Footage of journalist and medic killed in Gaza happened in 2014 conflict with Israel, not 2023

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on November 6, 2023 at 16:59
  • 3 min read
  • By James OKONG'O, AFP Kenya
Thousands of people have died in the latest Gaza war, which erupted after Hamas militants launched a deadly attack on Israel in early October. In response to the unprecedented assault, Israel began relentlessly bombing the Gaza Strip. A distressing video was posted on X (formerly Twitter) showing the moment a journalist and a paramedic were killed in an Israeli airstrike while the reporter’s camera was rolling. However, the context is misleading: while the footage is genuine, it was filmed during a previous conflict in 2014 and formed part of an Al Jazeera documentary.

"Palestinian journalist films the moment an Israeli strike kills him and a fellow medic on live TV (sic)," reads the post dated October 26, 2023.

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Screenshot showing the misleading post, taken on November 3, 2023

The video, shared in the midst of the latest conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, has had social media users guessing as to when it was filmed.

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Screenshots showing some of the comments on the post

In the footage, two men, one wearing what looks like a green paramedic uniform and the other who is only partially visible, can be seen attempting to escape a conflict zone. One of the men is visibly shaken and is holding his head in desperation, asking: "Where shall we go?"

The conversation continues until the shelling in the background is followed by a loud bang. The camera falls to the ground.

"Both Fouad Jaber and Khaled Hamad were killed by this missile," reads a line of text on the video. "Khaled's camera continued to record after he died."

Israeli troops continue to bombard and fight ground battles in the Gaza Strip in response to the unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023, when fighters associated with the Hamas Islamist movement killed more than 1,400 people – mainly civilians – and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli officials, making it the bloodiest day in the country’s history (archived here).

The health ministry in Gaza says Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 10,000 people, mainly civilians and many children.

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Map showing areas where ground operations by Israeli troops have been reported in the Gaza Strip

However, the footage is old and unrelated to the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war.

Old video

The logo of the Al Jazeera news channel is visible near the bottom of the screen.

By searching for "Fouad Jaber and Khaled Hamad", AFP Fact Check found the clip in a longer documentary published on Al Jazeera’s YouTube channel in 2016.

The section of the video shared on X appears 32 minutes into the documentary.

According to the documentary, the video was recorded in 2014 at the height of intense fighting between Israel and Hamas militias.

It shows Hamad, the journalist, and paramedic Jaber, both from the Palestinian territories, caught up in the middle of an Israeli artillery barrage in the Shujaiya residential district of the Gaza Strip in July 2014. Both men were killed during the incident.

We also came across articles about their deaths on Al Jazeera, the Middle East Eye and The Guardian predating the 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict (archived here, here and here).

News reports indicate that more than 20 journalists have been killed in the latest war (archived here). For more on AFP Fact Check’s coverage, click here.

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