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| - Misleading: Old video of a child in a Turkish hospital falsely shared as Gaza-related
A post on X featuring a video of a young child praying on a hospital bed, with tubes connected to medical equipment behind her, claimed that the footage shows a kid who got left behind “when doctors were forced to evacuate from the Baptist Hospital in Gaza” in late Dec. 2023.
It further suggested the video was filmed by a “Zionist soldier,” and doctors found the child unharmed when they came back. An Arabic text on the video said, “One of the kids was at the Baptist [Hospital]. This is how he will meet God” in English.
The post has over 12,000 likes and nearly 6,000 retweets on X at the time of writing. The same video was also posted on TikTok earlier on Oct. 19, 2023, which has over 32,000 shares so far.
The hospital that the video refers to is the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, where an explosion killed and injured hundreds of civilians on Oct. 17, 2023, during the conflict between Israel and Hamas. There have been several claims and counter-claims about who is to be blamed for the explosion that day.
Annie Lab investigated the video and can confirm that the footage is unrelated to the conflict in Gaza.
We found that the misleading clip was edited from a longer video featuring Fatima, a girl fighting cancer and receiving treatment at a hospital in Istanbul, Turkey.
A 33-second TikTok video uploaded on Jan. 6, 2023, seems to be the source footage. The misleading video shared later on X and TikTok was edited, only showing the first 15 seconds.
The account called “ali..kaled1996000” posted the source clip with a text in Arabic that reads, “Fatima fights cancer.” These words are covered by another overlaying text in the misleading video.
This TikTok account has been documenting Fatima’s journey in battling cancer since September 2021.
On Jan. 27, 2022, it shared a video of what appears to be a hospital in Istanbul. The ward setting captured in this clip closely resembles that of the source video. The uploader said in the comment section that Fatima had arrived in Turkey a year and a half ago.
We geolocated the hospital where Fatima was receiving treatment.
A video posted on May 31, 2022, captured a mosque and a sign that reads, “İstanbul 29 mayıs üniversitesi.”
Using these clues, we know that the building is part of the Ümraniye Gynaecology and Paediatrics Hospital (Ümraniye Kadın Doğum ve Çocuk Hastalıkları Hastanesi) in Istanbul, not in Gaza.
Annie Lab also found a picture of Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan visiting the hospital in 2016, posted by the Istanbul Project Coordination Unit, which reconstructed the hospital. The interior of the ward shown in the photos is identical to that shown in the misleading video.
The user “ali..kaled1996000” has posted a link to another account of his in the caption of one of the videos as well.
We looked at the clips and noticed that the background of a video posted on Dec. 13, 2023, matches the exterior of the Istanbul hospital, implying the girl was still receiving treatment there recently.
User’s clarification
On Oct. 22, 2023, the account “ali..kaled1996000” raised concerns in a video about the false claim regarding Fatima being in Gaza.
With the help of a postgraduate student studying Arabic at Peking University, Annie Lab learned that the uploader wrote in the caption that someone had taken the original video and fabricated such claims.
The misleading footage was placed in the upper left corner of this clarifying video alongside an overlaying text that reads, “I hope everyone who sees this video will know the truth.”
In the video, a little girl and a man are sitting together, and they seem to be Fatima and her father.
Annie Lab translated the gist of the statement by the man, which roughly says the misleading video gave them great pain and he hopes other users can help them (presumably by spreading the clarifying video).
One user commented, “I have been following you. Since the beginning of her illness, she is a Syrian girl and has been receiving treatment in Turkey.”
Arabic fact-check platform MISBAR checked the claim on Dec. 20, 2023, but the report appears to have confused the release time of the source video. It also has no evidence to confirm the location of the hospital.
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