An old video of a hospital being bombed is viral online with the false claim that it shows Israel's attack on a hospital in Gaza. BOOM found that the claims are false and the video shows an attack on a Syrian hospital in July 2016.
The Israel-Hamas conflict erupted on October 7 after the latter launched an unprecedented attack into Israel from Gaza. The conflict has since continued and resulted in the deaths of more than 8,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis in three weeks. An explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital on October 17 further raised humanitarian concerns for Gaza and both Israel and Hamas traded blame for the attacks.
The viral video purporting to be Gaza shows different areas of a hospital being bombed and is being shared with the caption, "#Gazabombing Actually attack in hospital is like strangulation of humanity... have some mercy.. The war should be tactically different and not an open human genocide. #كتائب_القسام #Gaza_Genocide #CeaseFireInGaza #อุ้มทวีพร #Israel #IsraelAttack #IsraeliNewNazism."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The post is circulating on Facebook with similar captions.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video is from the Omar Bin Abdul Azizi hospital in Aleppo, Syria and is unrelated to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
We ran a reverse image search of some key frames from the video on Yandex and found a video shared on Instagram on September 30, 2017. The video carried a news bulletin with footage that resembled the viral video.
Click here to view.
Parts of the Russian text in the video translated to English carried details of a Russian strike on a hospital in Syria on July 16, 2016. The text read, "The Russian strikes in Syria included hospitals in the list of targets for bombing, which led to a catastrophic state of medicine in the city of Aleppo... On July 16, 2016, the Russian Aerospace Forces carried out targeted airstrikes on the hospital."
We also noticed that the top right of the video carried the logo of AMC- Aleppo Media Center.
Taking a clue from this, we ran a search for the video on AMC's Facebook page and found a longer version shared on July 31, 2016. Some parts of this video were clipped and strung together to make the viral clip. The date stamp of the video was July 16, 2016.
The caption, roughly translated from Arabic to English, read, "#Aleppo Media Center : Moments documenting the crime: “The air strike that targeted Omar bin Abdulaziz Hospital with several raids on the same day in mid-July.”
The same video was also shared on AMC's YouTube channel. See here.
We also found a press release by the World Health Organisation dated July 19, 2016 that condemned the attacks on the hospital. According to the release, the hospital was targeted thrice in a 45-day period.
Click here to view.
According to The Guardian, hospitals in east Aleppo were subjected to 30 separate attacks since Russia began its attacks in the region in July 2016. Doctors Without Borders estimated that about 250,000 people were trapped under siege and had no way out of the city.