Thailand's prime minister has been removed by the Constitutional Court, plunging the country's politics into turmoil and dealing a blow to its most powerful political dynasty.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra was dismissed for violating ethics in a leaked June phone call, where she could be heard calling Cambodia's former leader Hun Sen "uncle" and criticising the Thai army, amid worsening border tensions with Cambodia.

The call, leaked by Hun Sen himself, damaged her reputation and critics accused her of undermining the country's army.

The ruling makes Paetongtarn, the daughter of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, the fifth prime minister to be removed from office by the court since 2008.

On Friday, the court's nine judges voted six to three against Paetongtarn, ruling that her actions had violated ethical standards expected of her office.

The court said that Paetongtarn possessed a "personal relationship" that "appeared to align with Cambodia" and dismissed her claims that the call was a "personal negotiation to... bring back peace without using violence".

In a ruling, it said "caused the public to cast doubt" on whether her actions "would benefit Cambodia more than the nation's interest".

In a brief press conference, Paetongtarn acknowledged the court's verdict but insisted she was trying to save lives.

Her call with Hun Sen came as tensions rose on the Thai-Cambodia border, which weeks later erupted into a five-day conflict in which dozens of people were killed and hundreds of thousands fled their homes.

Paetongtarn, 39, was thrust into the spotlight after the surprise dismissal of her predecessor Srettha Thavisin by the same court a year ago. She had only joined Pheu Thai in 2021 and became its leader in 2023.

Her replacement will be chosen by parliament, where her ruling Pheu Thai party has a thin majority.

A coalition partner had earlier quit her government, leaving her with only a slim majority as thousands of people protested in Bangkok to demand her resignation.

The powerful Shinawatra family have presided over several Thai governments - and Paetongtarn's removal is a blow to their political dynasty.

She becomes the third Shinawatra to have their premiership cut short: her father Thaksin was deposed by a military coup in 2006 and her aunt Yingluck was also removed by the Constitutional Court in 2014.

Despite his retirement from formal politics years ago, Thaksin remained hugely influential - though it's now unclear how much influence the Shinawatra name will now continue to bear.

The body of Israeli hostage Ilan Weiss has been recovered in an operation in the Gaza Strip, Israel's military has announced.

Weiss, 56, was killed during Hamas's attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

The remains of a second hostage, whose identity has not been released yet, were also recovered, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says.

Israel launched a massive offensive in Gaza following the attack in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken back to the territory as hostages.

After the latest announcement, 48 hostages remain in Gaza - 20 of whom Israel believes are still alive.

Ilan Weiss was killed while defending Kibbutz Beeri on the day of the attack. His body was taken to Gaza.

Weiss's wife, Shiri, and daughter, Noga, were taken hostage by Hamas on the same day. They were released during a temporary ceasefire in November 2023.

"Ilan showed courage and noble spirit when he fought the terrorists on that dark day," Israeli President Isaac Herzog said, before praising Weiss's family's "extraordinary strength in their struggle for his return".

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been facing strong domestic pressure to agree a deal that would enable the return of all hostages still in captivity.

Huge protests have been held demanding an end to the war, as Israel pushes ahead with its plan to take over Gaza City and eventually establish control over the entire Strip. Netanyahu argues the defeat of Hamas will secure the release of the hostages.

The country's military says it has begun the "initial stages" of its advance into Gaza City.

The IDF said a scheduled pause in military action which had been due to come into effect at 10:00 (07:00 GMT) would not apply to Gaza City. It said this was in "accordance with the situational assessment and directives of the political echelon".

In recent days, Israel has carried out air strikes on Gaza City and advised residents to make their way towards makeshift housing in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Since 14 August, the day the offensive was announced, about 20,000 people have been displaced to the south from Gaza City in addition to about 40,000 moving further north, according the UN's humanitarian affairs office.

Western countries - and the UN - have warned that an operation in an area of Gaza where more than a million people live would have devastating consequences.

Most of Gaza's population has been repeatedly displaced.

More than 90% of homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed and the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed.

Last week, a UN-backed body, which monitors hunger levels around the world, raised its food insecurity status in parts of Gaza to the highest and most severe - confirming famine for the first time. Israel denies there is starvation in the territory.

At least 62,966 Palestinians have been killed by Israel's military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Thailand's Constitutional Court strikes again, removing yet another prime minister from office.

The country's notoriously interventionist panel of nine appointed judges has ruled that Paetongtarn Shinawatra violated ethical standards in a phone call she had in June with the veteran Cambodian leader Hun Sen, which he then leaked.

In it, Paetongtarn could be heard being conciliatory towards Hun Sen over their countries' border dispute, and criticising one of her own army commanders.

She defended her conversation saying she had been trying to make a diplomatic breakthrough with Hun Sen, an old friend of her father Thaksin Shinawatra, and said the conversation should have remained confidential.

The leak was damaging and deeply embarrassing for her and her Pheu Thai party. It sparked calls for her to resign as her biggest coalition partner walked out of the government, leaving her with a slim majority.

In July, seven out of the nine judges on the court voted to suspend Paetongtarn, a margin which suggested she would suffer the same fate as her four predecessors. So Friday's decision was not a surprise.

Paetongtarn is the fifth Thai prime minister to be removed from office by this court, all of them from administrations backed by her father.

This has given rise to a widespread belief in Thailand that it nearly always rules against those seen as a threat by conservative, royalist forces.

The court has also banned 112 political parties, many of them small, but including two previous incarnations of Thaksin's Pheu Thai party, and Move Forward, the reformist movement which won the last election in 2023.

In few other countries is political life so rigorously policed by a branch of the judiciary.

In this case, it was the leaked phone conversation that sealed Pateongtarn's fate.

It is not clear why Hun Sen chose to burn his friendship with the Shinawatra family. He reacted angrily to a comment by Paetongtarn calling the Cambodian leadership's use of social media to push its arguments "unprofessional".

Hun Sen described it as "an unprecedented insult", which had driven him to "expose the truth".

But his decision caused a political crisis in Thailand, inflaming tensions over their border, which last month erupted into a five-day war that killed more than 40 people.

The Thai constitution now requires members of parliament to choose a new prime minister from a very limited list.

Each party was required to name three candidates before the last election, and Pheu Thai has now used up two, after the court's dismissal of Srettha Thavisin last year.

Their third candidate, Chaikasem Nitisiri, is a former minister and party stalwart, but has little public profile and is in poor health. The alternative would be Anutin Charnvirakul, the former interior minister whose Bhumjaithai party walked out of the ruling coalition, ostensibly over the leaked phone call.

Relations between the two parties are now strained, and Anutin would have to rely on Pheu Thai, which has many more seats, to form a government, which is hardly a recipe for stability.

The largest party in parliament, the 143 MPs who were formerly in the now-dissolved Move Forward and have reformed as The People's Party, has vowed not to join any coalition, but to remain in opposition until a new election is held.

A new election would appear to be the obvious way out of the current political mess, but Pheu Thai does not want that. After two years in office it has been unable to meet its promises to revive the economy.

For all of her youth, the inexperienced Paetongtarn failed to establish any real authority over the country, with most Thais presuming that her father was making all the big decisions.

But Thaksin Shinawatra seems to have lost his magic touch. Pheu Thai party's signature policy at the last election, a digital wallet which would put B10,000 ($308; £178) in the pocket of every Thai adult, has stalled, and been widely criticised as ineffective.

Other grand plans, to legalise casinos, and to build a "land-bridge" linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, have gone nowhere.

At a time when Thai nationalist sentiment has been fired up over the border war with Cambodia, the Shinawatra family's long-standing – though now broken – friendship with Hun Sen has heightened suspicion in conservative circles that they will always put their business interests before those of the nation.

The party's popularity has plunged, and it is likely it would lose many of its 140 seats in an election now.

For more than two decades it was an unbeatable electoral force which dominated Thai politics.

It is hard to see how it will ever regain that dominance.

A day of mourning has been declared in Kyiv after the second biggest aerial attack of the war so far killed at least 23 people, including four children.

The city's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said it was to honour the dead, as a massive recovery effort continues at the five-storey block of flats where 22 of the 23 were killed.

The attack has been widely condemned - the White House said President Donald Trump was "not happy" but not surprised, while European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Russia would "stop at nothing to terrorise Ukraine".

Meanwhile, EU defence ministers are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Friday to discuss military support for Ukraine.

The attack also damaged the EU's diplomatic mission and the British Council building in central Kyiv.

Speaking on the way into Friday's meeting, Lithuania's Defence Minister Dovilė Šakalienė said Russian President Vladimir Putin was "cheaply buying time to kill more people".

"Hopes of possible peace negotiations are at least naïve when we look at what is happening in Ukraine and what just happened [on Thursday]," she added.

Estonia's Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur said the best security guarantee for Ukraine would be membership of Nato.

Overnight from Thursday into Friday saw less fighting, although both Russia and Ukraine reported shooting down dozens of drones.

Kharkiv regional head Oleh Syniehubov said five settlements in his region had been attacked, with one person being killed in Kupyansk.

Trump had hoped to organise a summit involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin to bring an end to the war, but those efforts have since stalled.

Speaking after Thursday's attack, Zelensky said Moscow had chosen "ballistics instead of the negotiating table", and reiterated the need for "new, tough sanctions" on Russia.

Speaking after a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said it seemed unlikely now that a meeting between Putin and Zelensky would take place.

Israel struck Nasser Hospital at least four times during its deadly attack in southern Gaza on Monday, an analysis of new video footage by BBC Verify has found.

The attack, which has attracted international condemnation and widespread anger, reportedly killed at least 20 people, including five journalists.

Initial reports from Gaza said that Israel had struck the hospital twice, with the first blast followed nine minutes later by another which hit first responders and journalists who arrived at the scene.

But new analysis suggests the hospital was struck four times in total. BBC Verify and expert analysis found that two staircases were hit almost simultaneously in the first wave, and while what was thought to be a single later attack was in fact two separate strikes hitting the same place within a fraction of a second.

