Clip shows crowds in Azerbaijan during swearing-in of military recruits, not Palestinians fleeing Gaza
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on November 7, 2023 at 14:37
- 5 min read
- By Mary KULUNDU, AFP Kenya
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A Nigerian Facebook page posted a video of a huge street procession days after Hamas militants struck Israel in a surprise dawn raid that killed 1,400 people on October 7, 2023.
The post, published on October 14, 2023, further claims that Palestinians are "now fleeing to Egypt for safety, food and shelter. The heat of the war by Israel is becoming unbearable that citizens are now forced to flee in their hundreds of thousands".
A text overlay in the video reads: "Finally Israel is taking over … Palestinians fleeing to Egypt."
Other Facebook accounts in Nigeria repeated the claim, which was further shared in Uganda, Ethiopia and Australia.
Israel-Gaza conflict
The Gaza conflict began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants entered southern Israel, killing 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 240 others, prompting a massive Israeli retaliation that medics in the Hamas-run territory say has killed more than 10,000 people, many of them children (archived report).
Weeks of war have further displaced more than 1.4 million people, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (archived here).
The Rafah border crossing into Egypt, the only route out of Gaza not run by Israel, closed when the conflict erupted.
However, it has reopened sporadically since November 1 to allow foreign passport holders and wounded and sick Palestinians to escape the fighting into Egypt (archived here).
Cairo had earlier rejected calls to accept refugees and instead urged restraint and diplomatic efforts for de-escalation.
Egypt has since said it will help evacuate around 7,000 foreigners through the crossing.
However, the clip claiming to show masses of people entering Egypt is false.
Unrelated video
For one, the Raffah crossing had not been officially reopened when the claim emerged in early October.
Furthermore, the clip features various clues indicating that it is unrelated to the ongoing Gaza conflict.
A few seconds into the video, the flag of Azerbaijan can be seen in the crowd.
Using the video verification tool, InVID We Verify, we ran reverse image searches on multiple keyframes and located the same clip with an Azerbaijani caption on this Telegram account.
"A crowd of parents after the swearing-in ceremony of young soldiers in the military unit," the translated caption reads.
A further keyword search revealed the same clip was published on August 14, 2023, on a YouTube channel belonging to the Azerbaijani media site Baku TV (archived here), with a similar caption as the one on Telegram. Baku is the country’s capital city.
Additionally, when the Baku TV video pans to the right, a security officer wearing the uniform of Azerbaijan’s military police can be seen.
The uniform is clearly labelled HP – which stands for "Hərbi Polis", or military police. The same uniforms can be seen on military police officers pictured in other news reports from Azerbaijan (archived here and here).
On August 13, 2023, Azerbaijan’s defence ministry posted a video of the swearing-in ceremony on its official YouTube channel (archived here).
"In accordance with the 2023 preparation plan approved by the defence ministry, the swearing-in ceremony of young soldiers was held in the Azerbaijan army," the caption reads.
"Members of the families of martyrs, commanders of military units, local executive bodies and public representatives, veterans, parents of soldiers took part in the ceremonies."
The renewed conflict between Israel and Hamas has generated a wave of disinformation online. You can follow our coverage here.
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