Hezbollah confirmed Sept. 28 that its chief, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed a day earlier in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon.
Israel performed the strike Sept. 27 at Hezbollah’s central headquarters underneath residential buildings in Dahiya, a Beirut suburb.
An X video compilation posted Sept. 28 that had amassed greater than 1.8 million views as of Sept. 29 exhibits clips of 17 buildings being hit by bombs and claimed to indicate the second the airstrike that killed Nasrallah and different Hezbollah leaders landed.
“VIEWER DISCRETION: Moments of arrival for all of the bunker-busting bombs that ended the lives of Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s management of their fortified underground bases,” the publish mentioned.
We discovered different social media posts sharing the video and claiming it was of the airstrike that killed Nasrallah, or saying the footage was filmed in Lebanon.
The compilation’s first clip, shared on X, exhibits males and boys standing on a road nook taking a look at a constructing within the background that all of a sudden went up in flames after an airstrike. The video additionally exhibits a number of buildings struck by bombs.
However the declare that this was the second Nasrallah was killed doesn’t arise underneath scrutiny.
First, the entire X publish’s footage was shot in daylight. The Sept. 27 airstrike on Hezbollah’s headquarters occurred at night time. Israel Protection Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari mentioned in a video shared Sept. 28 that the strike passed off “final night time.” Information images of the aftermath of the bombing present that the airstrike occurred at night time.
Second, a reverse-image search of a number of of the clips exhibits they’re from airstrikes in Gaza.
(X screenshot)
We discovered the primary clip within the video had been shared Aug. 18 by the Anadolu Company, a Turkish state-run information company, on its English-language X account.
The Anadolu X publish mentioned the footage captured the “second of Israeli military’s assault on Zagout household’s dwelling in Nuseirat Camp” in Gaza. The publish linked to an Anadolu article about Israeli assaults in August that killed 16 individuals, together with on the Nuseirat refugee camp.
We additionally discovered the identical footage shared Aug. 18 on X on two different accounts that described it as being from Gaza.
The X video that claims it exhibits the strike on Nasralla additionally comprises different footage of Gaza airstrikes, together with:
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A man and a toddler run as a constructing behind them is hit by a bomb, shared Aug. 17 on Fb and labeled as being in Gaza.
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A gaggle of males working subsequent to a white automobile and piles of rubble as a constructing explodes behind them, shared Aug. 11 on Instagram, the place it was described as a scene from Gaza.
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One clip had textual content describing it as from a constructing within the Bureij camp, dated June 3. That matches with video we discovered on X exhibiting the identical constructing in central Gaza being struck the identical day.
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A unique video clip of a residential constructing being destroyed was shared on social media in December.
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A video of a residential constructing was shared on Instagram in February with a caption saying it was from Gaza.
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We discovered the video of a person standing in entrance of a white constructing after which working because it explodes in July X publish and in a fact-check by India-based fact-checking group Digital Forensics, Analysis and Analytics Centre, which mentioned this clip and others shared within the compilation are from Gaza, not Lebanon.
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One other bombing of a residential constructing was shared Aug. 27 on X with a caption saying it was from the Nuseirat camp in Gaza.
Our ruling
An X publish containing 17 video clips claimed to indicate the “moments” that Israel’s “bunker-busting bombs” arrived and “ended the lives of Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s management.”
Israel mentioned and information images present that the strikes that killed the Hezbollah chief occurred at night time; all of the footage within the X publish was shot in daylight. We discovered eight of the clips elsewhere on social media and so they had been taken in June, July and August in Gaza.
We charge the declare False.
