Old Video of a Failed Rocket Launch Falsely Linked to Strike at Gaza Hospital

This video dates back to August 2022 and is not related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Fact-Check: An old video is going viral to claim that it shows a failed rocket attack by Hamas on Gaza hospital.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video purportedly showing a failed rocket launch is going viral on social media to claim that it was fired by the Hamas group, which resulted in the blast at the Gaza hospital.

More context: On 18 October, an explosion at Gaza's Al-Ahli Arab hospital killed at least 500 people.

• The Israel Defense Force (IDF) refuted the claims about them bombing the hospital and said that a misfired rocket by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group was responsible for the blast.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X/Screenshot) 

(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)

But the video is old: While the video reportedly shows a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian militant group, it has been on the internet since August 2022.

How did we find out the truth?: On performing a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral video, we came across an old post on X (formerly Twitter) carrying the same video.

• This was posted on 7 August 2022 by Avi Mayer, the Editor-in-Chief of Jerusalem Post, a newspaper based in Jerusalem.

• His post carried the same viral video, and the caption stated that it shows an explosion in Gaza's Jabalia Refugee Camp due to a rocket that was misfired by the Palestinian militant group.

• We also found a post by Israeli journalist Noam Amir from 7 August 2022 that carried the same video.

• He stated that this video shows a missile launched at Jabalia, a Palestinian city located 4 kilometers north of Gaza.

• Kan, Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, also shared the video and specified that it shows a failed launch in Jabalia.

Conclusion: Although we couldn't independently verify more context of the video, it is clearly an old video that is going viral to claim that it shows a recent failed rocket launched by Hamas on Gaza hospital.

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