A video showing parachutists descending onto a sports complex in Egypt is circulating with false claims that it shows footage of Hamas militants paragliding into Israel during the latest escalation of the conflict between the two.
The El Nasr Sports Club in Cairo confirmed to BOOM that the footage shows a training exercise conducted by the Egyptian army.
On day four of the war, the death toll in Israel was 1200 people while more than 1000 people were killed by retaliatory air strikes pounding Gaza, after Hamas launched an unprecedented ambush on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas fighters used unconventional methods including hang gliders to breach the Israeli border, Reuters reported.
Social media platforms particularly Elon Musk owned X has been struggling to cope with a deluge of misinformation and disinformation surrounding the conflict.
The viral video is circulating with the caption, "Hamas terrorists paraglide in to Israel, they went door-to-door to massacre, innocent civilians, rape and murder women and children...#Israel #Hamas #Palestine #Palestinian #IronDome #Gaza #TelAviv
Click here to view an archive of the post.
The video is also circulating with a caption in Hindi that translates to, "Danger was looming, terrorists armed with guns were descending from motor fitted gliders but the Israeli citizens celebrating in the parks felt that this was some kind of sports going on. They were whistling and making videos, when the AK47 firing started, they could not understand anything for a minute. The enemy is not visible to you right now but he is also hovering over your head." Click here for an archive of the post.
Fact Check
BOOM was able to ascertain that the video is not from the attack by Hamas fighters as the terrain looked far more populated than the recent verified visuals circulating on the internet.
The video also contained a TikTok watermark of a user named @eslamre1. We then accessed the account and found a similar video, captioned as 'Part 2' uploaded on September 28, 2023. The video showed similar visuals of parachutists landing on a football field.
The video labelled 'Part 2' has been captioned with hashtags -Egyptian Umbrellas, Al Nasser Club on TikTok.
We also noticed that the video was uploaded first on September 28 on TikTok, almost nine days before the conflict began.
Furthermore, upon closely observing the viral video, we saw the text El Nasr SC written on one of the T-shirts worn by a man.
We then looked up El Nasr SC on Google and found that it is a sporting club based in Cairo, Egypt. The sporting club has similar visuals on Google Maps as in the viral video.
BOOM reached out to El Nasr SC on Facebook and the club confirmed that the video was shot in their sporting complex and was part of a training by the Egyptian Army .