Claim: Video shows Israel’s airstrike on a water tank in the Gaza Strip.
Fact: The claim is false because the video is not from Gaza. The video shows Sudan’s army targeting a fuel tank with a drone that belongs to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
On 7 October 2023, the Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, launched a “surprise attack” on Israel via sea, land, and air. In response, the Israeli government formally declared war on Hamas on 8 October 2023.
At least 1,400 fatalities have been reported in Israel, while health officials reported that more than 8,000 people have been killed in Gaza, Palestine, according to a report by OCHA. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the UNRWA, reported that over one million people, almost half the total population of Gaza, have been displaced. Internet and communication services have been cut off from Gaza and the Israeli bombardment continues at the time of writing.
[Content warning: This fact-check contains visuals of a drone strike. Viewer discretion is advised.]
On 23 October 2023, a Facebook user shared a video (archived) with an Urdu language caption,
یہ اصل دہشت گردی ہے جسے میڈیا چھپا رہا ہے۔
مشرقی غزہ میں فلسطینی بچوں کا ایک ہجوم پینے کا پانی لینے کے لیے پانی کے ٹینک پر جمع ہوا۔ اور اسرائیلی دہشت گردوں نے اوپر سے بچوں پر بم پھینکا جس کے نتیجے میں درجنوں بچے شہید اور زخمی ہوئے۔
Translated [This is the real terrorism that the media is covering up. A crowd of Palestinian children gathered at a water tank to get drinking water in eastern Gaza. The Israeli terrorists dropped bombs on children from above, resulting in the martyrdom and injuries of dozens of children.]
The video shows a crowd of people gathered around a huge tank, and an aerial shot of a bomb dropping which results in a blast.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check investigated the claim using reverse image search on the keyframes of the video. Google Lens results showed a blog post published a week ago on a website, Funker 350 featuring the same video as the Facebook post. The video was accompanied with the caption, “This footage is from the perspective of a Sudanese Army drone as it loiters above RSF rebels who are siphoning fuel. When the drone delivers its payload, the fuel is ignited, which in turn immolates many of the RSF troops. Viewer Discretion is advised.”
A keyword search on Google also led to the same video (archived) which was published on 12 October 2023 on X (formerly Twitter) by account, Sudan News. When translated in English, the Arabic caption of the video reads, “An army drone targeting a group of Rapid Support Forces mercenaries, who had gathered to refuel their motorcycles.”
The video of the drone strike was also reported by Al-Jazeera Sudan on their verified Facebook page, on the same day. Al Jazeera’s video report was captioned, “A Sudanese army march bombed a fuel tanker belonging to the Rapid Support Forces in Khartoum #Video #Al Jazeera_Sudan”, which corroborates what we’ve seen reported. Thus the video verifiably shows a drone strike by the Sudanese army, on a fuel tanker belonging to the RSF in Khartoum.
Since April 2023, the Sudan military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have engaged in fierce fighting in the capital Khartoum and elsewhere in the country, raising fears of a civil war. The conflict is ongoing at the time of writing.
Soch Fact Check could not independently find any news reports on Israel’s airstrikes on any water tank in eastern Gaza. We could only determine that the video shared is apparently from Sudan, and is not related to the escalations in Gaza.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 7-day period from 20 to 27 October 2023. It shows that the false claim received 300 interactions across 133 video posts on Facebook. The archived versions can be seen here, here, here, and here.
On X (formerly Twitter), the video received 49.8k views, 1.4k likes and 1.6k reposts. The archived versions are available here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The video which claims to show a bombing in eastern Gaza is not from the recent Israel-Hamas escalations. The video shows a drone attack on the RSF in Sudan.
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