A video showing people dumping packets out of trucks in the middle of a desert has gone viral with the claim that it shows 'expired aid' in Gaza in landfills.
What did the users say?: Those sharing claimed that the allocated aid for Gaza had expired in Rafah, Egypt and was in a landfill. It added that while people were suffering in Gaza, the Arabs were unable to bring in aid until it had expired.
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
How did we find out?: We divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran a reverse image search using the InVid Google Chrome extension.
We came across a news report from 17 November 2016 published on Al Arabiya, titled “Video shows Saudi Arabia getting rid of 80,000 packs of ‘spoiled chicken’”. The report included a screengrab from the same viral video.
An archive of the report can be found here.
(Source: Al Arabiya/Screenshot)
The report stated that 25 refrigerated trucks were found to contain expired chicken packs before they could be distributed within and outside the al-Qassim district.
The report also noted that it was part of an operation overseen by the Secretariat of the al-Qassim region to discard approximately 80,000 packages of spoiled chicken unsuitable for human consumption.
We also found a video in the story that had a longer clip of the incident. The video was posted on 16 November 2016.
We also came across a story about this operation in Al Riyadh newspaper on 20 November 2016.
This page has been translated from Arabic to English.
(Source: Al Riyadh/Screenshot)
Additionally, Team WebQoof had debunked the same video in 2020. It was being falsely shared in a different context. You can read our report here.
Food Crisis in Gaza: Amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, aid officials in Gaza believe that “pockets of famine” already exist in the territory, reported The Guardian on 16 January.
With the death toll numbers going beyond 24,000, the report said that Gaza is in urgent need for more humanitarian help.
The World Food Programme, UNICEF, and the World Health Organisation issued a joint statement emphasising the necessity of creating new entry points to Gaza, increasing the daily allowance of trucks, and ensuring the safe movement of aid workers and individuals in need of assistance.
Conclusion: It is clear that an old and unrelated video from Saudi Arabia is being falsely linked to the food crisis in Gaza, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
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