Israeli army shooting at Palestinian mosque? No, 2008 video of US army action in Iraq

A video that shows heavy firing on a mosque’s minaret is viral on social media with the following Hindi caption, “Israeli army fired at a mosque in Palestine near Israeli border because they were annoyed with the sound of Azan coming from the mosque. (इजरायल बॉर्डर के पास फलस्तीन में बनी मस्जिद से अज़ान की आवाज़ से तंग आकर इस्राइली फोज ने मस्जिद के गुंबद पर गोली बारी करदी.)” (Archive link) In the video, the sound of azan can be heard in the background.

इजरायल बॉर्डर के पास फलस्तीन में बनी मस्जिद से अज़ान की आवाज़ से तंग आकर इस्राइली फोज ने मस्जिद के गुंबद पर गोली बारी करदी pic.twitter.com/kyrhnS8ky7

— लेहरू 2.0 (@panditlehru) February 19, 2021

The same video was uploaded on Facebook with the claim, ”Israeli army attacked Palestinian mosque, but nothing happened to the mosque even after the attack.” This post was shared over 1,700 times. (Archive link)

Several Twitter and Facebook users shared the video with both captions. Alt News received a request on its WhatsApp helpline number (+917600011160) as well.

Fact check

We broke down the video into several keyframes and did a reverse image search. This led us to a Turkish news article from March 3, 2008. The title of the article is “US soldier’s new game minaret percussion”.

The video was also shared by American documentary filmmaker Michael Moore in 2008 which carries the testimony of US marine Jon M. Turner. He said that the video shows the US army attacking a mosque in Iraq.

We found another video of the testimony of Jon Turner where he confessed that he was in Iraq in 2006 with his troops. The viral video is played at 6:40 in the testimony. “It is illegal to shoot into a mosque unless you were taking fire from it. There was no fire that was taken from that mosque. It was shot into because we were angry,” he said.

There is also no sound of azan in the actual footage of the mosque attack.

A video of the US army firing at a mosque in Iraq in 2008 is viral with the false claim that the Israeli forces attacked a mosque in Palestine over the sound of azan.