As the war between Israel and Hamas continues, a video is going viral on the internet with users claiming that it shows thousands of United States Marine Corps personnel (or US Marines) landing in Israel.
At the time of writing this report, the video had more than 16,000 views on the platform. More archives to similar claims can be found here, here, and here.
What is the truth?: The video could be traced back to June 2022 and is unrelated to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The video showed 101st Airborne Division of United States army arriving in Mihail Kogalniceanu, Romania.
How did we find out?: Using a video verification tool, InVID, we divided the video into several keyframes and performed a reverse image on them.
A Yandex search directed us to a longer version of the video uploaded on an unverified YouTube channel named 'Murphy'.
The video was uploaded on 30 June 2022 and its description mentioned that it shows 101st Airborne Division soldiers arrive in Mihail Kogalniceanu, Romania on 28 June 2022.
The description was recently updated to clarify that the video had no connection with the recent events in Israel.
Comparing both clips: We compared several visuals from the viral video to the one uploaded on YouTube and found that both of them are from the same incident.
A comparison clearly highlights the similarities.
(Source: YouTube/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)
Other sources: We further performed a keyword search and came across the same video uploaded on the website named 'DVIDS' — a media distribution service.
The caption mentioned, "101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Soldiers arrive in Mihail Kogainiceani, Romania, June 28, 2022. The 101st units are supporting V Corps’ mission to reinforce."
Team WebQoof found an image uploaded on the US Department of Defense website that showed its soldiers arriving in Romania.
It mentioned that the soldiers had gone to Romania to join NATO's (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) ranks to "deter further Russian aggression."
Conclusion: It is clear that the video is old and is unrelated to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
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