Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

We’ve spent much of today focused on the US military build-up in the Gulf. Here’s a recap of what we’ve been working on.

We used publicly available flight-tracking data to update what we know about US military hardware in the region. The military build-up comes after the Trump administration began putting pressure on Iran over its nuclear plans and the violent crackdown on January’s protests.

Today, we also used an aircraft messaging system to reveal that a US air base in Germany is now operating round-the-clock.

Elsewhere we’ve confirmed Ukrainian reports of drone attacks on its rail network and got expert views on the kind of munition used in an Israeli air strike on a camp for displaced people in Gaza.

Join us tomorrow for more from the BBC Verify team in London, Delhi and Nairobi.

Kayleen Devlin
BBC Verify senior journalist

Following the interception of a vessel suspected of carrying narcotics by Estonian authorities, a maritime security expert has told BBC Verify that these tactics are “gaining traction across Europe” and are likely to continue.

Baltic Spirit was boarded in Tallinn Bay on Tuesday, following suspicions the 188-metre container ship was being used for drug smuggling, according to the Estonian authorities.

The vessel is not subject to EU or other international sanctions and has since been cleared to continue on to Russia, after officials said no narcotics were found.

Image source, MarineTraffic

The interception comes amid a broader shift in European maritime enforcement.

BBC Verify has been tracking the recent movement of shadow fleet oil tankers associated with Russia and Venezuela in European waters, as well as high-profile seizures by France and the US, in recent weeks.

Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said Nordic and Baltic states had already been detaining vessels prior to the recent seizures, but that “this heightened environment creates momentum to sustain these actions”.

“Whilst the detention of the Baltic Spirit was based on drug smuggling-related suspicions and not shadow fleet activity, vessel interceptions are gaining traction across Europe and we should expect more to follow,” said Erausquin.

Peter Mwai
BBC Verify senior journalist, reporting from Nairobi

We have been looking at reports from medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) about a hospital it operates in South Sudan being hit by an air strike Tuesday night.

MSF has accused the South Sudanese army of carrying out the strike on the facility as the “only armed party with the capacity to perform aerial attacks”.

In a statement, MSF, said the main warehouse of the hospital in Lankein, an area of Jonglei state in the north of the country, was “destroyed during the attack and we lost most of our critical supplies for providing medical care”.

The images we have verified show buildings and a huge tent having collapsed, with concrete, crates and other debris strewn around.

Image source, Medecins sans Frontieres

The army has been engaged in heavy fighting for control of key areas in Jonglei state which were previously under the control of opposition forces, led by the suspended First Vice-President Riek Machar.

Machar has been accused of plotting to overthrow President Salva Kiir while in being part of the government and has been charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity, all of which he denies.

There are concerns that renewed fighting could reignite a full-blown civil war, as the rivalry between the pair splits South Sudan’s two largest ethnic groups - with Kiir being from the Dinka community and Machar from the Nuer.

Tom Gould
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Facebook

The Israel Defense Forces said yesterday it had killed Muhammad Issam Hassan al-Habil - who it alleged was the Hamas cell leader responsible for the death of a captive Israeli soldier.

Al-Habil was targeted in an air strike in Gaza City’s al-Shati camp. Video shared on social media and verified by BBC Verify shows the apparent aftermath of the attack as locals pick through the rubble amid dust and screaming.

Local journalist Wassef Jawda reported on Facebook that the strike took place in al-Shati’s al-Balakhia area, near the Boraq taxi office, which OpenStreetMap places just over 100m (330ft) from the camp’s United Nations-run school.

We matched the collapsed buildings and cleared rubble seen in the video with the latest high-resolution satellite imagery of the area. We’ve also matched this location to drone footage released by the IDF when it announced it had killed al-Habil.

Lucy Dady
BBC Verify data journalist

The number of teenagers killed by knives or other sharp instruments in England and Wales has fallen by about 60%, new data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed, external.

The number of teenage homicide victims aged between 13 and 19 killed by sharp instruments was 22 in the 12 months to March 2025, compared to 54 in the 12 months to March 2024.

This fall in knife-related deaths has driven the number of all teenage homicide victims to almost halve from 66 to 34, reaching its lowest level since March 2013.

We reported last week that repeated falls over the last three years have brought the number of homicides to the lowest level in 50 years.

So this detailed breakdown of the types of attacks and who falls victim to them helps us to better understand the trends behind that fall.

Matt Murphy
BBC Verify senior journalist

BBC Verify journalists have been carefully combing through thousands of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein published by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Friday.

While doing a general searching of the Epstein files for evidence of interactions with public figures, our reporters found images and one video file containing nudity and where the victims are clearly identifiable.

We contacted the DoJ and gave them the specific file names on Wednesday but have not yet had a response as to why they were not redacted.

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that its journalists had separately discovered 40 images containing nudity.

Since then, the DoJ has removed thousands of files from its database.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

We’ve been speaking to weapons experts about the kind of munition used in an Israeli attack in southern Gaza yesterday.

Israel’s military (IDF) said a strike in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza was in response to what it said were “terrorists” firing on troops on Wednesday. It said it “regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians” and added it used “precise munitions” to mitigate harm.

One of the videos we verified shows an Israeli military helicopter firing a munition over al-Mawasi on the Gaza coast. The area is packed with tents for displaced people. Pictures posted by journalists in al-Mawasi showed part of a munition among destroyed tents.

At least 20 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday, including two children and a paramedic in al-Mawasi, according to hospital officials in Gaza.

Image source, Abdallah F.s. Alattar/Anadolu via Getty Images

Three experts agreed this fragment is consistent with the AGM-114 Hellfire missile which is used by Israeli AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.

