Old, Unrelated Video From Philippines Peddled as Hamas Destroying Church in Gaza

The viral claim is false. The video dates back to June 2017 and is unrelated to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Fact-Check | The video is old and unrelated to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, a video of some people vandalising a church is going viral on the internet with users claiming that it shows Hamas group destroying a Baptist church in Gaza City.

What have users said?: A verified X user ‘Amitabh Chaudhary' shared the video saying, "#HamasTerrorists destroying a Baptist Church in #Gaza city and kicking the statue of Jesus, is this their fight to reclaim their land or is it Jihad against every other religion in this world, ask yourselves."

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)

The video had garnered more than 50,000 views at the time of writing this report. More archives to similar claims can be found here, here, and here.

What is the truth?: The video could be traced back to June 2017 and reportedly shows Islamic State militants setting fire to a church building in southern Philippines.

How did we find that out?: We divided the video into several keyframes using a Google Chrome extension, InVID, and performed a reverse image search on them.

• A Microsoft Bing search led us to a report on Daily Mail, which carried the same video.

• It mentioned that Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) militants smashed statues and set fire to a church building in a city in the southern Philippines.

• The video reportedly showed people toppling crucifixes and destroying effigies in the church in Marawi, southern Philippines.

The report was published on 5 June 2017.

(Source: Daily Mail/Screenshot)

Other sources: The same video was also uploaded on the official YouTube channel of New York Post.

• It was posted on 6 June 2017 and was titled, "ISIS defaces and destroys a Catholic church in the Philippines | New York Post."

• Its description mentioned that the video was captured in Marawi and was released by Amaq News Agency, an affiliate of Islamic State.

Bishop condemned the incident: According to a report in Inquirer.net — a news website based in Philippines — a Catholic bishop condemned the destruction of the cathedral in Marawi.

• It mentioned that the Bishop of Marawi, Edwin de la Pena, condemned the incident and called it "trampling on the Catholic faith."

• The bishop further said that the incident was "blasphemy" and "unacceptable."

The report was published on 6 June 2017.

(Photo: Inquirer.net/Screenshot)

Conclusion: Neither is the video recent nor is it related to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

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