By Anmol Alphonso
A set of three old photos from Syria of a girl being rescued and carried by three different men is being shared on social media with a false claim that the photos show a Palestinian girl being saved by three different people at three different locations.
The collage is being shared by accounts supporting Israel to falsely claim that Palestinians including children are pretending to be injured to garner the support of the international community.
The Gaza strip which is controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas has been under constant retaliatory Israeli airstrikes after the October 7, 2023 attack by the militant group which killed 1400 Israelis and have take 200 hostages. Several photos and videos of the destruction and people being injured and killed including children after the airstrikes have surfaced online with reports of hospitals being overwhelmed with victims. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health 7,028 Palestinians, including 2,913 minors have been killed so far.
The photos were posted by the verified X (formerly known as Twitter) handle Squint Neon (@TheSquind) with the caption, "This Palestinian girl is saved by 3 different people from 3 different locations on 3 different days and all locations are 50 KM apart from each other. Wondering why she keeps travelling so far especially in the conflict zone?"
The photos show the girl with disheveled hair, her face covered with dust and wearing a light green top and light blue jeans in all three images.
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The same set of photos are being shared widely with the same false claim.
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Also Read:Image Of Infant Trapped Under Debris Not From Ongoing Israel-Hamas Conflict
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the set of three photos of a girl being rescued and being carried by three different individuals is from Aleppo, Syria in August 2016 when a funeral gathering was bombed.
Taking the hint from the replies that the viral photos are from Syria, we ran a selected keyword search and found that the same viral photos are from 2016.
On running a reverse image search using Google, we all the three photos used in several news reports from August 2016, reporting at least 16 people being killed when bombs hit a funeral in rebel-held Aleppo, Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had blamed a Syrian government aircraft for the attack, which had hit the Bab al-Nairab neighborhood of the divided city. It was reported that the two bombs fell several minutes apart, near a tent where people were receiving condolences for those killed.
We found that all the three photos are from the same incident back in August 2016, when the same girl was handed over to three different rescuers while the victims were being evacuated from the bombing site in Aleppo, Syria.
Photo 1
In this photo, a person with a white helmet can be seen carrying two girls. We found the original photo posted on Getty Images with the caption, "A Syrian rescue worker carries children in the Maadi district of eastern Aleppo after regime aircrafts reportedly dropped explosive-packed barrel bombs on August 27, 2016. At least 15 civilians were reported killed when two bombs fell several minutes apart, near a tent where people were receiving condolences for those killed this week."
It states that the photo was clicked by photo journalist Ameer al-Halbi for AFP.
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We also found another photo which is not in the viral collage, that shows one rescuer handing over the same girl to another rescuer who is seen in the third photo. This establishes the sequence of events, and that they are from the same incident with the same girl was handed over to different people while being rescued that day.
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Photo 2
In the second photo, a man in a yellow outfit is carrying the same girl. This photo is also from the same incident and was clicked by the same photo journalist.
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Photo 3
In the last photo, a man in a checked-shirt and jeans running carrying the same girl is also from the same incident. This photo was taken after the first rescuer handed the girl over to him which can be seen in other photos that have been left out from the collage.
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In December 2016, the same collage was fact-checked by Snopes when it was being shared with the false claim that CNN had been caught using images of the same girl to illustrate three separate reports of refugee crises in different areas
BOOM has previously debunked similar false claims of "child actors" in the Israel - Hamas conflict.