Israel does not allow international journalists to enter Gaza independently. BBC Verify identified the additional strikes by analysing dozens of videos provided by a freelancer on the ground and material filmed by eyewitnesses that circulated online.

In the first incident, an Israeli strike hit the exterior staircase on the hospital's eastern side at 10:08 local time (07:08 GMT), killing journalist Hussam Al-Masri who was operating a live TV feed for Reuters.

BBC Verify has now identified another previously unreported blast at a northern wing staircase at practically the same time, which was overshadowed by the "double-tap" strike on the eastern staircase.

New footage shows smoke rising and damage at both staircases, while emergency workers said the hospital's operating department was hit.

Other videos show an injured person being carried down the northern staircase and the hospital's nursing director holding shredded and bloodied clothing which he said was being worn by a nurse while she was working in the operating department when it was hit.

N R Jenzen-Jones - the director of Armament Research Services, an arms and munitions intelligence company - said the footage "appears to show interior damage consistent with a relatively small munition, including an entry hole that suggests a munition with a relatively flat trajectory".

Roughly nine minutes later, while dozens of first responders and journalists gathered on the eastern staircase, Israeli forces struck the facility again.

While the blast was documented by media at the time, frame-by-frame analysis of newly emerged footage clearly shows that two separate projectiles fired by Israeli forces hit the hospital milliseconds apart at an exposed stairwell where journalists and emergency workers had gathered.

Experts disagreed on the type of munition used in the third and fourth strikes.

Some munitions analysts with whom BBC Verify shared footage with identified the projectiles as Lahat missiles, a guided munition which can be fired from tanks, drones and helicopters. Several outlets in Israel have suggested that the munitions used against the hospital were fired by Israeli tanks stationed nearby.

The experts who spoke to BBC Verify said the blasts could not have been caused by a single tank, due to the quick succession in which the munitions hit the hospital.

"If these Lahats were fired from the ground, then at least two tanks would have been involved, as the interval between the two impacts is far too short," Amael Kotlarski, an analyst with the Janes defence intelligence company, said. "No tank loader could have reloaded that fast."

Meanwhile, Mr Jenzen-Jones said that the "impact of two projectiles at nearly the exact same moment suggests two tanks may have fired on the target simultaneously".

Although he said it wasn't possible to definitively identify the munitions used, the apparent physical characteristics and pattern of flight "suggest a 'multi-purpose' tank gun projectile, such as the Israeli M339 model".

Satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify show IDF forces 2.5km north-east of Nasser Hospital and within firing range on the day of the attack. Other armoured vehicles can also be seen nearby.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had no additional comment on the newly identified blasts when approached by BBC Verify.

Israel's narrative of the attack has evolved since Monday's attack. It initially said it had carried out a strike in the area of the hospital, saying that it "regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals " and that an initial inquiry would be opened as soon as possible, but provided no justification for the attack.

In the hours that followed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was responsible and that it "deeply regrets the tragic mishap".

On Tuesday, the IDF said an initial inquiry found that troops had identified a camera positioned by Hamas in the area of the hospital "used to observe the activity of IDF troops", without providing evidence.

The IDF has not yet acknowledged carrying out more than one strike on the hospital, amid allegations from some international legal experts that it may have violated international law.

Intentionally carrying out attacks on civilians which are "excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" is prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

"A reasonable attacker must expect scores of civilian casualties since a hospital is full of protected persons," Professor Janina Dill of Oxford University said.

Prof Dill added that the "mere presence of equipment that belongs to an adversary" does not mean a hospital or medical facility loses its protected status under the laws of war.

At least 247 journalists have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023, according to the UN, making it the deadliest conflict for reporters ever documented.

Israel's military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Almost 62,900 people have been killed in Gaza in the same period, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Investigators say that the attacker who opened fire on pupils as they were praying at a church in Minneapolis was "obsessed with the idea of killing children".

The attacker, who killed two children ages eight and 10 and injured 18 others, did not seem to have any specific motive, according to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara.

She "appeared to hate all of us", the chief said on Thursday, adding: "More than anything, the shooter wanted to kill children".

Officials have released few details so far about the suspect's background, but say she previously attended the church's school and had a mother who had worked there.

The suspect, identified as Robin Westman, is believed to have approached the side of the Annunciation Church, which also houses a school, and fired dozens of shots through the windows using three firearms. Police also found a smoke bomb at the scene.

Witnesses have described seeing children bleeding as they fled from the church, begging for help from strangers.

In a news conference on Thursday, acting US Attorney General for Minnesota Joseph Thompson said "the shooter expressed hate towards many groups, including the Jewish community and towards President Trump".

The killer left a note at the scene after taking their own life, officials said, but they added that a definitive motive may never be known.

"I won't dignify the attacker's words by repeating them, they are horrific and vile," said Mr Thompson.

Westman's name was legally changed from Robert to Robin in 2020, with the judge writing: "Minor child identifies as a female". However, some federal officials and police have referred to Westman as a man when discussing the attack.

Chief O'Hara told reporters that news outlets should stop using the killer's name, because "the purpose of the shooter's actions was to obtain notoriety."

He added that she, "like so many other mass shooters that we have seen in this country too often and around the world, had some deranged fascination with previous mass shootings".

US officials have warned for years that mass shooting can lead to copycat killings, as killers seek to become famous through their heinous crimes.

Several major news organisations have a policy of not identifying mass killers.

FBI Director Kash Patel has described the attack as "an act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology".

In a post on X, Patel said that the attacker "left multiple anti-Catholic, anti-religious references" written on guns and in notes uncovered by investigators.

"Subject expressed hatred and violence toward Jewish people, writing Israel must fall,' 'Free Palestine,' and using explicit language related to the Holocaust," he wrote.

The killer also "wrote a an explicit call for violence against President Trump on a firearm magazine".

In their news conference, officials confirmed that the attacker had previously attended the school. Her mother, Mary Grace Westman, previously worked at the school, and has so far not responded to law enforcement's attempts to contact her.

They also confirmed that three residences associated with the attacker, who was from suburban Minneapolis, have been searched by police.

They said that the church locked its doors before beginning its Mass service, likely saving many lives.

Officials added that the guns used in the attack were all legally purchased, that the killer did not appear on any government watchlist, and that police are not aware of any mental health diagnoses or treatments that she was receiving.

Witnesses and relatives of victims who spoke to the BBC have described harrowing scenes of violence.

Patrick Scallen, who lives near the church, said that he saw three children fleeing the building - one of them a girl with a head wound.

"She kept saying, 'please hold my hand, don't leave me', and I said I wasn't going anywhere."

Vincent Francoual, whose 11-year-old daughter Chloe was in the church when the shooting took place, said he tried not to panic after he heard the news.

He called it "sick" that children in the US are trained to prepare for mass shootings.

"We live in a country where we train kids what to do. And she did what she had to do," he said.

"Here it's a pattern. It's no longer a freak accident," he said of school shootings in the US.

"I told my wife that every morning, when we drop our kids, we don't know if she'd be back safe."

Mr Francoual, who is originally from France, said that Chloe is afraid to return to school or church.

In the wake of the attack, several lawmakers, including the Minneapolis mayor, have called for the state to enact a ban on assault weapons.

"There is no reason that someone should be able to reel off 30 shots before they even have to reload," said Mayor Jacob Frey, also calling for a ban on high-capacity ammo magazines.

"We're not talking about your father's hunting rifle here. We're talking about guns that are built to pierce armour and kill people."

Ukraine has come under heavy Russian bombardment overnight, with a child among three people killed in Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said early on Thursday.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack on Ukraine's capital was "massive" with military officials confirming at least 24 people had been injured.

A five storey-building collapsed in the Darnytski district and a fire had also been reported in a high-rise residential building in the neighbouring Dnipro district, the mayor added.

The wave of missiles comes after more than 100,000 Ukrainian homes were left without power by the latest Russian drone attacks on energy infrastructure, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday.

In a post on Telegram, Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv's military administration, said the child who was killed was a 14-year-old girl. At least five children had been injured in the latest drone strikes.

He noted more than 20 districts had been targeted, with many buildings including a kindergarten catching on fire.

Three and a half years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, fighting on the ground shows no sign of abating.

The latest international effort to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine was launched by US President Donald Trump earlier this month. He met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska and Zelensky with European leaders in Washington.

Trump has been pushing for a Putin-Zelensky summit. Ukraine's president has backed the move, but he has sought security guarantees from Western allies to prevent any future Russian attack in the event of a peace deal.

On Tuesday, Zelensky met the head of Britain's armed forces, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, in Kyiv, where they discussed efforts to end the war.

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has said he would meet Ukrainian representatives in New York this week, telling Fox News "we talk to the Russians every day".

The EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has warned that handing over Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal was a "trap".

An international network of spammers are posting AI-generated images of Holocaust victims on Facebook, a BBC investigation into "AI slop" has found.

Organisations dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust say the images are leaving survivors and families distressed.

They have also criticised Facebook's parent company Meta, saying it allows users on its platform to turn the atrocity into an "emotional game".

There are only a handful of genuine photos from inside the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two.

But in recent months, AI spammers have posted fake images purporting to be from inside the camp, such as a prisoner playing a violin or lovers meeting at the boundaries of fences - attracting tens of thousands of likes and shares.

"Here we have somebody making up the stories… for some kind of strange emotional game that is happening on social media," said Pawel Sawicki, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial in Poland.

"This is not a game. This is a real world, real suffering and real people that we want to and need to commemorate."

The BBC has tracked many of these images to the accounts of a network of Pakistan-based content creators who collaborate closely on how to make money on Facebook. They are gaming Meta's content monetisation (CM) program, an "invite-only" system which pays users for high-performing content and views.

One account named Abdul Mughees, listed as living in Pakistan, posted screenshots claiming to have earned $20,000 through social media monetisation schemes, including Meta's. Another post appears to show the account accrued more than 1.2bn views on content across the span of four months.

We have not been able to independently verify any creator's earnings.

Among the many Facebook posts from Abdul Mughees' account are several AI generated photos of fictional Holocaust victims and fake stories that included a child hiding under floorboards or a baby being left on train tracks outside a concentration camp.

