before and afterwards we can assess whether people living nearby were caught in the landslide

And with Israel’s military saying it now controls 40% of Gaza City we’re looking at satellite imagery and social media posts to get an idea about the progress of its operation to seize and control the area.