FACT CHECK: GAZA CHILD’S VIDEO FALSELY LINKED TO UNREST IN BANGLADESH

Thu 29 August 2024:

Footage of a child covered in dust after an airstrike in Gaza circulated in social media posts that falsely claimed it was filmed in Bangladesh following reports of attacks on members of the country’s Hindu minority. The child was in fact caught up in a strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza’s Nuseirat camp where the Israeli military said it had targeted “terrorists”.

“This is a Bangladeshi Hindu child,” read a Hindi-language Facebook post that shared the video on August 9, 2024.

“The one who has been thrown out of his house and heard the cries of his mother who is being raped and may have even been murdered.”

The video, which was posted on a pro-Hindu Facebook page with more than 150,000 followers, shows a small child covered in dust and sitting alone by a wall.

“If this child was on the streets of Gaza, he would have made the cover of the world media today,” it added.

The video circulated online after India’s Hindu-nationalist government sounded alarm over reports of attacks on Bangladesh’s Hindu minority immediately following Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s overthrow (archived link).

Hasina fled to India by helicopter on August 5 after weeks of student-led protests forced her to quit, ending her iron-fisted 15-year rule.

Hindus in Muslim-majority Bangladesh are considered a steadfast support base for Hasina’s Awami League party.

Gaza footage

However, the video shows a child caught up in an Israeli strike in Gaza.

A video features the logo of Arabic news channel Al Jazeera Mubasher in the top-left corner.

Al Jazeera Mubasher’s posted the video on Instagram in a July 14, 2024 post that read in Arabic: “Fear and panic of a child sitting alone after an Israeli airstrike targeted a shelter for displaced people at the UNRWA-affiliated Abu Araban school in Nuseirat camp” (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip shared in false posts (left) and video posted by Al Jazeera Mubasher (right):

Screenshot comparison of the clip shared in false posts (left) and video posted by Al Jazeera Mubasher (right)

Fifteen people were killed in a strike on the school sheltering displaced people where the Israeli military said it had targeted “terrorists” (archived link).

The strike on the UN-run Abu Araban site in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp was the fifth on a school-turned-shelter in eight days.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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