This video shows an Islamic State group bomb in Syria in 2014

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on June 4, 2021 at 09:00
  • 4 min read
  • By AFP India
A video has been viewed thousands of times in multiple Facebook posts that claim it shows Israeli forces bombing a Palestinian mosque in May 2021. The claim is false: the footage actually shows a shrine bombed by the Islamic State group in Syria in 2014.

The video was shared on Facebook here on May 13, 2021, where it has been viewed more than 1,500 times.

“Boom, Happy Eid. Oh God, at least they would've waited for Adhan to finish. Anyway. Eid Mubarak. Israeli forces demolishing a Palestinian mosque,” the Hindi-language caption reads.

Adhan is an Islamic call to prayer from a mosque, while Eid is an Islamic festival that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

The background audio in the video is a recitation of Adhan.

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Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post taken on June 2, 2021.

Clashes between Israel and Hamas escalated in May 2021. More than 200 Palestinians were killed in deadly fighting, before a ceasefire was agreed on May 21.

The 17-second video has also been shared here and here on Facebook; and here and here on Twitter alongside a similar claim.

The claim, however, is false.

A reverse image and keyword search on Google found a longer version of the video posted here on YouTube on June 8, 2014.

The video is titled: “Islamic State destroys the shrine of Uwais-al-Qarani.”

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in misleading posts (L) and YouTube video (R).

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The watermark highlighted on the top-left corner in a screenshot (L) from the video is a flag of the Islamic State group, as seen in AFP photos below.

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AFP also found a three-minute video here uploaded on September 23, 2015, on online stock photo website Flickr, titled “ISIS bombed Shrine of Hazrat Owais al Qarni in Raqqa Syria.”

The Arabic language audio translates to English as: "Thanks to God, the Islamic State (..) has demolished a center of paganism (…..) in Raqqa (northern Syria), this place has been used by Shiites to spread their sect among Sunnis. in This place, there was a shrine that Shiites from everywhere came to visit."

Raqqa is a city in Syria, which became the capital of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

A screenshot taken at the 01:16 mark in the Flickr video (L) of the structure of the shrine resemble the Google photo of the Owais-al-Qarni shrine (R) taken before the destruction here and here

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Details of the bombing feature in a report published in 2014 by the Center for Strategic Communication of Arizona State University. 

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in 2015 published a report titled ‘Syria World Heritage Sites Report’ showcasing images of the site in Raqqa before and after the destruction of the mosque.

Below is a screenshot of the UN report shows the satellite imagery of the Raqqa shrine before and after the destruction:

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Below is a screenshot comparison of Google earth images taken before and after the destruction of the shrine:

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Below is a screenshot comparison of the dome in the misleading video (L) and the dome in the satellite imagery (R)

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Reuters news agency published a report here in March 2014 about the destruction of the Owais al Qarni shrine in Raqqa by the Islamic State group.

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