Footage of Iranian consulate attack in Syria falsely shared as 'site of Hamas leader's death in Tehran'
- Published on August 7, 2024 at 10:07
- 3 min read
- By AFP Middle East & North Africa
- Translation and adaptation AFP Pakistan
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"Recording of the house where Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in an Israeli missile raid in the Iran capital, Tehran," read an English-language post on social media platform X on July 31.
The post -- viewed over 20,000 times -- included a video of heavily damaged buildings.
Similar false posts have been shared on X and Facebook here, here and here.
Haniyeh was killed in Tehran on July 31 in an attack blamed on Israel, which has not directly commented on it.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said that Israel killed Haniyeh using a "short-range projectile" launched from outside of his accommodation in Tehran.
Iran said it has the "legal right" to respond to the assassination, which came almost ten months into an Israeli military offensive that has ravaged the Gaza Strip and was sparked by an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel.
The circulating video, however, shows the aftermath of a strike in Damascus.
Reverse image searches of keyframes on Google found it shared in a report about the strike by an Argentinian news agency here on April 1, 2024 (archived link).
It was also published by an Israeli newspaper here (archived link).
AFP reported at the time that an air strike hit Iran's consulate building in the Syrian capital on April 1 and killed 16 people, including seven members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
The most senior figure killed was Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the Quds Force, which runs Iran's foreign military operations.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and the clip shared in news reports about the Damascus strike (right):
The video corresponds to an AFP photo showing the consulate after the strike.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the circulating video (left) and the AFP photo (right) with the corresponding features highlighted:
The site seen in the circulating video (left) corresponds with a picture geotagged at the same location (right) on Google Maps (archived link):
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