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| - Fact Check: Fan-wars! Egyptian soccer fans attacking rivals FALSELY shared as violent Al-Sadr supporters
A video of football fans attacking the fan bus of a rival football club was falsely circulated on social media claiming that it shows supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr attacking Iranian pilgrims.
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India Today Fact Check
This video is not from Iraq but from Egypt. It shows fans of Ismaily SC, a football club, attacking the fan bus of its rival Al Ahly SC.
Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, is witnessing massive unrest. Reportedly, at least thirty people have been killed in fighting between rival Shia militias, as well as the Iraqi security forces, after the religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr claimed on August 29 that he was withdrawing from politics. The death toll is only expected to rise further.
Video purportedly shows Sadr supporters attacking an Iranian bus carrying pilgrims pic.twitter.com/WP5X6F7Pnr — Karwan Faidhi Dri (@KarwanFaidhiDri) August 30, 2022
A video in the meanwhile has gone viral that shows people attacking a bus by throwing large rocks at it. Supposedly, the people attacking were Al-Sadr’s supporters and the passengers on the Iranian bus were pilgrims.
Archived versions of such posts can be seen here and here.
AFWA's investigation found that the video is not from Iraq, but from Egypt. It shows fans of a football club attacking a rival football club’s fan bus.
AFWA Probe
When we reverse-searched frames from the video, it led us to the same clip shared on Twitter from a handle named AL Ahly Stadium on August 21. The Arabic caption roughly translates to, "Ismaily fans attack the buses of Al-Ahly fans."
When we Googled these two names, results suggested that both were football clubs in Egypt, one based in Cairo, and the other in Ismaïlia. Given that the video was shared almost nine days ago, it is clear that it is not related to the ongoing agitation in Iraq.
Subsequent searches led us to multiple news reports from August 21 and 22 carrying photos from the same video
Per the reports, some fans of Ismaily Sporting Club attacked Al Ahly Sporting Club’s fan bus before a match between the two teams in the Egyptian League on August 21. Following the attack, the match was postponed. The report further noted that the bus driver was injured.
We also found another YouTube video of the same incident where a logo of a football club could be seen behind the windshield of the bus around the 16-second mark.
When we compared this logo with the profile picture of the official Twitter account of Al Ahly, it became clear that the bus was indeed carrying the fans of Al Ahly.
Al Arabiya Egypt, an Egyptian news outlet, also shared this video, confirming that Ismaily Sporting Club fans indeed attacked Al Ahly fans.
Therefore, we concluded that this video has nothing to do with the ongoing crisis in Baghdad, Iraq.
(With input from Sanjana Saxena)
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