The BBC barely reported the fact that the US opened its war on Iran with a strike on a primary school, killing more than 160 Iranians, most of them children aged between 7 and 12. Had there been an equivalent strike from Iran on an Israeli school, it would have been on front pages for weeks.

Instead the media have downplayed the story, treating as credible an obvious US lie that the massacre was caused by a faulty Iranian missile.

Now that inconvertible evidence of a US Tomahawk strike on the area has emerged, BBC Verify is reporting the massacre but only to give it functional coverage as a fact-check story.

Notice this too. BBC Verify refers to the dead from the strike simply as faceless "people". The vast majority were young children. The BBC is still doing its best to avoid humanising them.