Posts falsely link several unrelated images of fires to Sudan clashes
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on April 21, 2023 at 11:58
- 4 min read
- By Mary KULUNDU, AFP Kenya
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On April 16, 2023, a day after clashes erupted in Sudan, a Twitter account shared two images: one of a bridge on fire, and the other of Khartoum’s recognisable Corinthia hotel that looked like it was exploding into flames.
“Let us pray for #Sudan Khartoum where is African Union, where is Arab League (sic),” reads the tweet that has been shared more than 200 times.
These two images were also shared by a Kenyan Facebook page alongside another photo showing a burning apartment building.
“Fighting rages for a second day in Sudan between the army and a rival paramilitary force, the RSF. Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan is in Khartoum and says dozens of people have been killed,” reads the Facebook post.
The image of the burning hotel also showed up in this Facebook page, which separately published the photo of the burning bridge in a post that mixed in some accurate images from Sudan.
Since April 15, 2023, the streets of Khartoum have become a battlefield due to fighting between two rival generals. The army, under military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has clashed with the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Burhan's own deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
More than 300 people have been killed and thousands wounded since the fighting erupted.
Burhan and Daglo's bitter dispute is centred around the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army -- a key condition for a final deal aimed at restoring Sudan's democratic transition.
While there has been heavy gunfire and explosions in Khartoum, the three images showing the bridge, the apartment building and the hotel on fire are unrelated to these clashes.
Unrelated images
A reverse image search of the picture of the burning apartment building locates the image in an Associated Press photo blog (archived here). It was taken by an AP photographer in March 2022 – long before the clashes erupted in Sudan.
According to the caption, the photo was taken after a Russian rocket hit an apartment building in Ukraine’s Mariupol City.
“An apartment building explodes after a Russian army tank fires in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022”, the caption reads.
A reverse image search of the image of the burning bridge reveals that it is an AFP photo from October 2022. It was reprinted in various news reports at the time, and is available in AFP's photo archives.
“Black smoke billows from a fire on the Kerch bridge that links Crimea to Russia, after a truck exploded, near Kerch, on Saturday on October 8, 2022. Moscow announced that a truck exploded igniting a huge fire and damaging the key Kerch bridge built as Russia's sole land link with annexed Crimea,” the caption reads.
Lastly, a close look at the image of Khartoum’s Corinthia hotel shows that it has been digitally manipulated to add smoke, fire and what looks like a missile.
A reverse image search located the original image of the hotel -- but with no flames, smoke or missiles -- published in a tweet in 2013.
Alice Jonsdottir, a spokeswoman for Corinthia Hotels, also dismissed the image as fabricated.
“I can confirm that this is not accurate and the image has been manipulated,” Jonsdottir told AFP Fact Check.
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