The BBC's analysis of the online activities of the account and dozens of others like it suggests they are posting almost exclusively "AI slop".

The term refers to low quality AI-generated images and text, usually produced in large volumes and spammed across social media.

Auschwitz has become a popular topic for history-themed pages and groups. Some with names such as "Timeless Tales" and "History Haven" were posting more than 50 times a day.

In June, the Auschwitz Museum warned accounts like these were stealing its posts, processing them through AI models and often warping historical details or fabricating narratives and victims entirely. In a Facebook post, the Museum said these images were a "dangerous distortion" which "disrespects victims and harasses their memory".

Mr Sawicki said the tsunami of fake images was undermining the Auschwitz Memorial's mission to raise awareness of the Holocaust.

"We already started getting comments on our Facebook posts that 'oh, this is an AI-generated photograph'," he said.

Survivors and families are also disturbed by the surge of Holocaust AI slop, according to an organisation promoting Holocaust education and research.

"They don't quite understand what they're seeing," said Dr Robert Williams, from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

He said Holocaust survivors were feeling a "certain sense of sadness this has been allowed to happen" despite government and philanthropic investments into awareness campaigns.

"They feel like their efforts haven't been enough," he said.

"That's a very sad thing to consider because the last of the survivors will soon leave us."

Meta does not intentionally encourage users to post false stories, including about the Holocaust, but its system rewards posts with high engagement. The BBC has also found AI slop accounts based in India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Nigeria.

To understand why these networks are mass producing specific types of content, the BBC spoke with a Pakistani man Fazal Rahman, who is enrolled in several social media content monetisation schemes and says this work has become his sole source of income.

While he says he does not create any Holocaust images himself, and did not know what the word meant when initially asked, he operates in the same Facebook groups as those who do.

Mr Rahman said a Facebook page with 300,000 followers could earn its owner $1,000 USD a month if it had "premium content" catered to higher-value audiences from the UK, US, and Europe. He estimates Western views were worth eight times more per post than those from Asia.

He said history as a topic was a reliable driver of online traffic.

Other creators appear to agree. The BBC has seen step-by-step instructional videos on how popular AI models could be used to generate continuous fake history images and text.

In one video, the creator asked the AI chatbot to list key historical events they could use as a basis for content creation and was given the Holocaust as one of its answers.

Other advice given by some creators include tips on how to deceive audiences, by having their page impersonate other entities to build audiences and become eligible for Meta's CM program.

Facebook has a page transparency feature, which allows users to track the previous names of pages. Using this, the BBC found many pages that had posted Holocaust AI slop that once posed as a range of different entities including official firefighting departments in the US, commercial businesses, and American influencers - all without their consent.

These pages, according to creators' public posts, can also be sold or rented to those looking to break into the content creator market.

The BBC asked Meta about several profiles that had posted Holocaust-themed AI content and also appeared to have engaged in deceptive practices.

Several of the profiles and groups were removed, including ones originally flagged by the Auschwitz Memorial in June.

A spokesperson for the tech giant said while those fake images did not violate its content policies, it investigated them and found they broke its rules around impersonation or trading of pages.

"We removed the Pages and Groups shared with us and disabled the accounts behind them for violating our policies on spam and inauthentic behaviour," they said.

AI has been used in the past to commemorate the Holocaust and bring real victims' stories to life, but the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Dr Williams warns there's a risk this can contribute to a sense that Holocaust history is somehow fabricated.

"Any form of extreme manipulation is something that we should shy away from," he said.

Additional reporting by Umer Draz Nangiana, BBC Urdu

Israel struck Nasser Hospital at least four times during its deadly attack in southern Gaza on Monday, an analysis of new video footage by BBC Verify has found.

The attack, which has attracted international condemnation and widespread anger, reportedly killed at least 20 people, including five journalists.

Initial reports from Gaza said that Israel had struck the hospital twice, with the first blast followed nine minutes later by another which hit first responders and journalists who arrived at the scene.

But new analysis suggests the hospital was struck four times in total. BBC Verify and expert analysis found that two staircases were hit almost simultaneously in the first wave, and while what was thought to be a single later attack was in fact two separate strikes hitting the same place within a fraction of a second.

Israel does not allow international journalists to enter Gaza independently. BBC Verify identified the additional strikes by analysing dozens of videos provided by a freelancer on the ground and material filmed by eyewitnesses that circulated online.

In the first incident, an Israeli strike hit the exterior staircase on the hospital's eastern side at 10:08 local time (07:08 GMT), killing journalist Hussam Al-Masri who was operating a live TV feed for Reuters.

BBC Verify has now identified another previously unreported blast at a northern wing staircase at practically the same time, which was overshadowed by the "double-tap" strike on the eastern staircase.

New footage shows smoke rising and damage at both staircases, while emergency workers said the hospital's operating department was hit.

Other videos show an injured person being carried down the northern staircase and the hospital's nursing director holding shredded and bloodied clothing which he said was being worn by a nurse while she was working in the operating department when it was hit.

N R Jenzen-Jones - the director of Armament Research Services, an arms and munitions intelligence company - said the footage "appears to show interior damage consistent with a relatively small munition, including an entry hole that suggests a munition with a relatively flat trajectory".

Roughly nine minutes later, while dozens of first responders and journalists gathered on the eastern staircase, Israeli forces struck the facility again.

While the blast was documented by media at the time, frame-by-frame analysis of newly emerged footage clearly shows that two separate projectiles fired by Israeli forces hit the hospital milliseconds apart at an exposed stairwell where journalists and emergency workers had gathered.

Experts disagreed on the type of munition used in the third and fourth strikes.

Some munitions analysts with whom BBC Verify shared footage with identified the projectiles as Lahat missiles, a guided munition which can be fired from tanks, drones and helicopters. Several outlets in Israel have suggested that the munitions used against the hospital were fired by Israeli tanks stationed nearby.

The experts who spoke to BBC Verify said the blasts could not have been caused by a single tank, due to the quick succession in which the munitions hit the hospital.

"If these Lahats were fired from the ground, then at least two tanks would have been involved, as the interval between the two impacts is far too short," Amael Kotlarski, an analyst with the Janes defence intelligence company, said. "No tank loader could have reloaded that fast."

Meanwhile, Mr Jenzen-Jones said that the "impact of two projectiles at nearly the exact same moment suggests two tanks may have fired on the target simultaneously".

Although he said it wasn't possible to definitively identify the munitions used, the apparent physical characteristics and pattern of flight "suggest a 'multi-purpose' tank gun projectile, such as the Israeli M339 model".

Satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify show IDF forces 2.5km north-east of Nasser Hospital and within firing range on the day of the attack. Other armoured vehicles can also be seen nearby.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had no additional comment on the newly identified blasts when approached by BBC Verify.

Israel's narrative of the attack has evolved since Monday's attack. It initially said it had carried out a strike in the area of the hospital, saying that it "regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals " and that an initial inquiry would be opened as soon as possible, but provided no justification for the attack.

In the hours that followed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was responsible and that it "deeply regrets the tragic mishap".

On Tuesday, the IDF said an initial inquiry found that troops had identified a camera positioned by Hamas in the area of the hospital "used to observe the activity of IDF troops", without providing evidence.

The IDF has not yet acknowledged carrying out more than one strike on the hospital, amid allegations from some international legal experts that it may have violated international law.

Intentionally carrying out attacks on civilians which are "excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" is prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

"A reasonable attacker must expect scores of civilian casualties since a hospital is full of protected persons," Professor Janina Dill of Oxford University said.

Prof Dill added that the "mere presence of equipment that belongs to an adversary" does not mean a hospital or medical facility loses its protected status under the laws of war.

At least 247 journalists have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023, according to the UN, making it the deadliest conflict for reporters ever documented.

Israel's military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Almost 62,900 people have been killed in Gaza in the same period, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

The White House says it has fired the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Susan Monarez, after she refused to resign on Wednesday.

In a statement, it said she was "not aligned with the president's agenda" and she had been removed from her position at the health agency.

The US health department earlier announced her departure, which prompted a statement from Dr Monarez's lawyers who said she had not been told of her removal and she would not resign.

They said she was being targeted for refusing "to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts" and accused Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr of "weaponising public health".

"As her attorney's statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the president's agenda," the White House said later on Wednesday, adding that she had been terminated from her position as director.

A long-time federal government scientist, Dr Monarez was nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the CDC and was confirmed in a Senate vote along party lines in July.

Her nomination followed Trump withdrawing his first pick, former Republican Congressman Dave Weldon, who had come under fire for his views on vaccines and autism.

Almost immediately after Dr Monarez's departure was first announced by the health department, at least three senior CDC leaders resigned from the agency.

Among them was Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, who warned about the "rise of misinformation" about vaccines in a letter seen by the BBC's US partner CBS News. She also argued against planned cuts to the agency's budget.

Daniel Jernigan, who led the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, also quit citing "the current context in the department".

Head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Demetre Daskalakis, also said he was no longer able to serve "because of the ongoing weaponising of public health".

There are also reports, including by NBC News, that Dr Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology, has also resigned.

The exodus comes as health experts voice concern over the agency's approach to immunisations under the leadership of Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved new Covid vaccines while limiting who could receive them.

The vaccines will be available for all seniors, but younger adults and children without underlying health conditions will be excluded.

"The emergency use authorizations for Covid vaccines, once used to justify broad mandates on the general public during the Biden administration, are now rescinded," Kennedy wrote on X.

Dr Monarez was the first CDC director in 50 years to not hold a medical degree. Her background is in infectious disease research.

In her month as the CDC leader, she helped comfort agency employees after the CDC's headquarters in Atlanta was attacked by a gunman who believed he had been harmed by Covid vaccines.

The attack, in which hundreds of bullets struck the building, killed one police officer.

Earlier this month, current and former employees of the agency wrote an open letter accusing Kennedy of fuelling violence towards healthcare workers with his anti-vaccine rhetoric.

Dr Monarez departure comes about a week after a union representing CDC employees announced that it had fired about 600 employees.

The wide-ranging layoffs included employees working on the government's response to infectious diseases, including bird flu, as well as those researching environmental hazards and handling public record requests.

