Video shows Egyptian humanitarian convoy heading to Gaza in 2021, not October 2023

"Video of the convoy of aid vehicles piling up in front of the Rafah border. Gaza people need this aid, but the ruthless Zionist regime has blocked all routes for any aid that goes to Palestinians," reads an Indonesian-language post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on October 14, 2023.

The aerial footage, which is nearly two minutes long, shows long lines of vehicles in the middle of a desert, parked in front of a wall with the Egyptian flag raised above it.

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Screenshot of the false post, taken on November 3, 2023

The video has been viewed more than 4.6 million times in total after it was shared alongside a similar claim in posts on Facebook, SnackVideo and TikTok here and here.

Similar posts have also circulated in other languages, including Polish, English, French and Spanish.

Hamas gunmen carried out on October 7 a cross-border attack, the worst in Israel's history, that left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government.

In retaliation, Israel launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which, according to the Hamas government in the territory on November 21, has killed 14,100 people, thousands of them children.

Large parts of Gaza have been flattened by thousands of air strikes, and the territory is under siege, with minimal food, water and fuel allowed in.

At the time the video surfaced online, international aid had piled up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, the only route into Gaza after all Israeli checkpoints were closed following the shock Hamas assault.

Images taken by an AFP journalist on October 16, for example here and here, show a convoy of trucks carrying aid supplies for Gaza from Egypt waiting on the main Ismailia desert road, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) east of the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip, on the way to the Rafah crossing.

The video shared in the posts, however, predates the Israel-Hamas war.

Old clip

A Google reverse image search found an image showing a similar scene in a report about goods entering the Gaza Strip from Egypt published by Israeli media N12 News on June 28, 2021 (archived link).

The footage includes a watermark for Egyptian television channel Al Nahar TV (archived link).

Further searches using the tool "Who Posted What" -- which allows users to carry out keyword searches for Facebook posts from a particular date -- for posts by Al Nahar TV in 2021 found the original footage uploaded to the broadcaster's official Facebook page on May 31, 2021 (archived links here and here).

The Arabic-caption of the post says: "Egypt sends the largest convoys of support and aid to the Palestinians in Gaza for the third time."

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video from the false post (left) and the video from Al Nahar TV (right):

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Screenshot comparison of the video from the false post (left) and the video from Al Nahar TV (right)

Egypt had sent ambulances and aid to Gaza after a series of rocket attacks on the area in May 2021, which was triggered by an Israeli security force crackdown on protests against the explusion of Palestinians from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers in an annexed east Jerusalem neighbourhood, AFP reported at the time.

More than 200 Palestinians were killed in the conflict, which lasted nearly two weeks, with the United Nations saying that more than half of the dead were civilians.

A similar video showing Egypt's aid convoy to Gaza was also published to the official YouTube channel of Egyptian media outlet Sada El Balad on May 31, 2021 (archived link).

The war between Israel and Hamas has triggered a deluge of misinformation, debunked by AFP here.