An undated video showing an armed gunman record a video message inside a room where an elderly woman is seen lying on a bed is going viral with a misleading claim that it shows a Hamas fighter killing the bedridden woman and her young female caregiver.
The widely shared clip shows a masked individual wearing combat fatigues entering a room while carrying an automatic rifle. Subsequently, the gunman records a video message in Arabic in the presence of the elderly woman lying on the bed and a young woman sitting on the floor of the room. A person who is not in the frame records the video message. A wheelchair can be seen behind the young woman.
BOOM found that the claim was misleading. We were able to translate the gunman's speech in which he admitted to killing "combatants" but claimed to spare the lives of women and children.
Over 700 people in Israel, and 400 people in the Gaza Strip have been reported dead at the time of writing this article, after Islamist militant group Hamas launched one of the biggest military offensives against Israel on October 7, 2023. Since then social media has been flooded with unverified imagery.
Several right-wing handles posted the viral video with a caption saying, "Hamas Terrorists proudly recording butchering a bedridden Israeli woman and her Indian Caregiver. The caregiver is a Kerala Hindu woman as per reports.. This cult is dangerous to mankind and humanity......"
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The video has also been shared with Hindi captions making the same claim.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a related keyword search and found a post on X (formerly Twitter) where a user claimed that the gunman in the video did not kill the two women while claiming to be a true follower Prophet Mohammad.
The user posted the video on X on October 9, 2023, and wrote, "A fighter of Al-Qasam Brigades entered a house where there was a sick old woman and her daughter, he stood up and said: Here we are fulfilling the will of the Messenger of Allah Muhammada (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). Muslim Mujahideen "Do not kill a woman, an old woman, a child, an elderly person or a worshiper in his place of refuge." Today we killed fighters and kept women and children. These are the morals of great Men, these are the morals of those who graduated from the school of Muhammad, these are the truths that the world is trying to hide, these are the Palestinian Mujahideen.""
Click here to view the post.
Taking a cue, we reached out to a fact-checker at Fatabyyano, a fact-checking organisation that operates in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region to confirm details about the video.
In an email reply, the fact checker said that the gunman begins talking about the elderly woman and pointing towards her at the 35-second mark in the video. The gunman in Arabic says, "This scene you see today is the will of the Prophet (Prophet Mohammad) for us, we the Muslims mujahideen, not to kill a woman, child, elderly person, or a worshiper in his place of worship. Today, we have fulfilled the Prophet's will by killing the combatants and sparing the women and children."
The fact checker further clarified that there is no mention of the caregiver's nationality in the video.
We also contacted Riham Abu Aita, general manager at The Palestinian Platform for Fact-Checking and Media Literacy - Kashif.
Aita also corroborated the same about the gunman speaking about sparing the lives of women and children. Furthermore, she sent us the video with its corresponding English subtitles.
BOOM was not able to verify when or where the video was shot. However, it appears to show Hamas fighters during the large-scale ambush of Israel over the weekend. At least three fact-checkers fluent in Arabic separately confirmed that the masked gunman spoke about not harming women and children.