West Asia conflict: Old Tel Aviv subway image misrepresented as Indians denied shelter in Israel

by Oishani Bhattacharya

An image showing several people lying on the floor of a subway station is going viral on social media. Users claim it depicts Indians taking shelter in a subway in Israel after being denied access to bunkers.

This is viral against the backdrop of the ongoing US-Israel and Iran war. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a joint assault on Iran, targeting key military installations. The strikes reportedly killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with several senior figures of the ruling establishment. The attacks also caused civilian casualties, including 165 students and staff members, when a missile struck a girls’ elementary school. In retaliation, Iran carried out strikes on US military bases across Central and West Asia, including in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar. The situation remains fluid and highly volatile at the time of writing, with developments continuing to unfold.

X user Soft Spoken🔻 (@softspoken04) shared the image on March 3, claiming it showed Indians being denied access to bunkers in Israel and forced to take shelter in a subway station, highlighting their plight amid the ongoing conflict. The post has since garnered over 3.1 million views and been reposted more than 15,000 times.(Archive)

Another X user, @Jvnior, posted the viral image on March 3 with the same claim. The post has since been viewed over 444,900 times and reposted more than 700 times. (Archive)

The post was later quoted and amplified by Swati K. (@mynameswatik), who identifies herself as a lawyer in her bio. Her quoted post has garnered over 13,000 views. In the caption, she wrote: “Exactly what I feared… shame on you @myyogiadityanath @narendramodi to send them to a country that loves wars and occupation.” (Archive)

Several other users also shared the image while mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent remark referring to Israel as the “fatherland”, contrasting it with what they claimed was the plight of Indians there.

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Fact Check

To verify the claim, we ran a reverse image search on the viral image. This led us to a Hindustan Times report dated March 4, which featured the same image. The report, titled ‘FAKE’: Israel rubbishes reports of Indians being denied shelter amid Iran war’, stated that Israeli authorities had dismissed the claim that Indians were being denied access to shelters during the ongoing conflict.

The report also cited an X post by Guy Nir, spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in India. In the post, he pointed out that people of multiple ethnicities can be seen in the image and clarified that metro stations in Israel are designated and officially recognised safe spaces during attacks.

Further, we found a carousel post on Instagram shared by user @chaim_goldberg on June 18, 2025. The third slide carried the now-viral image. The caption read: “People take shelter in an underground train station in Tel Aviv during ongoing missile attacks from Iran, June 17, 2025.”

The post includes several other images showing people of diverse ethnicities taking shelter in the subway station.

At the time, tensions between Israel and Iran had escalated after Israel struck Tehran, citing efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear programme. This indicates that the viral image is old and unrelated to the ongoing US–Israel–Iran conflict.

Hence, our findings show that the viral image predates the current war. The claim that Indians were forced to take shelter in subway stations in Israel after being denied access to bunkers is therefore false, as the image shows people of multiple ethnicities taking shelter in a designated safe space.

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