Aisha Sembhi
BBC Verify journalist

We're closing BBC Verify Live’s coverage for the day shortly so here's a quick rundown of what we've covered:

The team has verified footage of armed men entering a camp in Syria holding thousands of people with alleged links to the Islamic State group, as well as a video of a man encouraging people to leave the camp.

The team who worked on the investigation into pictures of hundreds of people killed during Iran's violent crackdown on anti-government protests, which were leaked to BBC Verify, provided insight into how they went about verifying them.

Plus, our fact-checkers have been examining US President Donald Trump's address at the World Economic Forum. Their coverage has been feeding into the the main BBC News live coverage, which you can read here.

BBC Verify will also be publishing a full write-up of these claims we’ve fact-checked later on the BBC News website and app, so keep an eye out for that.

We will be back with more tomorrow.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Instagram/@osama.kahlout

We’ve been verifying videos shared on social media after reports came in of an Israeli strike on a vehicle Gaza killing three journalists.

Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence agency named the three journalists killed as Mohammed Salah Qashta, Abdul Raouf Shaat and Anas Ghneim, AFP reported. One of them, Abdul, previously worked for AFP as a photo and video journalist, AFP added.

In one video we have verified a group of men watch the smouldering wreckage of a vehicle and an emergency worker is also at the scene.

The remains of a university building on the horizon allowed us to confirm it was filmed south of Gaza City near the al-Zahra area.

In another video of the same wreckage, one part of the vehicle ruins has the logo of the Egyptian Relief Committee aid organisation on it, who the journalists are reported to have been working with.

Mohamed Mansour of the Egyptian Relief Committee told Reuters Israel had targeted a crew working with his organisation. “This crew was not firing rockets nor fighting the Israeli army,” he said.

The IDF said troops fired on suspects “who operated a drone affiliated with Hamas”. It added the details of the incident are under examination.

Merlyn Thomas, Shayan Sardarizadeh and Ghoncheh Habibiazad
BBC Verify and BBC Persian

While we investigated the distressing images which formed the basis for our new Iran investigation, we were also given glimpses into the chaos inside the mortuary.

One source, who we are not naming for their safety, told us they saw family members huddled around a screen where a slideshow of the victims' faces was displayed.

People were looking at the pictures to try and identify their loved ones.

They weren't prepared for the level of devastation they saw inside the mortuary, and said they saw victims ranging from as young as 12 or 13 to 60 and 70-year-olds. "It was just too much," they said.

Adam Durbin
BBC Verify Live senior journalist

Our fact-checking team are listening to US President Donald Trump's address at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

We're assessing the claims he's been making - you can find those fact checks in the main BBC News live page coverage.

Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

At Prime Minister’s Questions earlier, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said “the head of the armed forces warned that our military faces a £28bn shortfall” last week.

She was referring to a report in the Times that the UK’s Chief of Defence Staff Richard Knighton had warned the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at a Downing Street meeting before Christmas about a shortfall over the next four years.

A few days later, Knighton was asked about these reports, external when he appeared before a committee of MPs. He did not confirm the figure, describing it as “speculation in the media” and stressed the meeting being reported on was classified.

When pressed on whether there was a shortfall he said: “The cost of the programme depends on a whole bunch of assumptions that we might make, and ultimately it will be a matter for ministers to make those, based on the advice that I and others offer.”

When I asked Bee Boileau from the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank about the £28bn figure, she pointed out that we don’t yet have published plans for defence spending over the next four years, so it’s hard to assess whether there will be a shortfall.

Merlyn Thomas, Shayan Sardarizadeh and Ghoncheh Habibiazad
BBC Verify and BBC Persian

The team analysing the pictures taken from the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Centre were sent 392 close up photos of the victims. Some pictures were taken of the same body from different angles, and we were able to identify 326 separate victims.

However, sources told us they believed the true number of dead at the mortuary ran into the thousands.

Many photos showed unzipped body bags with papers laid close to their faces, identifying them by name, ID number or date of death. In some cases, we were told, the only identifier was a small possession they could find on the victim such as a bank card.

We spent hours verifying the images and then blurring the victims' faces as the original pictures of dead bodies are too distressing to show.

The leaked photos provide a small snapshot of the thousands believed to have been killed at the hands of the Iranian state.

Jake Horton and Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify

As we just reported, US President Donald Trump made several incorrect claims in a speech at the White House yesterday - but we also noted some new assertions which we hadn't checked before.

When repeating his claim about ending eight wars, this time Trump added: “No president has probably ever settled one war.”

Previous US presidents have successfully acted as mediators in ending wars, such as Bill Clinton in the 1995 Bosnia peace agreement.

Theodore Roosevelt became the first US president to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his role in ending a war between Russia and Japan.

And on domestic issues, Trump said: “Minnesota is a very corrupt place and the elections are totally corrupt. I feel I won it all 3 times.”

He lost the state of Minnesota in 2016, 2020 and 2024 by 1.5, 7.1 and 4.2 percentage points respectively - and there’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Jake Horton and Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify

Image source, Getty Images

US President Donald Trump held a press conference yesterday to mark the first year of his second term in office which lasted more than an hour.

