Fact Check: Old video of grieving child from Syria falsely linked to Israel-Hamas conflict

Hyderabad: A heart-wrenching video of a child yelling and crying is viral on social media. Users claim that the video is from Gaza where the child is crying for his little sister who was killed in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

An X (formerly Twitter) premium user shared the video with the caption, “A little boy in #Gaza grieving for his sisters sees no distinction between an #Israeli soldier and a Western journalist spewing #Zionist propaganda. One murders with a rifle, while the other murders with a pen. (sic)”

Several X users have shared the video claiming the same.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video is from Syria in 2014.

Upon a reverse image search of the keyframes of the video, we found it on YouTube, published on October 19, 2014. As per the Arabic caption, the video shows an injured Syrian child crying after his sister’s demise.

We also found the extended version of the video published by Aleppo Media Centre, a Syrian activist media group, on YouTube on February 14, 2014.

The Arabic title stated that the video shows a child crying for his sibling, killed in a helicopter bombing in the Masaken Hanano district of Aleppo, Syria. Aleppo Media Centre also posted a picture of the sobbing child in 2014 on its Facebook page and captioned it “Masaken Hanano neighbourhood.”

CNN Arabic also published the video of the grieving brother in a report on February 16, 2022.

Hence, it is evident that the viral video is from 2014 and has been falsely linked to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.