Fact Check: 2023 video from Gaza VIRAL as India's revenge on Pakistan after Pahalgam attack
On the night of April 28-29, the Pakistan Army resorted to unprovoked firing across the Line of Control for the fifth consecutive time following the terror attack in Pahalgam. Pakistan's defence minister said on April 28 that 'a military incursion' by India was imminent in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack.Now, a video of people running helter-skelter amid heavy bombardment at a distance is being widely shared online with the claim that India conducted this attack at the India-Pakistan border to avenge the Pahalgam massacre. advertisementSharing the video on Facebook, one person wrote, 'Pakistan situation now. Bharat Mata Ki Jai. #Pahalgam Terror Attack.'
India Today Fact Check, however, found that this video is from the Gaza Strip, and is more than a year old.Our ProbeReverse-searching keyframes from the viral video led us to a Facebook post from November 10, 2023, by Omar Suleiman, an American Islamic scholar and civil rights activist. Its caption stated that Israel dropped bombs on the Indonesia Hospital outside the Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza.We then found multiple news reports about this incident. According to them, people fled from a hospital in Beit Lahia in Gaza during an Israeli strike in a nearby street. An Al Jazeera video report about this featured the viral clip, along with some other footage from the attack.advertisement Per reports, hundreds of people were injured in this Israeli airstrike near the Indonesia Hospital, which was opened in Beit Lahia in 2015. The hospital, built from donations raised by an NGO, was one of the last remaining hospitals in Gaza. A week before this attack, the Israeli military had claimed that Hamas was using this hospital 'to hide an underground command and control center'.Back in October 2024, the same video was shared on social media as Israel's attack on Iran. We had debunked it at the time as well.It is thus clear that a 2023 video from Gaza was falsely linked to the ongoing India-Pakistan tensions.
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