BBC Verify has been fact-checking his speeches for years, and in his latest address we noticed at least 10 false claims which we’ve previously debunked.

For example, he said that the former president Joe Biden’s administration “had the biggest inflation in the history of our country”. We’ve examined this claim several times before, showing it was higher in the 1920s, 70s and 80s.

Trump also spoke about US fentanyl deaths, saying “we lost, I believe, 300,000 people last year”. This figure is significantly higher than the estimated 40,000 overdoses involving synthetic opioids recorded in the latest official figures.

He also repeated false claims on topics we've looked into before, including about:

• Gas prices
• Election fraud
• Crime in Washington DC
• Ending eight wars

Paul Brown, Ahmed Moneim and Lamees Altalebi
BBC Verify and BBC Arabic

Image source, X/@rudaw_arabic

We've just verified footage appearing to show a man encouraging a group of young people to leave the al-Hol camp in Syria, which holds thousands of people with alleged links to the Islamic State (IS) group.

The footage shows three children passing through an open gate. The man filming tells them to take the "opportunity" to leave through a second open gate which leads to a road outside of the camp.

Several individuals, some of whom appear to be wearing face veils, can already be seen walking away from the camp. The conversation is conducted in a number of different dialects, including classical Arabic, and ends with the three children running back into the camp.

The footage was filmed at the fence next to the camp's annex, which houses "third country" women and children who are not citizens of Iraq or Syria.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which has previously operated at the camp, has reported that "little to no movement" is permitted between the annex and the main camp, which houses Syrian and Iraqi nationals.

Merlyn Thomas, Shayan Sardarizadeh and Ghoncheh Habibiazad
BBC Verify and BBC Persian

Warning: this post contains graphic content which some readers might find distressing

Our team has been working on a story showing the brutality of Iran's crackdown on anti-government protesters as the internet blackout enters its third week. Hundreds of photos revealing the faces of those protesters have been leaked to BBC Verify.

Friday 9 January was one of the deadliest nights for protesters in Tehran so far. We identified labels on more than 100 victims, who had their date of death recorded, showed that same date.

The pictures, which are too graphic to show without blurring, reveal the bloodied, swollen and bruised faces of at least 326 victims - including 18 women.

The images, displayed in a south Tehran mortuary, are one of the only ways families have been able to identify their dead loved ones.

Many of the victims were too disfigured to be identified, we were told. Sixty-nine people had been labelled in Persian as John or Jane Doe, suggesting their identity was unknown when the photo was taken. Only 28 of the victims had labels with clearly visible names in the photos.

Read our full investigation here.

Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify journalist

This morning we’ve been looking into the seizure of another oil tanker by US forces in the Caribbean.

US authorities have released a video of the ship, named Sagitta, and various features on its deck are consistent with previous photos of this vessel available online.

It is unclear where exactly the vessel was seized. Signal from the ship’s onboard tracker was last received by MarineTraffic almost 80 days ago, when it was transmitting a location in the Baltic.

It is flagged to Liberia and its beneficial owner is listed as Sunne Co Ltd, based in China.

The Sagitta is currently sanctioned by the US, UK, EU, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UN.

TankerTrackers says the vessel exported fuel from Venezuela in August 2025 while using a “zombie alias”. This is a technique to hide a ship’s real identity by using the identity of another ship that has been scrapped, de-registered or sunk.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

We have verified video showing a convoy of armed men in vehicles entering al-Hol camp in north-eastern Syria, which is holding thousands of people with alleged links to the Islamic State (IS) group.

The footage was shared after troops from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) pulled out of al-Hol, following renewed clashes between them and forces loyal to the Syrian government.

The SDF has said it was "compelled" to leave the camp "due to the international indifference toward the issue of [IS]".

A BBC team who entered the camp in October last year were met with intimidation from residents.

The video was filmed from the back of a pick-up shortly after entering the camp at its western gate. It shows armed men shouting "Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) as residents of the camp rush towards the fences.

It is unclear from the footage who the forces entering the camp are. AFP has reported that “a large number of soldiers” from Syria’s army had entered the camp, and Syrian state media has posted photographs this morning of troops stationed at the eastern gate.

Since the footage emerged, a new ceasefire has been declared between the SDF and Syrian government.

Adam Durbin
BBC Verify Live senior journalist

BBC Verify is looking into the situation on the ground in Syria after videos emerged of armed men entering a camp holding thousands of people with alleged links to the Islamic State group. Al-Hol camp in the country’s north-east was controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, before the Kurdish-led group pulled out after recent clashes with Syrian government forces. We’ve verified footage of a convoy of vehicles entering al-Hol and are speaking to experts about what a change of who runs it might mean for the people held there.

We’re also examining footage of the US seizing another sanctioned oil tanker in the Caribbean. It is not clear exactly where the Sagitta was captured, but we've been able to establish the shadow fleet vessel's registration and ownership history.

Plus, our fact checkers are digging into claims made by Donald Trump last night in the White House, ahead of the US president’s appearance at the the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland later.