Damaged smartphone photo from Egypt falsely linked to Lebanon communication device blasts

“An iPhone exploded in Lebanon," read a simplified Chinese X post on September 19, 2024.

It featured a photo of a damaged smartphone with exposed electronic components.

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Screenshot of the false post, taken October 3, 2024.

The photo was shared thousands of times with the same false claim on Facebook and X. AFP debunked a similar claim after it emerged in Arabic-language posts.

The posts surfaced online after explosions that targeted Hezbollah communications devices on September 17 and 18 killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000 (archived link).

The attack was widely blamed on Israel, which has refused to comment.

Hezbollah has traded almost daily cross-border fire with Israel since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip (archived link). 

The unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,788 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The UN has described the figures as reliable.

However, this photo has circulated online since 2021.

Photo from Egypt

A reverse image search on Google found the original photo published by the Egyptian newspaper Cairo 24 on March 19, 2021, alongside other images of the burned device (archived link).

According to the report, an iPhone exploded while being charged and caused a fire in a residential area in the southern part of Egypt's capital Cairo. A child fell and broke his arm fleeing the scene, it said.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and the original photo published by Cairo 24 (right):

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Screenshot comparison of the photo in the false post and the original photo published by Cairo 24.

The owner of the phone told Cairo 24 that he filed a report with the police station and provided eight photos of the damaged iPhone including the phone's original package, "describing the incident and accusing the iPhone company of negligence, stressing that the phone was no more than a month old".

The same incident was reported by Arab media Elnabaa (archived link).

AFP previously fact-checked posts falsely linking an old photo to the Lebanon pager blasts here.