Fact Check: Old image of protests passed off as aftermath of Kabul blasts
An image of shoes floating in a pool of blood is viral on social media. Users claim that it shows the aftermath of the Kabul airport explosions on August 26.
By Newsmeter Network Published on 30 Aug 2021 10:44 AM GMT
Hyderabad: An image of shoes floating in a pool of blood is viral on social media. Users claim that it shows the aftermath of the Kabul airport explosions on August 26.
A Twitter user accompanied the photo with a caption, "The Pic of bloody water after the explosions in Kabul. Where is humanity now?"
The link to the post can be viewed here. Many people retweeted this post on their timelines.
Archive link of the viral post.
Fahim Abed, a journalist with The New York Times based in Kabul, also tweeted the photograph with a caption, "No matter who is in control, the bloodshed in Afghanistan won't stop and the killings of Afghans will continue. The cheapest blood around the globe."
Click here to see the archived version.
Twitter cannot retrieve the post. Hence, the archived link.
Fact Check:
The claim is false.
NewsMeter performed a reverse image search and found 2017 blog post which led us to an article published by an Afghan media outlet `Etilaatroz', which carried the same picture.
http://asianews.blogfa.com/
We used Google translate to understand the report from Persian to English. According to the translation, the image is from a symbolic protest movement that happened in Kabul against the mass casualties of civilians after the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) annual report on civilian casualties.
We found a Tolo news article published on February 10, 2017. An excerpt of the report reads: "Organizers of the event poured red dye into Kabul River to depict a river of blood ā so as to show the horrors of the war. Organizers of the movement said that by depicting a river of blood, they were not only showing the reality of the situation but also calling on the warring parties to stop killing innocent civilians and bring an end to the war."
Evidently, the claim is false.