“It’s a highly precise system with radar-guided and laser beam-tracking versions, with the latter being most likely in this case,” Justin Crump, CEO of the risk consultancy Sibylline, told us.

Justin Bronk, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “Depending on the variant, the Hellfire can cause lethal injuries at distances of around 50m.”

Benedict Manzin, Middle East and Africa lead analyst at Sibylline, said typically this type of missile “has a kill radius of around 15m and a wounding radius of 20m”.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

We’ve been reporting today on the arrival of more US military hardware in the Middle East, as diplomatic tensions between Iran and the US remain high. Here’s a recap of what BBC Verify has been tracking over the last week:

The team has analysed satellite imagery showing that a dozen F-15 fighter jets, an MQ-9 Reaper combat drone and several A-10C Thunderbolt II ground attack aircraft have arrived at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

We’ve followed a guided-missile destroyer ship, USS Delbert D Black, as it sailed through the Suez Canal in Egypt from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and a US Navy MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone operating over the Gulf last week.

And alongside the E-11A communications aircraft we reported on earlier, we’ve also kept tabs on P-8 Poseidon and E-3G Sentry surveillance and reconnaissance planes that have also been moved into the region.

Emma Pengelly and Ghoncheh Habibiazad
BBC Verify and BBC Persian

We’re checking reports of two vessels being seized in the Gulf by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency shared an interview with one of the corps’ naval commanders who alleged the two vessels were part of a fuel smuggling network. He added they were intercepted near Iran’s Farsi Island before being transferred to Bushehr, an Iranian port city about 65 nautical miles north-east.

According to Tasnim, more than one million litres of smuggled fuel was found on board the vessels and 15 foreign crew members were detained.

We’re attempting to verify these reports by checking tracking sites like MarineTraffic to see if we can find the ships’ locations. In particular we’re looking for vessels that have noticeably changed course. We’re also in touch with maritime analysts for their insights into what has happened.

We’ll try to bring you more on this story when we have further details and have heard back from experts.

Peter Mwai
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, National Police of Ukraine

We have verified photos posted online showing the aftermath of a reported Russian drone attack on a train station in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region.

The images show damage to buildings and a train at the railway station in Voronizh, a town about 25 miles (40km) from the Russian border.

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said in a post earlier today on Telegram that Russia had attacked railway infrastructure in the Sumy region and shared images of some of the damage.

Ukrainian national police force also posted images of the aftermath, including one where we can see a fire still burning in one of the damaged buildings. The other pictures show train carriages with windows blown out and a locomotive with extensive damage.

The train attack was part of a wave of more than 180 drones and missiles launched by Russia at Ukraine overnight, according to a post on X from President Volodymyr Zelensky.

BBC Verify has been monitoring Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure in recent months, which have targeted energy facilities and left millions without power in freezing winter temperatures.

Becky Dale and Matt Murphy
BBC Verify

Image source, US Department of Justice

Unredacted images and videos showing nudity released in the Epstein files have been online for days despite US officials being warned about failures in redaction.

The files seen by BBC Verify are among thousands of documents lawyers say they have discovered that contain identifying information about dozens of Jeffrey Epstein's victims.

Victims groups first spoke out about the issue at the weekend when the New York Times reported nearly 40 separate images had been published as part of the Epstein files on Friday.

"I'm heartbroken for the girls whose information was released," Ashley Rubright, a survivor of Epstein's abuse, told the BBC. "That's such a huge violation of one of the most horrible moments of their lives."

On Tuesday, a New York judge said the Department of Justice (DoJ) had agreed to quickly fix the issue after victims called for the website to be shut down until names and images could be properly redacted.

But BBC Verify found independently that a number of images of identifiable people were online on Wednesday.

You can read our full story here.

Joshua Cheetham and Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify

As we reported in our previous post we have been following the movement of US military jets in recent days as part of our work monitoring the build-up of American forces in the Middle East.

Spangdahlem Air Base, a large Nato facility in Germany operated by the US Air Force (USAF), is now operating round-the-clock, according to a message sent to an American transport plane.

A text communication sent to a USAF C-17 transport plane - RCH858 - flying from Germany to Saudi Arabia yesterday detailed that ETAD, the airport code for Spangdahlem, “is currently open 24 7 due to tempo”.

The message was delivered to the jet by the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (Acars). The transmissions can be picked up by anyone with a suitable receiver on the ground.

Joshua Cheetham and Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify

We’ve been reporting on a significant build-up of US military assets in the Gulf as the Trump administration has been increasing the pressure on Iran over its nuclear plans and the violent crackdown on January’s protests.

A third US Air Force E-11A aircraft departed from Chania International Airport on the Greek island of Crete yesterday. It touched down about four hours later at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

These modified commercial jets act as a flying communications hub so US forces can share information quickly and securely across broad areas.

We told you about two of these planes arriving in the region last week.

“The most specialised aircraft show up last,” plane-tracking expert Steffan Watkins told us. “That they're showing up now shows they have work to do.”

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

We’re continuing to check what publicly available sources reveal about the US military’s build-up in the Middle East as tensions remain high between Washington and Iran.

Using flight and ship-tracking tools we can get a picture of what types of aircraft and ships are either in or heading for the region. We’ll bring you more on that shortly.

BBC Verify has found that unredacted images and videos showing nudity were released in the Epstein files and stayed online for days. Lawyers for Epstein’s victims have warned this has caused them "irreparable" harm. You can read our full report here.

With talks on ending the war now into a second day, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba says Russia has attacked railway infrastructure in the northern Sumy region. We’re looking to see if there is verifiable video of these strikes, or their aftermath, that show what’s been attacked.

Elsewhere we’re looking into reports of an explosion and fire on a cargo ship off the Russian city of St Petersburg. We’re looking at the latest ship-tracking data and checking if any images are being posted online to help us see what happened.