Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

That’s it for our live page today, but here’s a look back at what we’ve reported on:

• We fact-checked Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s claims about the asylum application grant rate in the UK
• We also published the results of an investigation into an Israeli strike on Gaza, which uncovered a previously unacknowledged strike in al-Mawasi
• Elsewhere on the international front, we verified air strikes in Ukraine and Lebanon, and a fire at an oil depot in the Russian city of Engels

That same oil depot was also hit in January this year. From a verification perspective, the Engels case provides a relevant example of why it's important to ensure that any footage we investigate is new, and not being recycled from an older incident at the same location.

Later this evening, you can look forward to a video from our Analysis Editor Ros Atkins, which explains everything we know so far about the mass drone attack that Ukraine carried out on Russia last Sunday.

You can keep up with all our videos, investigations and analysis at our dedicated page on the BBC website.

Merlyn Thomas
BBC Verify senior reporter

I’ve just been on BBC News Channel talking to Matthew Amroliwala about our new investigation which uncovered a previously unacknowledged Israeli strike in al-Mawasi in Gaza.

I explained just how unusual it is for the Israeli army to admit to an “error” - especially one that it described had “deviated” from its intended “target” and had “wrongfully hit“ an area.

Wesley Stephenson
BBC Verify

It’s nearly 20 years since the Glazer family took over the Manchester United Football Club. To mark the anniversary, we’ve been looking into the club’s finances over that time.

Our team has calculated that almost £1.2bn has been spent on debt interest, debt repayments, dividends and fees to the family. It is reasonable to argue that would not have done so in the absence of the Glazer takeover.

The story came after many weeks of painstakingly going through the club’s accounts and bond offers from the last two decades to build a picture of the club’s finances.

The club was bought using mainly money borrowed from hedge funds and as a result the club ended up with over £600m in debt. This in turn saw millions being spent on interest payments and debt repayments.

The Glazers have also benefitted personally from the club through dividend payments, payments to companies owned by the family and directors’ payments.

The club has seen benefits over the past 20 years. Commercial revenues have grown significantly and more than £2bn has been spent on players.

Fridon Kiria, Shruti Menon and Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Monitoring Russian Team and BBC Verify

Earlier, we verified footage of a large fire at a Russian fuel site. We’re now looking into footage of strikes on the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk.

In two of the videos we’ve verified, you can see three projectiles striking the city over the course of 12 seconds.

One of those videos was filmed from a high floor of a building looking north towards the centre of Lutsk.

A second video, taken at street level, shows projectiles flying overhead before they are seen exploding nearby.

In both cases, we‘ve been able to confirm the filming locations using street-level panoramas, freely available on Google, Yandex, and other global mapping sites.

A third video and a photograph show how these strikes damaged a tall building near a playground, which started a fire and destroyed a portion of the roof.

Lucy Gilder and Tamara Kovacevic
BBC Verify

We’ve been trying to get to the bottom of a claim about asylum applications that Kemi Badenoch made in a speech earlier.

Comparing the UK’s asylum grant rate with other countries, she said: “in some years, our approval rate for asylum applications was above 80%. Last year Japan’s was 2%.”

The highest grant rate - that we could find - for first decisions made on asylum applications was 76% in 2022 under the Conservatives.

Between 2001 and 2018 the average grant rate was 29%, according to the Home Office, external.

For the year ending in March 2025 - the most recent data available - the rate is 49%.

We asked the Conservative Party how they calculated the figure of over 80% and which years it applies to.

In Japan in 2024, only 190 people were granted asylum out of 12,373 who applied – a grant rate of 1.5%, external, , externala, externalccording to, external the Japanese governmen, externalt., external

So Badenoch is right that Japan has a very low rate of asylum grants, but this is unsurprising given that the country’s immigration system is considered restrictive. , external

Thomas Spencer, Paul Brown & Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Verify senior journalists

Image source, X

Israel carried out air strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight, saying it was targeting Hezbollah's drone production facilities. Our team has been working on getting a clearer picture of those strikes.

The Israeli military shared a post, external on X, pinning the intended targets on a map along with satellite images of the buildings themselves.

By cross-referencing this with satellite imagery and aftermath footage posted to social media, BBC Verify has geolocated two of the four sites.

Both are in the Hadath area of Lebanon’s southern Dahieh district and show entire buildings have collapsed.

A ceasefire has been in effect between Israel and Hezbollah for the last six months, although the IDF has carried out sporadic strikes during that time.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun described the strikes as a "flagrant violation of an international accord" while noting it had occurred "on the eve of a sacred religious festival [Eid al-Adha]".

• For context: Dahieh is often described as a Hezbollah stronghold. The term does not reflect the totality of the suburb – a densely packed residential area where other political parties operate and where not everyone supports Hezbollah – but the group certainly has a strong influence there

Ros Atkins
BBC News analysis editor

Image source, Security Service of Ukraine

As soon as the first drone footage was released, it was clear that Ukraine’s operation inside Russian territory this week was something out of the ordinary.

The attacks were on Sunday and through the week more information has emerged about the drone attacks that Ukraine launched at a number of military locations in Russia.

Ukraine itself wanted to talk it up. We heard from President Zelensky and the Ukrainian Secret Service, as well as seeing footage and stills that were released. Russia, too, made statements, with claims it had repelled a number of the attacks.

Through the week, BBC Verify has been analysing Ukrainian drone footage as well as satellite images of the targets identified by Ukraine and other video posted online. We published a report the day after the attacks - and our work has continued.

