A five-month-old video of an attack on a Gaza building is being misrepresented as new
Gaza #Gaza
CLAIM: A video shows Israel bombing a target in the Gaza Strip after attacks by the Islamist militant group Hamas on Saturday.
AP VERIFICATION: False. The video was recorded in May when Israeli warplanes bombed targets in Gaza.
THE FACTS: While news outlets are publishing verified footage of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza response to attacks from the unprecedented Hamas incursion over the weekend, a video of a previous bombing in Gaza is being shared on social media with false claims that it is recent.
“Israel has declared war on Hamas and is bombing Gaza, after the Islamist group’s unprecedented attack on Israeli territory that has left at least 40 dead and hundreds injured. The Israeli counterattack has left nearly 200 dead and 1,600 injured in the Gaza Strip,” states a Facebook post published on October 7. The death toll rose to nearly 1,600 on Monday, with 900 deaths reported in Israel and more than 680 in Gaza.
The post, which shows a missile destroying a building with a yellow and orange facade, has more than 897,000 views.
Similar messages also spread on Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter, in both Spanish and English.
Through a reverse image search, The Associated Press found that the recording does not correspond to the current bombings.
The Qatari network Al-Jazeera broadcast the same clip on May 13, identifying it as showing the destruction of the house of a family living in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza.
News reports attributed the video to the user @hassaneslayeh. The video appears on his X account where it was posted in May. He did not respond to a request to comment from the AP.
According to the AP report at the time, Israeli warplanes bombed targets in Gaza, targeting militants from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second largest guerrilla group in Gaza after Hamas fired projectiles toward Jerusalem and southern Syria. The AP released a video showing a missile attack on May 12 in Gaza.___This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.