According to reports, an air attack at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in the Gaza Strip on the night of October 17 killed hundreds. The health ministry in Gaza said the blast at the hospital was caused by an Israeli air raid. Israel has attributed the explosion to a misfired rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group. The PIJ has denied the allegation.
After news of the attack broke out, several videos started circulating on social media, claiming to be related to the strike. One of these videos was shared by Israeli journalist Eddie Cohen who claimed that “a failed Hamas rocket launch landed on innocent heads”. The video appears to show a failed missile launch. The claim aligns with Israel’s allegation that the hospital attack was a result of a misfired rocket by the PIJ. (Archive)
عاجل
مجزرة المعمداني . صاروخ حماس نفسه إطلاق فاشل سقط على رؤوس الأبرياء.
هناك صور واقمار تصور لا تحاولوا الكذب. pic.twitter.com/EGclpcamNo— إيدي كوهين אדי כהן 🇮🇱 (@EdyCohen) October 17, 2023
A parody handle of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, @TheMossadIL also tweeted the video. The video appears to show a failed missile launch, and was one of three videos shared by the user in a tweet captioned, “Gaza hospital bombed. IDF was not operating in the area. It appears to have come from a failed Hamas rocket”. The claim aligns with Israel’s allegation that the hospital attack was a result of a misfired rocket by the PIJ. (Archive)
Several accounts, including verified ones, have shared the video with the same claim. (Archives- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Fact Check
There are several instances of this video being shared in August of 2022. It was uploaded by Non-Profit Organisation StandWithUs on Facebook which claimed that the video is of an explosion in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip that had killed at least four children and was the result of a failed rocket launch by Islamic Jihad.
According to a Washington Post report, the explosion happened during the airstrikes and rocket attacks that continued for two whole days, until Israel and the militants in the Gaza Strip agreed to a cease-fire on August 7. The airstrikes killed 43 people and injured more than 300 in Gaza and forced thousands of Israelis to shelter in bunkers. In the refugee camp of Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip, an explosion on August 6 had killed at least four children. The Israeli military, which shared satellite footage of rocket fire from the enclave, said that the fatalities were the result of a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch and that it did not conduct an airstrike at the time of the blast.
Following the explosion, the viral clip started circulating on social media. The current editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, Avi Mayer, had shared the viral video alongside a statement from the Israeli Defence Forces.
🔴 BREAKING: The explosion in Gaza’s Jabalia Refugee Camp—in which several civilians, including children, were killed—was the rest of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired and fell short; there was no Israeli military activity in the area. (IDF) pic.twitter.com/dD8yMSCxWZ
— Avi Mayer אבי מאיר (@AviMayer) August 6, 2022
An Israeli news outlet shared the video as documentation of the failed launch.
ראש מערך ההסברה: בידינו ראיות לכך שהילדים בג’בליה נהרגו מירי של הג’יהאד | תיעוד השיגור הכושל@AmichaiStein1 @ItayBlumental pic.twitter.com/FpeLkL6FYl
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) August 6, 2022
Israeli journalist Noam Amir and activist Yoseph Haddad had also shared the clip and claimed it to be representative of the explosion that occurred in Jabaliya due to a misfire by the militant group Islamic Jihad.
It is thus evident that an old video, that was shared in August 2022 claiming to be representative of a failed rocket launch by the militant group Islamic Jihad is currently viral again with the claim that the video shows a similar misfire by the PIJ which resulted in the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza getting hit.
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