By BBC Verify team

BBC News

In any warzone, counting the dead is a challenge. Gaza is no different.

As battles there intensify, the chaotic situation - with bombardment by Israeli forces, on-the-ground fighting, communications blackouts, fuel shortages and crumbling infrastructure - makes getting accurate information on the numbers of people who have died extremely demanding.

And Palestinian officials have said there are now "significant difficulties" in obtaining updated information because of the interruption of communications in the Gaza Strip.

The health ministry is Gaza's official source for death numbers - which it updates regularly. On Monday evening, it said 11,240 people had been killed, including 4,630 children, since the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October which prompted the current war.

...

November 13, 20235:10 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition

By Michael Sullivan

In addition to the deaths, more than two dozen workers are thought to have been abducted. The wife of one worker explains why her husband went to southern Israel, and what he had hoped to achieve.

...

By MAYA ZANGER-NADIS NOVEMBER 12, 2023 19:09 Updated: NOVEMBER 12, 2023 21:26

Israeli security forces delivered 300 liters of diesel fuel to Shifa Hospital in Gaza early Sunday morning and later received intelligence indicating that Hamas had intercepted the delivery, according to a Sunday night IDF statement.

...

By Alice Cuddy BBC News, Jerusalem

The call to Mahmoud Shaheen came at dawn.

It was Thursday 19 October at about 06:30, and Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight.

He'd been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in al-Zahra, a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.

He'd heard a rising clamour outside. People were screaming. "You need to escape," somebody in the street shouted, "because they will bomb the towers".

By George Wright BBC News

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 10,000 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel started bombing it last month.

More than 4,000 of those killed were children, the ministry said.

The number surpasses the UN's figure of about 5,400 killed in Gaza in all of Israel's previous conflicts with Hamas since it took control of the territory in 2007.

Israel began bombing Gaza after Hamas killed 1,400 people and kidnapped more than 200 others on 7 October.

...

By Rushdi Abualouf at Al-Maghazi camp in Gaza & Kathryn Armstrong in London BBC News

The Hamas-run health ministry says at least 45 people have been killed in what it said was an Israeli air strike at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp.

Israel's military says it is looking into whether it was operating in the area at the time.

The small camp has been experiencing overcrowding because of people fleeing bombardments further north.

Efforts are under way to find those still missing. It is thought more than 100 people were there at the time.

The head of Gaza's Al-Aqsa hospital said 52 people were killed in the blast on Saturday night, slightly more than the number given by the health ministry.

...

Hamas tried to sneak its fighters out of the Gaza Strip in ambulances that evacuated dozens of wounded Palestinians to Egypt earlier this week, a senior Biden administration official said Friday.

Hamas had compiled a list of the seriously wounded that it wanted to evacuate from Gaza for treatment in Egypt, along with thousands of foreign nationals looking to flee the enclave.

The list was then vetted by Egypt and the United States, which found that a third of the names on it were of Hamas fighters, the administration official said, adding that the list was rejected and none of the 76 wounded Palestinians who were ultimately evacuated in ambulances out of Gaza were members of the terror group.

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent

Jupiter-sized "planets" free-floating in space, unconnected to any star, have been spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

What's intriguing about the discovery is that these objects appear to be moving in pairs. Astronomers are currently struggling to explain them.

The telescope observed about 40 pairs in a fabulously detailed new survey of the famous Orion Nebula.

By Paul Adams in Jerusalem, Anthony Zucher in Tel Aviv & Graeme Baker BBC News

Israel has rebuffed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's call for a "humanitarian pause" in Gaza.

Mr Blinken said he had discussed the idea with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials during their talks in Tel Aviv.

But in a TV statement minutes later, Mr Netanyahu said Israel rejected "a temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of our hostages".

He said that Israel was "continuing with all our force" against Hamas.

...

At least 13 people have been killed in a blast outside Gaza City's biggest hospital, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says.

BBC Verify has verified graphic videos showing badly injured and possibly dead people lying outside the hospital.

The Israeli military has confirmed it struck an ambulance that it says was being used by Hamas operatives.

It did not say where the air strike took place.

"An IDF aircraft struck an ambulance that was identified by forces as being used by a Hamas terrorist cell in close proximity to their position in the battle zone," it said in a statement.

...

By Nkechi Ogbonna BBC News, Lagos

Sacked Twitter staffers in Africa are threatening to sue the company for failing to pay out the redundancy money they say they were promised.

Most had only been in the job a matter of months when the social media platform, now known as X, told them they were fired last November.

"It's difficult when it's the world's richest man owing you money and closure," one of the sacked workers tells the BBC.

The BBC has approached X for comment several times but was rebuffed with, among other things, a smiling poo emoji.

A more recent attempt received this response: "Busy now, please check back later."

...

By Stephen McDonell in Anhui, China

"He was a great leader who has remained in our hearts," says a man who has come to pay his respects to Li Keqiang, China's popular former premier who died last week.

Flowers in hand, he and his son walk up to Li's childhood home on Hongxing road in the city of Hefei. The footpaths are covered in a sea of flowers. Crowds of mourners have been gathering since the 68-year-old suddenly died in Shanghai of a heart attack.

"He visited our textile factory and it left a deep impression," says the man. Li was from the same province as him, Anhui, he added: "It's too sad. I can't accept it."

...