New Zealand police have released fresh CCTV footage believed to show a fugitive who disappeared with his three children more than three years ago .

The night-time footage shows two people in full-body clothing - who police are "confident" is Tom Phillips and one of his children - apparently breaking into a store before driving away on a quad bike.

Detective Senior Sergeant Andy Saunders told a press conference on Friday that the pair had made off with some "grocery items".

Mr Phillips disappeared into the wilderness with his three children in December 2021. Police believe he took the kids after losing legal custody of them to their mother.

Since then a national search has been underway for Mr Phillips and his children: Ember, Maverick and Jayda.

Police released the latest footage in hopes that the community would report sightings of them.

The apparent break-in happened on Wednesday around 02:00 local time (Tuesday 14:00 GMT) in Piopio, a small town in northern New Zealand. Police said Mr Phillips was believed to have unsuccessfully targeted the same store in November 2023.

"At the heart of this are three children who have been away from their home for four years. Their wellbeing is our main focus," Detective Senior Sergeant Andy Saunders said in the police statement.

Mr Phillips faces a range of charges including aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding and illegally possessing a firearm, police said.

Police previously said that they believed Mr Phillips had assistance from other people. Now they're "considering what this burglary actually means", detective Saunders said.

"Does it mean that he's potentially had a falling out with who's helping him? Or is he just that brazen and confident that he's quite happy to come out at night and commit a burglary?"

Last October, Mr Phillips and his three children were publicly spotted for the first time since vanishing, when a group of teenagers spotted them trekking and filmed the encounter.

Police said at the time that the children had not been in contact with other people for years and had not received an education.

Last year authorities offered a cash reward for information that led to the safe return of the children - but the offer expired before being claimed.

Mr Phillips's family has publicly pleaded for him to come home.

"Tom - I feel really sad that you thought you had to do this. Not considering how much we love you and can support you," his mother wrote in a note provided to local media.

"It hurts every time I see photos of the children and of you and see some of your stuff that is still here."

India and Canada have appointed new high commissioners to each other's countries, in the latest step to restore ties strained by the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in a Vancouver suburb in 2023.

India's previous high commissioner left Canada last October after Ottawa expelled him, linking six diplomats to the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar - though Delhi insisted he was withdrawn.

That same day, India ordered out six senior Canadian diplomats, including the acting high commissioner.

The mutual expulsion of top diplomats last year marked an unprecedented low in an otherwise cordial relationship.

Nijjar, designated a terrorist by India in 2020, was shot dead by two gunmen outside a Sikh temple in Vancouver in June 2023.

Relations between the two countries deteriorated months later after former prime minister Justin Trudeau alleged "credible allegations" linking Indian government agents to Nijjar's killing.

India called the accusations "absurd and motivated" and accused Canada of providing shelter to Sikh separatists.

At their first meeting in Canada in June, PM Modi and Trudeau's successor Mark Carney agreed to reinstate senior diplomats, a sign of thaw in relations.

Ottawa has now named Christopher Cooter as its new envoy to Delhi, while India has appointed Dinesh K Patnaik, currently ambassador to Spain, as its representative in Canada.

Canada's Foreign Minister Anita Anand said the appointment of Mr Cooter was part of a "step-by-step approach to deepening diplomatic engagement" with India.

India's foreign ministry said Mr Patnaik was "expected to take up the assignment shortly".

India has sharply criticised Canada for tolerating the pro-Khalistan movement, saying Ottawa has long been aware of and monitoring such groups. The Khalistan movement calls for an independent homeland for Sikhs in India.

There are some 770,000 Sikhs living in Canada, home to the largest Sikh diaspora outside the Indian state of Punjab.

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Several investigations have been launched after a Spanish man in Kenya posted videos of himself pouring beer down an elephant's trunk - sparking anger on social media.

He was filmed in a wildlife reservation drinking from a can of Tusker, a popular local beer, before giving the rest of it to the elephant.

"Just a tusker with a tusked friend," he captioned one clip posted on Instagram, which was later deleted from his account after a backlash from Kenyans in the comments.

The BBC analysed the footage and was able to authenticate it as genuine. The landscape and a well-known bull elephant point to it being filmed at the Ol Jogi Conservancy in the central county of Laikipia.

A member of the staff contacted by the BBC at the privately owned wildlife sanctuary was shocked by the behaviour - and said the videos would be passed on to "the relevant authorities".

"This should never have happened. We're a conservation and we can't allow that to happen," the staffer, only identified as Frank, said.

"We don't even allow people to go near the elephants."

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) was also probing the incident, the agency's spokesperson Paul Udoto told the BBC.

The man involved does not use his name on his social media accounts, which all have a variation of the phrase Skydive_Kenya.

In another clip shared on Instagram on Tuesday, he is seen feeding two elephants with carrots and then saying: "We are on beer time."

The Instagram videos attracted hundreds of critical comments - with some calling for the man's deportation - before the posts were pulled down.

The elephant that was given the beer is big in size, with long tusks - one in particular is distinctive as it is damaged.

From other images and videos posted online, it matches the description of Bupa, a friendly male at Ol Jogi whose photo is often shared by visitors.

Bupa was rescued from a mass elephant cull in Zimbabwe in 1989 and brought to the conservancy when he was eight years old.

Ol Jogi says it is home to about 500 elephants and regards itself one of the pioneers in rehabilitating animal orphans and releasing them back to the wild.

The man featured in the beer videos, who describes himself as an "adrenaline junkie" on TikTok, had posted a video on Monday in which he is seen at the nearby Ol Pejeta Conservancy feeding a rhino with carrots.

"He has also broken our rules because he was not supposed to touch the rhinos because they are not pets," Thige Njuguna from Ol Pejeta told the BBC.

He confirmed the rhino in the footage was from their nature reserve, adding that Ol Pejeta was not home to elephants.

Dr Winnie Kiiru, a Kenyan biologist and elephant conservationist, termed the tourist's behaviour "unfortunate" as it had endangered his life and that of the elephant.

"About 95% of elephants in Kenya are wild and it is wrong to have social media posts that give the impression that you can get close to the elephants and feed them," she told the BBC.

The incident comes barely a week after a group of tourists were filmed blocking migrating wildebeest at Kenya's Maasai Mara during the annual wildlife migration - one of the world's greatest wildlife spectacles.

The viral footage showed visitors jumping out of safari vehicles, crowding riverbanks and forcing wildebeests into crocodile-infested waters - sparking outage.

Following the incident, the tourism and wildlife ministry announced stricter rules, directing tour operators to enforce park rules by ensuring visitors remain inside vehicles except in designated areas.

It also pledged to improve signage across the wildlife parks and intensify visitor education on safety rules.

The Maasai Mara wildebeest migration draws thousands of visitors annually and is regarded as one of Kenya's most prized natural heritage assets.

You may also be interested in:

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Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

New Zealand police have released fresh CCTV footage believed to show a fugitive who disappeared with his three children more than three years ago .

The night-time footage shows two people in full-body clothing - who police are "confident" is Tom Phillips and one of his children - apparently breaking into a store before driving away on a quad bike.

Detective Senior Sergeant Andy Saunders told a press conference on Friday that the pair had made off with some "grocery items".

Mr Phillips disappeared into the wilderness with his three children in December 2021. Police believe he took the kids after losing legal custody of them to their mother.

Since then a national search has been underway for Mr Phillips and his children: Ember, Maverick and Jayda.

Police released the latest footage in hopes that the community would report sightings of them.

The apparent break-in happened on Wednesday around 02:00 local time (Tuesday 14:00 GMT) in Piopio, a small town in northern New Zealand. Police said Mr Phillips was believed to have unsuccessfully targeted the same store in November 2023.

"At the heart of this are three children who have been away from their home for four years. Their wellbeing is our main focus," Detective Senior Sergeant Andy Saunders said in the police statement.

Mr Phillips faces a range of charges including aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding and illegally possessing a firearm, police said.

Police previously said that they believed Mr Phillips had assistance from other people. Now they're "considering what this burglary actually means", detective Saunders said.

"Does it mean that he's potentially had a falling out with who's helping him? Or is he just that brazen and confident that he's quite happy to come out at night and commit a burglary?"

Last October, Mr Phillips and his three children were publicly spotted for the first time since vanishing, when a group of teenagers spotted them trekking and filmed the encounter.

Police said at the time that the children had not been in contact with other people for years and had not received an education.

Last year authorities offered a cash reward for information that led to the safe return of the children - but the offer expired before being claimed.

Mr Phillips's family has publicly pleaded for him to come home.

"Tom - I feel really sad that you thought you had to do this. Not considering how much we love you and can support you," his mother wrote in a note provided to local media.

"It hurts every time I see photos of the children and of you and see some of your stuff that is still here."

An international network of spammers are posting AI-generated images of Holocaust victims on Facebook, a BBC investigation into "AI slop" has found.

Organisations dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust say the images are leaving survivors and families distressed.

They have also criticised Facebook's parent company Meta, saying it allows users on its platform to turn the atrocity into an "emotional game".

There are only a handful of genuine photos from inside the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two.

But in recent months, AI spammers have posted fake images purporting to be from inside the camp, such as a prisoner playing a violin or lovers meeting at the boundaries of fences - attracting tens of thousands of likes and shares.

"Here we have somebody making up the stories… for some kind of strange emotional game that is happening on social media," said Pawel Sawicki, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial in Poland.

"This is not a game. This is a real world, real suffering and real people that we want to and need to commemorate."

The BBC has tracked many of these images to the accounts of a network of Pakistan-based content creators who collaborate closely on how to make money on Facebook. They are gaming Meta's content monetisation (CM) program, an "invite-only" system which pays users for high-performing content and views.

One account named Abdul Mughees, listed as living in Pakistan, posted screenshots claiming to have earned $20,000 through social media monetisation schemes, including Meta's. Another post appears to show the account accrued more than 1.2bn views on content across the span of four months.

We have not been able to independently verify any creator's earnings.

