By: Rajini KG
November 13 2023
Video of Syrian army tanks being destroyed in Damascus falsely linked to Israel-Hamas war
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Screenshot of the viral post. (Source: X/Screenshots/Modified by Logically Facts)
Fact-Check
The Verdict False
The video shows Syrian fighters shooting down T72 tanks of the Syrian Army in Syria’s Darayya city in 2013.
Claim ID 81c5021d
What's the claim?
A video of an army tank on fire is being shared on social media with the claim that Hamas fighters shot down Israeli military vehicles and tanks. An X user shared the video on November 8, 2023, with the caption, "Hamas has destroyed 12 Israeli military vehicles, including tanks in a sigle day (sic)." The post had 78,000 views and more than 600 likes. An archive of the post can be found here.
Screenshot of the viral post. (Source: X/Screenshots/Modified by Logically Facts)
However, the video is old and from Syria.
Here are the facts
A reverse image search led us to a video uploaded on January 25, 2013, on the YouTube channel named 'لواء المقداد بن عمرو' (Al-Miqdad bin Amr Brigade). Al-Miqdad bin Amr Brigade is one of the groups that joined the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to fight Bashar al-Assad's forces during the civil war in Syria. The video caption indicated that it captured the "destruction of a tank in Daraya, Al-Miqdad bin Amr Battalion on January 25, 2013 (Translated from Arabic)."
Screenshot of the YouTube video. (Source: YouTube/Screenshots)
The same video was found on Military.com in a report saying that a Syrian Arab Army (SAA) tank was blown by FSA fighters in Daraya, Syria, on January 25, 2013.
The Time of Israel included a screenshot from the viral video in a report published on January 26, 2013. The image was captioned: "A pair of what activists say are Syrian army tanks sit in a street in the Daraya neighborhood of Damascus on January 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Sham News Network via AP video)." It reports that Syrian army troops were fighting Syrian rebels to capture Daraya, which was under the control of Syrian forces during the Syrian Civil War.
The verdict
A ten-year-old video from Syria showing Syrian rebels reportedly attacking a Syrian Arm tank in Damascus has been misrepresented to be from the current Israel-Hamas war. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.