Footage of smoke from 2013 misrepresented amid Syrian takeover

"Smoke is coming out from the National Syrian TV in the center of Damascus," said a December 6 post sharing the footage on X. "Things are moving rapidly, and apparently, a regime collapse is eminent."

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Screenshot from X taken December 12, 2024

Similar posts spread across the platform in various languages, with some attributing the smoke to a drone strike.

Assad fled the country after a lightning rebel offensive brought a dramatic end to more than five decades of his family's iron-fisted rule in the country, which has been devastated by a drawn-out civil war that killed 500,000 people and displaced millions.

AFP footage captured smoke pluming over Damascus as the rebels seized the capital on December 8 -- and again in the days that followed due to air strikes from Israel, which has been pounding sites across its historic adversary since Assad fell.

But the clip of smoke shared online predates the toppling of Assad's government by more than a decade.

Reverse image searches surfaced the same video posted March 25, 2013 by the YouTube channel "ANA PRESS," with a credit to another called "EyeDamascus" (archived here and here). The Shaam News Network, a Syrian opposition media organization, also published the footage that day (archived here).

The YouTube titles and captions say the footage shows smoke rising from a shell that hit near the Damascene Sword Monument in Damascus's Umayyad Square, a prominent area in the city's center close to a number of key buildings and not far from the presidential palace.

AFP reported at the time that Syrian state media said at least one person had been killed and others were wounded.

The New York Times reported that the Free Syrian Army rebel group took responsibility for the blast.

AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about Syria here.