A video showing some children digging through burnt debris to look for food is being falsely connected to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. BOOM found that the video predates the Israel-Hamas conflict and is likely from a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon.
On October 7, Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack into Israel from Gaza and faced retaliatory strikes in a conflict that has ended up killing more than 4,000 people on both sides. The United Nations Security Council proposed a resolution for temporary ceasefire in the region in order to open corridors into Gaza for humanitarian assistance. 12 countries including France, Japan, and China voted in favour of the resolution, however, it could not be passed because of the US' veto. Russia and UK abstained from voting.
A 39-seconds long video showing some children rummaging through burnt debris is viral online as a video from Gaza. A verified handle on X, @MarioNawfal, shared the video with the caption, "UNRWA: "Not a drop of water, not a grain of wheat, or a liter of fuel was allowed to enter the Gaza Strip during the past eight days. Palestinian Health: 254 people were killed and 562 injured during the past 24 hours."
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The video is also circulating on Facebook with the caption, "Children in Gaza dig up burnt food after Israël bombing."
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video predates the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict and is likely from a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon.
We looked at the viral video closely and noticed the watermark of a TikTok account, @moumentaleb.
We then ran a search for this TikTok account and found that they had shared the viral video on July 21, 2023, months before the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out.
The translation of the Arabic caption to English roughly reads, "Fire in relief camp in Hanin Al-Minya" and the hashtags carried words like Lebanon and Syria.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a search for fires at Syrian relief camps in July 2023 and found a report published by Middle East Monitor on July 21. According to the report, a huge fire broke out at a Syrian refugee camp in Hanin, Lebanon. No casualties were reported during this fire.
News outlet Lebanon 24 also shared a video of the fire on its verified X account.
We also found this video report by Al Jazeeera Mubasher shared on July 21, 2023, with an Arabic title that roughly translates to, '“Our whole division is gone, I lost everything.”..🔥 A fire devours a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon'
The video carries interviews of the people in the camp and explains that the cause of the fire was an electrical short circuit. We found that the building in the background of the Al Jazeera video matched the one in the viral video. Below is a comparison: