Old Video of Mosque Being Bombed Falsely Linked to Israel-Hamas Conflict
The clip of a mosque being bombed has been on the internet since January 2016 and is not related to the ongoing war
advertisement
At the time of writing this report, this post by Facebook user Omar Suleiman was over 900 times and had gathered more than 14,000 views.
(Archives of more posts sharing the same claim can be seen here and here.)
Is it true?: The video has been on the internet since January 2016 and has no connection to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
How did we find out?: Using InVID, a video verification tool, we divided this clip into multiple keyframes and ran a reverse image search.
On Microsoft's Bing, the search returned a result with the link to a YouTube video.
This video's title mentioned that it showed the Israel Defense Forces bombing a mosque in Gaza, and was uploaded on 19 January 2016.
The video was uploaded in 2016.
(Source: YouTube/Altered by The Quint)
Its description mentioned that the IDF sounded proud of bombing a mosque, which had civilians inside.
Latest updates on the Israel-Hamas war: Since Hamas' attack on Israel on 7 October, the conflict has led to around 1,200 Israeli deaths and over 11,000 deaths (until 10 November) on the Palestinian side.
Palestinian health officials have lost the ability to count the dead due to a collapse of parts of the health system, and difficulty in retrieving bodies from certain areas which had large numbers of Israeli troops, reported Associated Press.
On 22 November, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and detainee exchange plan, which aims to release at least 50 Israeli and foreign hostages, as well as 300 Palestinians, as per a statement by the Israeli government.
Israel's cabinet approved the two-phase deal after more than five hours of discussions, announcing a four-day pause. Their government added that it would extend the pause in fighting for every 10 additional hostages released by Hamas.
Conclusion: While we were unable to independently verify the date and location of the bombing in the video, we can confirm that it has no connection to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9540511818, or e-mail it to us at webqoof@thequint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)