Lighthouse Journalism came across a video being widely shared on social media platforms, the video showed a bombing. It was claimed that Israel returned the body of a terrorist with explosives and that eliminated over 100 terrorists. During the investigation we found that the video is old from 2012 of a car bombing at a funeral in Syria.
Claim:
X user Prachyam shared the video with a misleading claim on his profile.
Other users too are sharing the same claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by uploading the video in the InVid tool and ran a reverse image search on all the keyframes obtained from the same.
We found the video on a YouTube channel and noticed that it was uploaded 12 years ago.
The description of the video said (translation): Damascus Countryside Zamalka The moment of the funeral procession bombing 6/30/2012 YouTube
We also found the video uploaded on the website of abc.net.
The caption stated: Video footage from Syria appears to show an explosion ripping through a funeral procession near Damascus.
We also found a few news reports about it after doing a simple keyword search.
The report in LA Times stated: At least 85 people were killed when a car bomb exploded during a funeral procession Saturday evening in the Syrian town of Zamalka, activists and human rights groups said. People had gathered to honor a resident of the town near Damascus who had been killed earlier in the day, said Abu Omar, an activist in Zamalka who attended the funeral. The resident, Abdul Hadi Halabi, had been killed by gunfire when government forces briefly entered the town from their checkpoints, said Abu Omar, who requested to be identified by a nickname for his safety.
We also found a similar news report on the website of CNN.
Conclusion: Israel did not send the body of a terrorist covered in explosives to target other terrorists. The video circulating with this false claim is actually from a 2012 funeral procession in Syria, where a car bombing resulted in over 85 fatalities. This viral claim is misleading.
