Image of fireball in night sky shows 2020 airstrike near Gaza-Egypt border, not military base in Syria
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on November 2, 2023 at 14:49
- 4 min read
- By AFP Middle East & North Africa, AFP South Africa
- Translation and adaptation Tendai DUBE
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"US troops attacked in northern Syria at the Al-Omar oil fields," reads an October 23, 2023, post published by a South African account on X (formerly Twitter).
Two images in the post appear to show a large explosion at night.
Similar claims have been shared widely in the United States and were debunked in Arabic by AFP Fact Check.
Although attacks have been reported in Syria and Iraq in recent weeks, the images in question are unrelated to these events.
Regional tensions
The US pledged full support to Israel after Hamas gunmen crossed the Gaza border and killed 1,400 people on October 7, 2023, most of them civilians. Militants also took more than 200 hostages.
Israel has responded with relentless bombing of Gaza (archived here). Troop movements into the Palestinian enclave have also begun.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip says Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 9,000 people, mainly civilians and many children.
On October 25, 2023, AFP reported how armed factions close to Iran have threatened to attack US interests over Washington’s support for Israel, with one group – Ketaeb Hezbollah – demanding that American forces leave Iraq or "taste the fires of hell" (archived here).
Days earlier, the Pentagon said (archived here) there had been 10 attacks on American and allied forces in Iraq and three in Syria, involving a "mix of one-way attack drones and rockets".
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, drones targeted a base in the area of Syria’s Al-Omar oil field on October 21, 2023, but no casualties were reported (archived here).
A group identifying itself as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq later claimed responsibility for the attack, and others that have targeted American and coalition forces.
Some 2,500 American troops are stationed in Iraq and another 900 in Syria as part of efforts to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, which once held significant territory in both countries but was pushed back by local ground forces backed by international air strikes in a bloody multi-year conflict.
US soldiers and other personnel from the international coalition against the jihadists are deployed at bases in Iraq and Syria that have been the target of the attacks, but the facilities are ultimately controlled by local forces rather than international troops.
Old Gaza images
A reverse image search revealed that one of the photographs was used in articles here and here describing a surge in violence in Israel and Gaza, but in 2020 (archived here and here).
"A ball of fire is seen following an Israel airstrike at Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip early on February 23, 2020," the AFP caption reads.
Additional information in the caption reports that "Israeli aircraft hit what the military said were Islamic Jihad sites in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants said they fired a barrage of rockets at Israel".
The US Department of State classified the Islamic Jihad as a terrorist organisation, founded in 1979 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (archived here). It broadly shares the same goals as Hamas.
Another reverse image search on the second picture showed it was also taken in Gaza, this time in 2018, and was credited to China’s Xinhua News Agency.
"Photo taken on November 12, 2018, shows an explosion during an Israeli airstrike on Hamas-run television station Al-Aqsa Television in Gaza City," reads the photo caption on the Alamy stock photography website, which sells the image (archived here).
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