Among the many Facebook posts from Abdul Mughees' account are several AI generated photos of fictional Holocaust victims and fake stories that included a child hiding under floorboards or a baby being left on train tracks outside a concentration camp.

The BBC's analysis of the online activities of the account and dozens of others like it suggests they are posting almost exclusively "AI slop".

The term refers to low quality AI-generated images and text, usually produced in large volumes and spammed across social media.

Auschwitz has become a popular topic for history-themed pages and groups. Some with names such as "Timeless Tales" and "History Haven" were posting more than 50 times a day.

In June, the Auschwitz Museum warned accounts like these were stealing its posts, processing them through AI models and often warping historical details or fabricating narratives and victims entirely. In a Facebook post, the Museum said these images were a "dangerous distortion" which "disrespects victims and harasses their memory".

Mr Sawicki said the tsunami of fake images was undermining the Auschwitz Memorial's mission to raise awareness of the Holocaust.

"We already started getting comments on our Facebook posts that 'oh, this is an AI-generated photograph'," he said.

Survivors and families are also disturbed by the surge of Holocaust AI slop, according to an organisation promoting Holocaust education and research.

"They don't quite understand what they're seeing," said Dr Robert Williams, from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

He said Holocaust survivors were feeling a "certain sense of sadness this has been allowed to happen" despite government and philanthropic investments into awareness campaigns.

"They feel like their efforts haven't been enough," he said.

"That's a very sad thing to consider because the last of the survivors will soon leave us."

Meta does not intentionally encourage users to post false stories, including about the Holocaust, but its system rewards posts with high engagement. The BBC has also found AI slop accounts based in India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Nigeria.

To understand why these networks are mass producing specific types of content, the BBC spoke with a Pakistani man Fazal Rahman, who is enrolled in several social media content monetisation schemes and says this work has become his sole source of income.

While he says he does not create any Holocaust images himself, and did not know what the word meant when initially asked, he operates in the same Facebook groups as those who do.

Mr Rahman said a Facebook page with 300,000 followers could earn its owner $1,000 USD a month if it had "premium content" catered to higher-value audiences from the UK, US, and Europe. He estimates Western views were worth eight times more per post than those from Asia.

He said history as a topic was a reliable driver of online traffic.

Other creators appear to agree. The BBC has seen step-by-step instructional videos on how popular AI models could be used to generate continuous fake history images and text.

In one video, the creator asked the AI chatbot to list key historical events they could use as a basis for content creation and was given the Holocaust as one of its answers.

Other advice given by some creators include tips on how to deceive audiences, by having their page impersonate other entities to build audiences and become eligible for Meta's CM program.

Facebook has a page transparency feature, which allows users to track the previous names of pages. Using this, the BBC found many pages that had posted Holocaust AI slop that once posed as a range of different entities including official firefighting departments in the US, commercial businesses, and American influencers - all without their consent.

These pages, according to creators' public posts, can also be sold or rented to those looking to break into the content creator market.

The BBC asked Meta about several profiles that had posted Holocaust-themed AI content and also appeared to have engaged in deceptive practices.

Several of the profiles and groups were removed, including ones originally flagged by the Auschwitz Memorial in June.

A spokesperson for the tech giant said while those fake images did not violate its content policies, it investigated them and found they broke its rules around impersonation or trading of pages.

"We removed the Pages and Groups shared with us and disabled the accounts behind them for violating our policies on spam and inauthentic behaviour," they said.

AI has been used in the past to commemorate the Holocaust and bring real victims' stories to life, but the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Dr Williams warns there's a risk this can contribute to a sense that Holocaust history is somehow fabricated.

"Any form of extreme manipulation is something that we should shy away from," he said.

Additional reporting by Umer Draz Nangiana, BBC Urdu

Israel struck Nasser Hospital at least four times during its deadly attack in southern Gaza on Monday, an analysis of new video footage by BBC Verify has found.

The attack, which has attracted international condemnation and widespread anger, reportedly killed at least 20 people, including five journalists.

Initial reports from Gaza said that Israel had struck the hospital twice, with the first blast followed nine minutes later by another which hit first responders and journalists who arrived at the scene.

But new analysis suggests the hospital was struck four times in total. BBC Verify and expert analysis found that two staircases were hit almost simultaneously in the first wave, and while what was thought to be a single later attack was in fact two separate strikes hitting the same place within a fraction of a second.

Israel does not allow international journalists to enter Gaza independently. BBC Verify identified the additional strikes by analysing dozens of videos provided by a freelancer on the ground and material filmed by eyewitnesses that circulated online.

In the first incident, an Israeli strike hit the exterior staircase on the hospital's eastern side at 10:08 local time (07:08 GMT), killing journalist Hussam Al-Masri who was operating a live TV feed for Reuters.

BBC Verify has now identified another previously unreported blast at a northern wing staircase at practically the same time, which was overshadowed by the "double-tap" strike on the eastern staircase.

New footage shows smoke rising and damage at both staircases, while emergency workers said the hospital's operating department was hit.

Other videos show an injured person being carried down the northern staircase and the hospital's nursing director holding shredded and bloodied clothing which he said was being worn by a nurse while she was working in the operating department when it was hit.

N R Jenzen-Jones - the director of Armament Research Services, an arms and munitions intelligence company - said the footage "appears to show interior damage consistent with a relatively small munition, including an entry hole that suggests a munition with a relatively flat trajectory".

Roughly nine minutes later, while dozens of first responders and journalists gathered on the eastern staircase, Israeli forces struck the facility again.

While the blast was documented by media at the time, frame-by-frame analysis of newly emerged footage clearly shows that two separate projectiles fired by Israeli forces hit the hospital milliseconds apart at an exposed stairwell where journalists and emergency workers had gathered.

Experts disagreed on the type of munition used in the third and fourth strikes.

Some munitions analysts with whom BBC Verify shared footage with identified the projectiles as Lahat missiles, a guided munition which can be fired from tanks, drones and helicopters. Several outlets in Israel have suggested that the munitions used against the hospital were fired by Israeli tanks stationed nearby.

The experts who spoke to BBC Verify said the blasts could not have been caused by a single tank, due to the quick succession in which the munitions hit the hospital.

"If these Lahats were fired from the ground, then at least two tanks would have been involved, as the interval between the two impacts is far too short," Amael Kotlarski, an analyst with the Janes defence intelligence company, said. "No tank loader could have reloaded that fast."

Meanwhile, Mr Jenzen-Jones said that the "impact of two projectiles at nearly the exact same moment suggests two tanks may have fired on the target simultaneously".

Although he said it wasn't possible to definitively identify the munitions used, the apparent physical characteristics and pattern of flight "suggest a 'multi-purpose' tank gun projectile, such as the Israeli M339 model".

Satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify show IDF forces 2.5km north-east of Nasser Hospital and within firing range on the day of the attack. Other armoured vehicles can also be seen nearby.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had no additional comment on the newly identified blasts when approached by BBC Verify.

Israel's narrative of the attack has evolved since Monday's attack. It initially said it had carried out a strike in the area of the hospital, saying that it "regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals " and that an initial inquiry would be opened as soon as possible, but provided no justification for the attack.

In the hours that followed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was responsible and that it "deeply regrets the tragic mishap".

On Tuesday, the IDF said an initial inquiry found that troops had identified a camera positioned by Hamas in the area of the hospital "used to observe the activity of IDF troops", without providing evidence.

The IDF has not yet acknowledged carrying out more than one strike on the hospital, amid allegations from some international legal experts that it may have violated international law.

Intentionally carrying out attacks on civilians which are "excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" is prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

"A reasonable attacker must expect scores of civilian casualties since a hospital is full of protected persons," Professor Janina Dill of Oxford University said.

Prof Dill added that the "mere presence of equipment that belongs to an adversary" does not mean a hospital or medical facility loses its protected status under the laws of war.

At least 247 journalists have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023, according to the UN, making it the deadliest conflict for reporters ever documented.

Israel's military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Almost 62,900 people have been killed in Gaza in the same period, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

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Investigators say that the attacker who opened fire on pupils as they were praying at a church in Minneapolis was "obsessed with the idea of killing children".

The attacker, who killed two children ages eight and 10 and injured 18 others, did not seem to have any specific motive, according to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara.

She "appeared to hate all of us", the chief said on Thursday, adding: "More than anything, the shooter wanted to kill children".

Officials have released few details so far about the suspect's background, but say she previously attended the church's school and had a mother who had worked there.

The suspect, identified as Robin Westman, is believed to have approached the side of the Annunciation Church, which also houses a school, and fired dozens of shots through the windows using three firearms. Police also found a smoke bomb at the scene.

Witnesses have described seeing children bleeding as they fled from the church, begging for help from strangers.

In a news conference on Thursday, acting US Attorney General for Minnesota Joseph Thompson said "the shooter expressed hate towards many groups, including the Jewish community and towards President Trump".

The killer left a note at the scene after taking their own life, officials said, but they added that a definitive motive may never be known.

"I won't dignify the attacker's words by repeating them, they are horrific and vile," said Mr Thompson.

Westman's name was legally changed from Robert to Robin in 2020, with the judge writing: "Minor child identifies as a female". However, some federal officials and police have referred to Westman as a man when discussing the attack.

Chief O'Hara told reporters that news outlets should stop using the killer's name, because "the purpose of the shooter's actions was to obtain notoriety."

He added that she, "like so many other mass shooters that we have seen in this country too often and around the world, had some deranged fascination with previous mass shootings".

US officials have warned for years that mass shooting can lead to copycat killings, as killers seek to become famous through their heinous crimes.

Several major news organisations have a policy of not identifying mass killers.

FBI Director Kash Patel has described the attack as "an act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology".

In a post on X, Patel said that the attacker "left multiple anti-Catholic, anti-religious references" written on guns and in notes uncovered by investigators.

"Subject expressed hatred and violence toward Jewish people, writing Israel must fall,' 'Free Palestine,' and using explicit language related to the Holocaust," he wrote.

The killer also "wrote a an explicit call for violence against President Trump on a firearm magazine".

In their news conference, officials confirmed that the attacker had previously attended the school. Her mother, Mary Grace Westman, previously worked at the school, and has so far not responded to law enforcement's attempts to contact her.

