Fact Check: Video of parachutists landing at sports center is from Egypt, not Israel

A video of multiple parachutists landing at a crowded sports venue in Egypt has been misrepresented on social media as showing attackers of the militant Islamist group Hamas landing in Israel. The video dates to at least September 2023 and is not related to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

A post on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, shared the video with the caption: “BREAKING: New footage of Hamas militants paragliding in to attack civilians in Israel.” The video was also shared on Facebook with a similar caption.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas carried out its biggest attack on Israel in years on Oct. 7, killing an estimated 900 Israelis. 

The footage can be traced back to TikTok, where it was posted on Sept. 27, 2023. In the clip, a man can be heard speaking in Arabic, saying that the men with the parachutes are Egyptian military commandos, who are landing at the El-Nasr Club in Heliopolis.

A sports center named El-Nasr Sporting Club can be seen in the Heliopolis area of Cairo, Egypt, on Google Maps.

A comparison between the frames of the clip at 0:01 and 0:21, and Google Earth imagery of the sports club, shows several similarities, highlighted in the same colors.

Additionally, the brown buildings that can be seen in the background throughout the online video are also featured in photographs in a press release published by the sports center on May 27, 2022.

At 0:01 in the video of the parachutists, “El Nasr SC” can also be seen printed on the jacket of the person on the bottom right of the frame.

El Nasr Sporting Club did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

Miscaptioned. The video shared online shows events in Egypt, not Israel, that predate the October 2023 attack on Israel.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.