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FACTCHECK
Debunked: Years-old video of hospital bombing in Syria claimed to show strike on Gaza
The hospital, which housed Aleppo’s only pediatric department, was reportedly bombed more than a dozen times in 2016.
DRAMATIC VIDEO FOOTAGE showing a hospital being hit by airstrikes has been shared online, where it’s been claimed that it shows a recent Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza.
However, the footage is at least seven years old, and was filmed hundreds of miles away, in Syria.
“Israel caught on camera bombing Al-Sadaqa Hospital,” a description posted alongside the video by an Irish Facebook user reads. “Not a single ‘Hamas terrorist in sight,’ only hospital workers and patients.”
Multiple other posts featuring the video also claim that it shows a recent bombing of a hospital in Gaza by Israel. Some have the exact same wording.
However, the video is at least seven years old, and has previously been posted online, described as being from the Syrian civil war, an ongoing conflict between forces loyal to the government of Bashar al-Assad and rebel militants, which included both pro-democracy and Islamist groups.
The footage is described as showing a 2016 attack on a hospital by pro-Assad government forces in Aleppo City, Syria, which was under the control of the pro-democracy Free Syrian Army at the time.
The footage was published by the Aleppo Media Centre, a pro-opposition group that regularly uploaded videos of attacks in the region, including others that they describe as being the same place: the Omar Bin Abdul Aziz Hospital.
Certain features and rooms in the footage match, confirming that these videos were taken from the same location, and a 2017 analysis by Forensic Architecture, a London-based research group, confirms that it was taken at the Omar Bin Abdul Aziz Hospital in Aleppo.
The hospital, which housed the city’s only pediatric department, was reportedly bombed more than a dozen times in 2016.
Pro-Assad government forces would later take control of Aleppo City near the end of that year.
Posts falsely claiming that the footage was taken in Gaza City give the location as Al-Sadaqa Hospital, described as being the only hospital offering cancer treatment in the Gaza Strip, built using a donation from Turkey.
The Hamas-controlled Palestinian Health Ministry has said that “significant damage” has been done to that hospital from recent Israeli strikes, but did not report any fatalities.
Since the recent wave of violence in Israel and Gaza began, misinformation and disinformation has surged on social media sites, often described as evidence of actions by either Hamas or Israeli forces.
These include video game clips being passed off as combat footage, years-old videos of attacks, military demonstrations, or firework displays from other countries being shared with descriptions that they show combat in Gaza; fake accounts for media organisations and journalists being used to spread misinformation; and doctored government documents.
Verdict
False. A years-old video for a bombing in Aleppo in Syria has falsely been shared as a recent video from Gaza.
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