They also confirmed that three residences associated with the attacker, who was from suburban Minneapolis, have been searched by police.

They said that the church locked its doors before beginning its Mass service, likely saving many lives.

Officials added that the guns used in the attack were all legally purchased, that the killer did not appear on any government watchlist, and that police are not aware of any mental health diagnoses or treatments that she was receiving.

Witnesses and relatives of victims who spoke to the BBC have described harrowing scenes of violence.

Patrick Scallen, who lives near the church, said that he saw three children fleeing the building - one of them a girl with a head wound.

"She kept saying, 'please hold my hand, don't leave me', and I said I wasn't going anywhere."

Vincent Francoual, whose 11-year-old daughter Chloe was in the church when the shooting took place, said he tried not to panic after he heard the news.

He called it "sick" that children in the US are trained to prepare for mass shootings.

"We live in a country where we train kids what to do. And she did what she had to do," he said.

"Here it's a pattern. It's no longer a freak accident," he said of school shootings in the US.

"I told my wife that every morning, when we drop our kids, we don't know if she'd be back safe."

Mr Francoual, who is originally from France, said that Chloe is afraid to return to school or church.

In the wake of the attack, several lawmakers, including the Minneapolis mayor, have called for the state to enact a ban on assault weapons.

"There is no reason that someone should be able to reel off 30 shots before they even have to reload," said Mayor Jacob Frey, also calling for a ban on high-capacity ammo magazines.

"We're not talking about your father's hunting rifle here. We're talking about guns that are built to pierce armour and kill people."

Ukraine has come under heavy Russian bombardment overnight, with a child among three people killed in Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said early on Thursday.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack on Ukraine's capital was "massive" with military officials confirming at least 24 people had been injured.

A five storey-building collapsed in the Darnytski district and a fire had also been reported in a high-rise residential building in the neighbouring Dnipro district, the mayor added.

The wave of missiles comes after more than 100,000 Ukrainian homes were left without power by the latest Russian drone attacks on energy infrastructure, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday.

In a post on Telegram, Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv's military administration, said the child who was killed was a 14-year-old girl. At least five children had been injured in the latest drone strikes.

He noted more than 20 districts had been targeted, with many buildings including a kindergarten catching on fire.

Three and a half years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, fighting on the ground shows no sign of abating.

The latest international effort to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine was launched by US President Donald Trump earlier this month. He met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska and Zelensky with European leaders in Washington.

Trump has been pushing for a Putin-Zelensky summit. Ukraine's president has backed the move, but he has sought security guarantees from Western allies to prevent any future Russian attack in the event of a peace deal.

On Tuesday, Zelensky met the head of Britain's armed forces, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, in Kyiv, where they discussed efforts to end the war.

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has said he would meet Ukrainian representatives in New York this week, telling Fox News "we talk to the Russians every day".

The EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has warned that handing over Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal was a "trap".

By day, Kyiv can often feel far from the front line. But at night, the war looms large.

In the morning rush hour, the traffic along the Dnipro river embankment is heavy and slow-moving as people try to get to work and go about their daily lives.

During the night, every so often, the air raid sirens go off. Much of the time, people glance at their phones and then decide on their plan of action, depending on the threat.

Last night, monitoring channels such as Telegram alerted Kyiv residents to a potentially heavy attack involving not just drones but missiles too.

They are not always accurate, but this time the air raid sirens rang and people listened.

The muffled thud of air defences intercepting drones and missiles was the soundtrack to most of the night. People can sleep through them.

But then, around 03:00, there was a loud explosion – the sound of a missile that had hit a building. It was enough to wake people up across the city.

People made their way to the shelter. Every so often, we could hear the whirr of a drone overhead; then flashes of light as some were shot down and they fell from the sky.

After the big explosion that woke us up, we could see huge plumes of smoke on the horizon.

That, we now know, was the strike on the Darnytskyi district on Kyiv's left bank.

It was hit by at least one missile, on a night that Russia fired almost 600 drones and more than 30 missiles, according to the Ukrainian military.

Missile and drone strikes were recorded in 13 different locations, and the attack on Darnytskyi was the most deadly.

Arriving at the site on Wednesday morning, we could see the aftermath for ourselves.

The missile ripped through the middle of the low-rise block of flats; the five floors had totally collapsed where it hit.

Rescue workers were clambering over the rubble – some of it was still smouldering.

The brick and wrought-iron balconies were twisted in the blast, some hanging by a thread. Plant pots and fruit baskets sat on broken windowsills, a reminder of the families that until hours earlier had led their lives tucked away behind these walls.

Diggers and trucks were lining up to collect broken bits of the building and clear the way for the workers, trying to sift through the debris in the hope of finding survivors.

Every so often, a stretcher with a body bag was delivered – a victim found in the rubble.

Nearby, Iryna Kutsenko was sitting on a chair, her mobile phone to her ear.

Since 03.30 she has tried desperately to contact her mother Liubov. Every time she calls, it just rings out.

"You never think it will be your house that's hit," she says, starting to cry. Her mother didn't want to go to the shelter. She was a slower walker than Iryna so decided to shelter in the corridor.

"These attacks are very cruel," Iryna says. "They happen at a time when people are sleeping and you are unable to get your bearings."

"And they are attacking with everything all together - missiles and Shaheds (drones). They all attack at the same time. It's just impossible to live like this."

• European leaders outraged by deadly strikes and damage to EU's HQ

Also on site was Minister for Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha.

What do these attacks mean for the current bid to end the war? I ask him.

"This is a pure example of a terrorism attack," he tells me. "That's the response of Russia for all our peace proposals and all our peace efforts."

The death toll in Kyiv climbed throughout the day, with at least 19 killed including four children.

Oksana Rumpik, 54, and her husband Mykhailo survived the missile strike on the block of flats, but their gold-coloured Volvo car was hit by shrapnel.

"I just can't," she says, unable to finish her sentence when asked what she makes of the Russian strikes.

"People are dying, simple people are dying. So many are dying, you just cannot imagine."

Her husband believes the only path to peace is without Vladimir Putin.

"If there are negotiations and peace, Putin [can't] be president," he says, before conceding that's an unlikely scenario as he clings to power.

It's been 40 months now since Russia's full-scale invasion but the reality of war in Ukraine's capital is never far away.

Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook has sued President Donald Trump over attempt to fire her, setting up a potential legal battle over the US central bank's autonomy.

Cook has asked the court to declare Trump's firing order "unlawful and void", and also named Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and the Board of Governors as defendants.

Trump has said there was "sufficient reason" to believe Cook had made false statements on her mortgage, and cited constitutional powers which he said allowed him to remove her.

The president has put increasing pressure on the Fed over what he sees as an unwillingness to lower interest rates. Cook is part of the board responsible for setting interest rates in the US.

Thursday's lawsuit is likely to bring up a number of legal challenges that could end up at the US Supreme Court.

"This case challenges President Trump's unprecedented and illegal attempt to remove Governor Cook from her position which, if allowed to occur, would the first of its kind in the Board's history," Abbe Lowell, Cook's attorney, wrote in the lawsuit.

"It would subvert the Federal Reserve Act ... which explicitly requires a showing of 'cause' for a Governor's removal, which an unsubstantiated allegation about private mortgage applications submitted by Governor Cook prior to her Senate confirmation is not," Lowell wrote.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai told the BBC the president "exercised his lawful authority to remove" Cook.

"The President determined there was cause to remove a governor who was credibly accused of lying in financial documents from a highly sensitive position overseeing financial institutions," he said. "The removal of a governor for cause improves the Federal Reserve Board's accountability and credibility for both the markets and American people."

The allegations against Cook were first made in a public letter from housing finance regulator, Bill Pulte, a Trump ally. In the letter he accused Cook of falsifying records to obtain a mortgage.

The letter alleges that she signed two documents, two weeks apart, attesting that two homes in different states were both her primary residence. No charges have been brought against Cook and it is unclear if she is under investigation for these allegations.

Cook's lawsuit does not address those allegations.

She is one of seven members of the Fed's board of governors, and in this position sits on the 12-member committee which is responsible for setting interest rates in the US.

Since returning to Washington, Trump has put increasing pressure on the Fed - especially Powell - over interest rates.

The UK, France and Germany have begun the process of restoring major UN sanctions on Iran - lifted under a 2015 deal - as tensions once again escalate over Iran's nuclear programme.

The move will trigger a so-called snapback mechanism, which could result in the return of sanctions in 30 days.

The three countries, participants in the 2015 deal, warned two weeks ago that they were ready to do this unless Iran agreed to a "diplomatic solution" by the end of August.

Talks between Iran and the US over its nuclear programme have not resumed since June when the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites and Iran barred UN-backed inspectors from accessing its facilities.

The snapback provision was built into the 2015 accord and allows for a participant to initiate the process to bring back sanctions if they believe Iran has significantly failed to fulfil its nuclear commitments by notifying the UN Security Council.

The UK, France and Germany, known as the E3, took the step in a letter to the Security Council. The council now has 30 days in which to decide whether to extend the sanctions relief or allow it to lapse.

Iran had warned of repercussions if the snapback was triggered.

Years-long crippling economic sanctions were lifted in exchange for curbs to Iran's nuclear programme under the UN-backed deal between Iran and the US, UK, France, Germany, China and the EU.

But the deal unravelled after Donald Trump pulled the US out and reimposed nuclear-related sanctions in 2018 during his first term. Iran stepped up its nuclear activities in response, fuelling a renewed crisis.

Western powers and the global nuclear body the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say they are not convinced that Iran's nuclear programme has purely peaceful purposes. Iran strongly insists it is not seeking nuclear weapons, and that its nuclear programme is solely a civilian one.

The White House says it has fired the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Susan Monarez, after she refused to resign on Wednesday.

In a statement, it said she was "not aligned with the president's agenda" and she had been removed from her position at the health agency.

The US health department earlier announced her departure, which prompted a statement from Dr Monarez's lawyers who said she had not been told of her removal and she would not resign.

