Video of Gaza children wading through floods is AI-generated
- Published on December 17, 2025 at 10:01
- 3 min read
- By AFP Malaysia
Winter storms have flooded encampments of displaced Gazans in the war-torn territory, but a video shared in Malay-language social media posts supposedly showing children struggling in the rain is fabricated. The footage bears signs indicative of AI-generated content, and AFP photos of the flooding differ from the clip circulating online.
"Rain and flood in Gaza," reads a Malay-language Facebook post featuring a "save Gaza Palestine" hashtag shared November 28, 2025.
It includes a clip of four children huddled together in knee-deep floodwaters, with one girl saying in Arabic: "Enough, enough, help us. We are scared, where do we go? We have nothing, someone help us."
Heavy rains and cold brought by Storm Byron have battered Gaza, with the United Nations warning on December 15 that an estimated 1.3 million people were in need of shelter assistance and faced increasing risk of hypothermia (archived link).
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said a two-week-old baby named Muhammad Khalil Abu Al-Khair died because of severe hypothermia caused by extreme cold.
Most of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by two years of war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by Hamas's October 7, 2023 assault that resulted in the deaths of 1,221 Israelis.
Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed more than 70,000 people, according to figures from the territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Meanwhile, aid shortages have left people ill-equipped for winter, with limited access to gas, firewood, food and medicine since the war began.
The same video spread elsewhere on Facebook alongside similar claims, as well as in posts in Turkish, Arabic, Italian, Indonesian and Thai.
However, the video contains signs that it was generated with AI. It is similar to another fabricated clip of the Gaza floods that AFP previously debunked in Arabic.
A reverse image search on Google found it matches now-deleted videos labelled as AI-generated content posted by a TikTok account called "nourforpalestine".
A close inspection of the video shows visual inconsistencies characteristic of AI-generated content.
A Palestinian flag in the background appears unattached and moves unnaturally. Electrical wires disappear into the distance, free from any utility poles.
The clip appears to show rain falling onto the floodwaters, but the children do not seem to be getting drenched.
Additionally, their eyes and mouths move unnaturally, while their bodies remain unusually stiff even as they appear to speak.
AFP ran the video through the Hive Moderation detection tool, which found that it is "99.9% likely to contain AI generated or deepfake content".
AFP photos of a flooded encampment also differ from the footage circulating online, with children wading through ankle-deep water filled with debris and mud.
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here.
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