A set of images have gone viral on social media, claiming to show a Palestinian man being shot at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, adding that he survived since the bullet couldn’t penetrate his head.
This comes in the backdrop of Israeli security forces entering the mosque in May that left more than 300 Palestinians wounded, as Israeli police fired rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas.
While the images have not been tampered with and the Iraqi man seen in the images, Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al-Rawi, indeed survived a bullet shot, the incident could be traced back to 2014.
CLAIM
The set of images shows a man with a bullet in his head and the claim along with the collage mentions that he was worshipping at the Al-Aqsa mosque when he was hit with a bullet.
WHAT WE FOUND
On conducting a reverse image search, we found an article published by Riyadh-based news channel Al Arabiya in 2014 that carried the viral images.
The article, which was dated 10 August 2014, mentioned that an Iraqi man was shot as "clashes occurred between the clan revolutionaries and the Iraqi troops". The man seen in the images, identified as Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al-Rawi, is a resident of Fallujah city in Iraq and the pictures were taken while he was receiving treatment at Fallujah General Hospital.
We found the same picture on other websites in articles published in 2014 that can be viewed here and here.
Evidently, images from 2014 of a man being shot were falsely linked to the recent tension between Israel and Palestine.
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