They said she was being targeted for refusing "to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts" and accused Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr of "weaponising public health".

"As her attorney's statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the president's agenda," the White House said later on Wednesday, adding that she had been terminated from her position as director.

A long-time federal government scientist, Dr Monarez was nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the CDC and was confirmed in a Senate vote along party lines in July.

Her nomination followed Trump withdrawing his first pick, former Republican Congressman Dave Weldon, who had come under fire for his views on vaccines and autism.

Almost immediately after Dr Monarez's departure was first announced by the health department, at least three senior CDC leaders resigned from the agency.

Among them was Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, who warned about the "rise of misinformation" about vaccines in a letter seen by the BBC's US partner CBS News. She also argued against planned cuts to the agency's budget.

Daniel Jernigan, who led the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, also quit citing "the current context in the department".

Head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Demetre Daskalakis, also said he was no longer able to serve "because of the ongoing weaponising of public health".

There are also reports, including by NBC News, that Dr Jennifer Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology, has also resigned.

The exodus comes as health experts voice concern over the agency's approach to immunisations under the leadership of Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved new Covid vaccines while limiting who could receive them.

The vaccines will be available for all seniors, but younger adults and children without underlying health conditions will be excluded.

"The emergency use authorizations for Covid vaccines, once used to justify broad mandates on the general public during the Biden administration, are now rescinded," Kennedy wrote on X.

Dr Monarez was the first CDC director in 50 years to not hold a medical degree. Her background is in infectious disease research.

In her month as the CDC leader, she helped comfort agency employees after the CDC's headquarters in Atlanta was attacked by a gunman who believed he had been harmed by Covid vaccines.

The attack, in which hundreds of bullets struck the building, killed one police officer.

Earlier this month, current and former employees of the agency wrote an open letter accusing Kennedy of fuelling violence towards healthcare workers with his anti-vaccine rhetoric.

Dr Monarez departure comes about a week after a union representing CDC employees announced that it had fired about 600 employees.

The wide-ranging layoffs included employees working on the government's response to infectious diseases, including bird flu, as well as those researching environmental hazards and handling public record requests.

Several investigations have been launched after a Spanish man in Kenya posted videos of himself pouring beer down an elephant's trunk - sparking anger on social media.

He was filmed in a wildlife reservation drinking from a can of Tusker, a popular local beer, before giving the rest of it to the elephant.

"Just a tusker with a tusked friend," he captioned one clip posted on Instagram, which was later deleted from his account after a backlash from Kenyans in the comments.

The BBC analysed the footage and was able to authenticate it as genuine. The landscape and a well-known bull elephant point to it being filmed at the Ol Jogi Conservancy in the central county of Laikipia.

A member of the staff contacted by the BBC at the privately owned wildlife sanctuary was shocked by the behaviour - and said the videos would be passed on to "the relevant authorities".

"This should never have happened. We're a conservation and we can't allow that to happen," the staffer, only identified as Frank, said.

"We don't even allow people to go near the elephants."

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) was also probing the incident, the agency's spokesperson Paul Udoto told the BBC.

The man involved does not use his name on his social media accounts, which all have a variation of the phrase Skydive_Kenya.

In another clip shared on Instagram on Tuesday, he is seen feeding two elephants with carrots and then saying: "We are on beer time."

The Instagram videos attracted hundreds of critical comments - with some calling for the man's deportation - before the posts were pulled down.

The elephant that was given the beer is big in size, with long tusks - one in particular is distinctive as it is damaged.

From other images and videos posted online, it matches the description of Bupa, a friendly male at Ol Jogi whose photo is often shared by visitors.

Bupa was rescued from a mass elephant cull in Zimbabwe in 1989 and brought to the conservancy when he was eight years old.

Ol Jogi says it is home to about 500 elephants and regards itself one of the pioneers in rehabilitating animal orphans and releasing them back to the wild.

The man featured in the beer videos, who describes himself as an "adrenaline junkie" on TikTok, had posted a video on Monday in which he is seen at the nearby Ol Pejeta Conservancy feeding a rhino with carrots.

"He has also broken our rules because he was not supposed to touch the rhinos because they are not pets," Thige Njuguna from Ol Pejeta told the BBC.

He confirmed the rhino in the footage was from their nature reserve, adding that Ol Pejeta was not home to elephants.

Dr Winnie Kiiru, a Kenyan biologist and elephant conservationist, termed the tourist's behaviour "unfortunate" as it had endangered his life and that of the elephant.

"About 95% of elephants in Kenya are wild and it is wrong to have social media posts that give the impression that you can get close to the elephants and feed them," she told the BBC.

The incident comes barely a week after a group of tourists were filmed blocking migrating wildebeest at Kenya's Maasai Mara during the annual wildlife migration - one of the world's greatest wildlife spectacles.

The viral footage showed visitors jumping out of safari vehicles, crowding riverbanks and forcing wildebeests into crocodile-infested waters - sparking outage.

Following the incident, the tourism and wildlife ministry announced stricter rules, directing tour operators to enforce park rules by ensuring visitors remain inside vehicles except in designated areas.

It also pledged to improve signage across the wildlife parks and intensify visitor education on safety rules.

The Maasai Mara wildebeest migration draws thousands of visitors annually and is regarded as one of Kenya's most prized natural heritage assets.

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Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

The number of animals infested with New World screwworm (NWS), a flesh-eating parasite, has risen by 53% in the four weeks to mid-August, Mexican government data reveals.

While infestations by the fly larvae primarily affect cattle, Mexican officials also registered cases in dogs, horses, sheep – and humans.

According to local media, dozens of people have been treated for the infestation in hospitals in the southern Mexican states of Campeche and Chiapas.

The rise in affected animals in Mexico comes just days after US health authorities said that they had confirmed the first human case in a patient who had returned to the US from El Salvador.

NWS was declared eradicated in the US in 1966 after sterile male flies were released to disrupt the insects' reproductive cycle, and Mexico followed suit in 1991.

However, it has remained common in tropical and subtropical areas of Central and South America and has recently been spreading north with the first new case reported in Mexico in November 2024.

Female New World screwworm flies (Cochliomyia hominivorax) lay their eggs in or near open wounds on the skin of warm-blooded animals. They are also attracted to the mucous membranes, such as those in the nose, mouth, eyelids, ears and genitals.

The eggs hatch into maggots which burrow into the wound or the membrane, feeding on the living flesh.

The infestation is called myiasis and, if left untreated, can cause serious damage - and can even prove fatal - as the larvae tear into the tissue with sharp mouth hooks.

Health officials warn that while fatal cases in humans are rare, people with pre-existing health issues and the elderly should take extra care.

Mexico's health ministry said an 86-year-old woman had died in Campeche state in July from skin cancer which had been exacerbated by an infestation of screwworm larvae.

Those most at risk are people working with livestock or those living in rural areas where infested livestock are present.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges people who may have visited a region where screwworm flies are present to be alert to the symptoms. These include unexplained skin lesions, feeling larvae move within a wound or the nose, mouth or eyes and seeing maggots in an open sore.

Experts point out that prevention is key when visiting rural areas in affected regions, which includes keeping any open wounds clean and covered, and using an insect repellent.

They also ask people who suspect they may have been infested to seek medical help.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attending a military parade in the centre of Beijing, alongside Russian president Vladimir Putin and China's leader Xi Jinping, is quite the photo-op.

It's also a key diplomatic win for Xi.

The Chinese leader has been trying hard to project Beijing's power on the international stage - not just as the world's second-largest economy, but also as a diplomatic heavyweight.

He has emphasised China's role as a stable trading partner while Trump's tariffs upended economic relationships.

Now, while a deal with Putin to end the war in Ukraine continues to elude the US President, Xi is getting ready to host him in Beijing.

Kim's attendance, a surprise announcement, is no less significant. Trump said last week, in a meeting with the South Korean president, that he wanted to meet Kim Jong Un again.

His last shot at diplomacy with the reclusive dictator ended with no breakthroughs - despite two summits that captivated the world. Trump is suggesting he wants to try again.

Meanwhile, the Chinese leader is signalling that he may hold the geopolitical cards in this game, and that his influence – though limited – on both Kim and Putin may prove crucial in any deal.

The parade on 3 September will see a display of China's military might to mark 80 years since Japan surrendered in World War Two, bringing an end to its occupation of parts of China.

But now Xi has also turned it into a display of something more - and the timing is key. The White House has suggested that President Trump could be in the region at the end of October and is open to meeting Xi.

There is plenty on the table for them to discuss, from a long-awaited tariffs deal and the sale of TikTok in the US, to Beijing's ability to persuade Putin to agree to a ceasefire or more in Ukraine.

Now, having met both Kim and Putin, the Chinese leader would be able to sit down with Trump without feeling like has has been left out of the loop – and given his close relationship with both leaders, he may even have information his US counterpart does not.

Russia and North Korea are pariahs in the eyes of the western world. Kim for much longer than Putin because of his weapons programme, but his support for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine has renewed the condemnation.

So the invitation to Beijing is a big step for him - the last time a North Korean leader attended a military parade in China was in 1959.

There has been little public contact between Xi and Kim since 2019, when they met to mark the 70th anniversary of China-North Korean ties. Beijing was also Kim Jong Un's first stop in 2018 before his summits with President Trump to curb Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

More recently, Xi even appeared to be on the sidelines of a deepening Moscow-Pyongyang alliance, one that perhaps Beijing wanted no part of.

China has tried to stay publicly neutral on the war in Ukraine, while urging a peaceful solution. But the US and its allies have accused Beijing of supporting Moscow's efforts by supplying components Russia can use in its war effort.

Some analysts wondered if China's relationship with North Korea had soured as Kim grew closer to Putin. But Kim's visit to Beijing next week suggests otherwise.

It's not a relationship the North Korean leader can easily give up - his economy depends heavily on China, which provides almost 90% of food imports. And being on that stage with not just Putin and Xi, but other leaders, from Indonesia, Iran etc, also offers Kim legitimacy.

For Xi, this is diplomatic leverage with Washington ahead of a possible summit with Trump.