Our open-source intelligence experts, graphics team and video editors have continued to build-up a picture of what happened on Sunday - and how Ukraine carried out what it calls “Operation Spider Web”.

We’ll be posting a video later on today that explains everything we know so far about how that attack was carried out.

Richard Irvine-Brown, Paul Brown & Kumar Malhotra
BBC Verify senior journalists

We’re continuing to analyse footage that purports to show the aftermath of reported strikes in both Ukraine and Russia.

In Russia, we've been looking into reports that a fuel storage facility serving a military airfield in Engels in the Saratov region was struck early this morning.

There are several videos circulating online that appear to show thick, black smoke over Saratov.

We’ve verified three of these videos, confirming that the fire is located within an area of the fuel depot.

• Video one: This was filmed from a vehicle heading south along a road towards the site. From that vantage, we can see the fire is behind the trees at the end of the road. Close by is a chimney, which we have identified as being part of a factory to the north of the site
• Video two: This footage, filmed at dawn, shows two sources of fire, to the east and west sides of the depot
• Video three: Taken in full daylight, this video shows the fire is still burning in at least two spots, on opposite sides of the site

All three videos show the smoke blowing southwards, which matches the reported wind direction over Saratov this morning.

We’ve reverse-searched these videos and are confident they were not publicly available online before this morning.

Merlyn Thomas
BBC Verify senior reporter

While we were sifting through footage and trying to understand what unfolded in an incident where Palestinians were killed near an aid distribution centre in Rafah on Sunday, we came across a video which appeared to show a separate incident elsewhere.

In fact, we geolocated it to a spot 4.5km (2.8 miles) away in the nearby city of Khan Younis by matching a building in the background of the footage to Google satellite imagery.

It was only when approached by BBC Verify that the Israeli army admitted it had fired artillery towards a “target” which then “deviated” and “wrongfully hit the Mawasi area”.

The IDF didn’t provide evidence for these assertions but said the “deviation was caused as a result of technical and operational errors”.

• Continue reading our report on the Israeli strike in al-Mawasi area in Gaza

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, PA Media

We've been listening to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch make a speech this morning about illegal immigration. She's gone on to criticise the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) - which she says is making it harder for the UK to deport foreign criminals.

Badenoch is setting up a review into whether the UK should leave the ECHR - an international treaty set up in the 1950s which the UK signed up to.

The Conservatives have said they would aim to deport every foreign criminal from the UK if they became the governing party - but how many did they deport when they were last in government?

Between 2010 to 2019, removals averaged 5,500 a year. These removals decreased sharply around the time of the Covid pandemic, and only started to pick up again in 2023, external.

Government figures, external also show that, as of September 2023, there were about 11,800 foreign criminals subject to deportation who were living in the community after serving their prison sentences.

The latest figures show there were 5,154 removals of foreign criminals in the year ending March 2025.

Although this is up compared to the same period last year, external, removals are still down by a fifth compared with the peak year of 2016.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, AFP via Getty Images

We’re currently sifting through a large volume of footage showing the aftermath of reported strikes in both Ukraine and Russia.

In Ukraine:

• A building has been hit in the capital, Kyiv. At least three people were killed, according to the city’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko
• Further west, in the city of Ternopil, residents have reportedly been told to close their windows after an industrial facility was struck overnight. We’re reviewing several videos of the aftermath there

In Russia:

• We have confirmed a fire at an oil refinery in the city of Engels, in the Saratov region. The city is also home to an airbase and an ammunition storage area which was targeted in March - verified videos at the time showed a huge blast and fire

Our team is reviewing the footage and comparing it to publicly available satellite imagery to pinpoint the exact locations.

We’ll also keep an eye out for any new satellite images which may give a sense of the scale of damage.

Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Verify senior journalist

As we’ve previously reported, satellite imagery is an important tool in our work at BBC Verify as it gives us visual evidence from locations where access is either impossible or restricted.

It also provides a birds-eye view of an area of interest, for instance helping us monitor the extent of damage in a war zone over time.

Earlier this week, we used high-resolution satellite images of Russian airbases to analyse damage inflicted on multiple aircraft by Ukrainian drones.

While the footage we've verified shows real damage, in recent months (and with the rapid advancement in AI) we’ve also seen the rise of a new phenomenon as a tool of misinformation: AI-generated satellite imagery.

Here’s a very recent example shared online claiming to be satellite imagery documenting damaged Russian aircraft.

But this is fake, created using AI techniques.

We can establish this by zooming in to look at the detailed structure of individual aircraft. Multiple physical anomalies are visible, including asymmetrical wings, misaligned engines and other features that do not make physical sense.

BBC Verify has observed similar AI-generated and misleading satellite images shared in relation to news events from North Korea, Iran, and the Israel-Gaza war.

While authenticating generative AI content is increasingly becoming difficult, zooming in to spot inconsistencies and verifying sources are good places to start.

Johanna Chisholm
BBC Verify Live editor

Hello - welcome back to today's live feed where we're bringing you the latest updates from BBC Verify, including fact-checks, online open-source gathering, disinformation debunking and data journalism.

I've just been to our morning meeting and the main prospects for BBC Verify today are:

• Analysing AI-generated satellite imagery of Russian airbases that are being shared online
• Reviewing footage of multiple reported strikes in Russia and Ukraine overnight, including in Kyiv where at least three people were killed
• BBC Verify is also looking at footage of last night's Israeli strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs in Lebanon, which it says were targeting Hezbollah's drone production

Plus, we'll be monitoring Kemi Badenoch's speech later this morning, where the Conservative leader is expected to announce plans to set up a commission that would examine whether the UK should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).