A video which shows a child crying over the death of his father followed by visuals of other children weeping is being shared with users linking it to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
What have users said?: Those sharing the video have uploaded it with a caption that said, "Heartbreaking Stop the Genocide in Gaza! #FreePalestine."
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)
At the time of writing this report, the video had garnered more than 2,00,000 views lakh on the platform. Archives of similar claims can be found here, here, and here.
What is the truth?: The video actually shows three different videos that have been stitched together and shared with the misleading claim.
All three videos are old and from Syria. None of them are related to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
VIDEO 1
A keyword search on YouTube directed us the same video of the child crying over his father's death, uploaded on the official channel of AJ+.
The video dated back to 7 June 2016 and was titled, "Child Cries Over His Father's Death In Aleppo."
The description of the video said that the child named Ahmed was crying after his father was killed reportedly by a Syrian attack.
Ahmed's father, Fawzy Barghout, was a member of The White Helmets — a civilian group that saves people trapped in the rubble.
VIDEO 2
We performed a Google Lens search on the second video, which showed a child in a red sweater facing down and crying.
This led us to a longer version of the video on a Facebook page named 'Yenisafak.com/ru'.
It was uploaded on 17 February 2020 and its caption when translated to English said, "After my father died, no one buys me a jacket."
We noticed that the video had two watermarks that said "spotlight humanity" and "onenationuk."
On searching for the second word on Google, we came across a YouTube channel with the same name. According to its bio, One Nation is a relief and development agency based in the United Kingdom.
Team WebQoof found the video uploaded on the YouTube channel on 30 January 2020. It showed a person asking several kids why they don't have a jacket on.
At around the 0:34 timestamp, the same kid can be seen talking.
VIDEO 3
While going through the YouTube channel named 'One Nation', we also found a longer version of the third video that showed two children crying while talking about their parent.
The video dated back to December 2019 and was titled, "A heartbreaking story of 2 orphans in Syria."
It showed a young boy talking about he lost his father when he was nine years of age. It showed him talking about how his father used to buy gifts for the family and take them for trips.
Recent updates from Gaza: According to a recent report in Reuters, Palestinian officials said that more than 11,000 Gaza residents were killed in air and artillery strikes that started on 7 October.
They said that 40 percent of the death toll were children.
The report further mentioned that Israel said around 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 hostages were taken by Hamas militants.
Conclusion: Three old and unrelated videos have been stitched together and are being shared with users falsely linking them to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
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