The two countries have continued talks to try and strike a deal and avert ruinous tariffs and a trade war. Another 90-day pause is under way but the clock is ticking, so Xi will want the strongest hand possible as negotiations go on.

He has much to offer: China has helped Trump in the past when he tried to meet Kim Jong Un. Could Xi do that again?

More important perhaps is what role China could play in ending the war in Ukraine.

The most striking question of all: could there be a meeting between Xi, Putin, Kim and Donald Trump?

Witnesses to a mass shooting in the US state of Minneapolis have described the "terrifying" scenes after an attacker opened fire on a church in which children were celebrating Mass on Wednesday morning.

One young boy described being protected by a friend who got hit himself.

Two children were killed and 17 others injured in an incident that the FBI is treating as an anti-Catholic hate crime.

The attacker, named as 23-year-old Robin Westman, died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Authorities have not yet given a suspected motive.

The young survivor, 10-year-old Weston Halsne, explained to CBS affiliate station WCCO that his friend saved him from bullets by lying on top of him.

"I was like two seats away from the stained glass window," he said. "My friend, Victor, saved me though, because he laid on top of me, but he got hit."

He continued: "My friend got hit in the back, he went to the hospital... I was super scared for him but I think now he's okay."

Weston said he and his classmates were well-drilled in what to do in a shooting situation - but not in the environment in which they found themselves. "We practise it every month, but not in church, only in the school," he said.

• Full story: FBI investigates shooting as anti-Catholic hate crime
• What we know about the attack so far

The suspect Westman is believed to have approached the side of the Annunciation Church, which also houses a school, and fired dozens of shots through the windows using three firearms. Police also found a smoke bomb at the scene.

Officials are investigating whether the shots were fired from inside the building or outside it, noting that no casings from bullets were found inside.

Locals described their confusion when they heard the shots ring out. One man, Mike Garrity, told NBC News that he believed it was the sound of a nail gun at a nearby construction site.

Bill Bienemann, who lives two blocks away, spoke to reporters near the scene and recalled the moment: "I said there's no way that could be gunfire because there's so much of it."

Another local resident, PJ Mudd, who was working from home on Wednesday morning, told the Wall Street Journal he heard three booms. "It suddenly dawned on me - it was a shooting."

Mr Mudd then ran to the church, where he saw three magazine cartridges on the ground.

Witnesses including Mr Garrity also described the horrifying spectacle of children emerging from the church covered in blood.

Another neighbour, Patrick Scallen, told the BBC that he saw three children fleeing the building - one of them a girl with a head wound.

"She kept saying, 'please hold my hand, don't leave me', and I said I wasn't going anywhere."

A nanny who works nearby said she was relieved to see some children leaving the building unharmed, but was disturbed by "the looks on their faces alone".

"You see videos online, but it does not compare to seeing it and witnessing it in person," Madee Brandt told NBC. "That was rough... it is terrifying."

Hundreds of people attended a vigil for the victims on Wednesday evening at another nearby school.

Those who were injured in the shooting are expected to recover, and some have already been released from hospital.

One mother told CNN that she was relieved her children were not hurt in the incident, but that she had "such mixed feelings right now".

Carla Maldonado spoke of being "incredibly sad and angry that this has to be a thing in any school". She went on to say: "The lives that were lost [are] too much. One is too much. It's not okay."

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz offered a similar sentiment, saying the situation was "all too common - not just in Minnesota, but across the country".

Walz said US President Donald Trump and his team had expressed their "deep condolences" and offered assistance.

Trump later said the US flag would be flown at half-mast at the White House as a show of respect to the victims.

Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, was among those who paid tribute to the young victims, saying he was "profoundly saddened" by the attack.

Two children, aged 8 and 10, were killed and 17 people were injured when an attacker fired through the windows of a Minneapolis Catholic church at people celebrating Mass, police said.

Annunciation Church, which also houses a school, was filled with students when the shooting happened on Wednesday. Of the 17 injured victims, 14 are children and all are expected to survive.

The attacker, 23-year-old Robin Westman, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene and had no "significant criminal history", authorities said.

"This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping," Police Chief Brian O'Hara told reporters.

"The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible," he added.

The motive for the shooting is still unknown. It is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime against Catholics, FBI Director Kash Patel said.

Police began receiving calls of a shooting just before 08:00 local time (14:00BST) on Wednesday.

The attacker approached the side of the building and fired dozens of shots through the church windows using three firearms - a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol. Police also found a smoke bomb at the scene.

Officials are investigating if he shot inside the building or if all the shots came from outside the church, noting that no casings from bullets were found inside.

"I could hear 'boom, boom, boom'," P.J Mudd, who lives close to the church and was working from home on Wednesday morning, told the Wall Street Journal. "It suddenly dawned on me - it was a shooting."

He then ran to the church where he saw three magazine cartridges on the ground.

A 10-year-old boy who survived the attack told CBS affiliate WCCO that his friend saved him from bullets by lying on top of him.

"I was like two seats away from the stained glass window," he said. "My friend, Victor, saved me though, because he laid on top of me, but he got hit."

"My friend got hit in the back, he went to the hospital... I was super scared for him but I think now he's okay," he said.

The school, located in a residential area of southern Minneapolis, is home to students aged between 5 and 14.

The attacker's mother, Mary Grace Westman, previously worked at the school, according to a school newsletter from 2016. A post on Facebook says she retired from the role in 2021.

Police did find a note the suspect scheduled to publish online at the time of the shooting. The FBI assisted officials and took it down.

Governor Tim Walz said President Donald Trump and his team had expressed their "deep condolences" and offered assistance.

He said the situation is "all too common - not just in Minnesota, but across the country", adding that he hoped no community or school ever had to go through a day like this.

Trump later said the US flag would be flown at half-mast at the White House as a show of respect to the victims.

Seven migrants deported from the US have arrived in Rwanda, the first of 250 expected to be taken in by the African state under a deal reached with President Donald Trump's administration.

"The first group of seven vetted migrants arrived in Rwanda in mid-August," Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said.

She gave no details about their nationalities, only explaining that four of them would remain in Rwanda, with three opting to return to their home countries.

Rights groups have warned that such deportations could breach international law if people are sent to countries where they risk torture or other abuses.

Trump has focused on a sweeping mass deportation scheme to remove undocumented migrants from the US since starting his second term in January.

So far, at least a dozen nations have agreed to accept deported migrants from other countries.

• Destination: Africa - is it legal for US to deport foreign criminals to the continent?
• Is Rwanda a land of safety or fear?

"Regardless of their specific needs, all of these individuals will receive appropriate support and protection from the Rwandan government," Ms Makolo told Rwanda's pro-government New Times news site.

Those deported were being accommodated by "an international organisation" and would be visited by the International Organization on Migration (IOM) and Rwandan social services, she added.

An IOM spokesperson confirmed to the AFP new agency that it had seen the migrants to "assess their basic needs", without giving further details.

Earlier this month, Ms Makolo told the BBC that Rwanda was going ahead with the deal as "nearly every Rwandan family has experienced the hardships of displacement".

Rwanda went through a genocide in the mid-1990s - and the government has been keen to extend help to other migrants, maintaining it can provide a safe place for them despite criticism of its human rights record.

Under an agreement reached with the UN refugee agency and African Union six years ago, nearly 3,000 refugees and asylum seekers trapped in Libya were evacuated to Rwanda between September 2019 and April 2025. The UN says many of these people have subsequently been resettled elsewhere.

Rwanda had a deal with the UK, agreed with the Conservative government in 2022, to accept asylum seekers.

But the UK scrapped the scheme, which faced numerous legal challenges, after Sir Keir Starmer's Labour government took office in July last year.

The UK had paid Rwanda £240m ($310m), even building places to house the asylum seekers. It is not clear what has happened to these facilities.

It is also not clear if there is a financial element to Rwanda's most recent deal.

In June, Trump's administration oversaw the signing of a peace deal in Washington between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of an ongoing peace process aimed at ending three decades of instability in the region.

Kigali has been accused of backing the M23 rebel group embroiled in the conflict in neighbouring DR Congo - an accusation it has denied.

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Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

Israeli drone strikes near Damascus have killed six Syrian soldiers, Syria's government said, among a series of reported attacks this week.

Syria's foreign ministry condemned Tuesday's strike as a violation of international law and a breach of its sovereignty.

After more strikes on Wednesday, Israeli forces carried out an airborne landing at a former military site in the area, international and Syrian state media report. Reports differ on what forces did and how long they stayed for.

Israel's military told the BBC it did not comment on foreign reports. Defence Minister Israel Katz posted on X on Thursday that "forces are operating in all combat zones day and night for the security of Israel".

Israel carried out dozens of attacks across Syria after the fall of ex-President Bashar al-Assad in December, which saw an Islamist-led government set up by former rebels. Israel at the time said it was acting to stop weapons falling "into the hands of extremists".

This year, Israel has conducted 95 attacks - 85 air strikes and 10 land operations - according to British-based monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

Tuesday's attack happened while Syrian troops were attempting to deal with "surveillance and eavesdropping devices" discovered during a field tour near al-Kiswah, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reports.

Further air strikes followed on Wednesday, taking place around 10km (six miles) from where Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa was attending the Damascus International Fair, SOHR reported.

Few details were available on the landing by Israeli forces at the former military site, which was reported on Wednesday night.

SANA reported that Israeli aircraft launched several raids, followed by an airdrop, "the details of which are yet to be determined".

A Syrian military source told Al Jazeera the operation included dozens of soldiers with search equipment who stayed at the site for more than two hours.

Two Syrian army sources told Reuters that troops conducted the landing, but withdrew after, with no more details.

The reported series of attacks this week comes as the two countries engage in deconfliction talks.

In July, Israel bombed Syrian government forces around Suweida in the country's south as the army entered the predominantly Druze city following deadly sectarian clashes.

Israel's prime minister said he had ordered strikes on forces and weapons because the government "intended to use [them] against the Druze". Syria condemned the July attacks, which it said had resulted in deaths of members of the armed forces and civilians.

There is also a population of Druze, whose religion is an offshoot of Shia Islam with its own unique identity and beliefs, in Israel.