After Israel launched airstrikes against military targets in Iran’s capital Tehran in October 2024, a photo was shared hundreds of times in posts that falsely claimed it showed the attack. In reality, the image shows a different Israeli bombardment in Lebanon.
The photo circulated after Israel carried out airstrikes on military targets in Iran on October 26, 2024 (archived link).
Israel had vowed to retaliate against Tehran for its October 1 barrage of 200 missiles, the second-ever direct attack by Iran on its arch-foe.
At roughly the same time as Israel struck Iran, Syrian state news agency SANA said an Israeli air attack targeted military positions in central and southern Syria.
“Iranian military targets attacked,” read the Thai-language caption alongside a photo of a huge explosion on Facebook on October 26, 2024. “Israel launched several waves of revengeful attacks on Iran since this morning. Meanwhile, there were loud explosions in Syria too…”
NationTV, a Thai media company with over four million Facebook followers, falsely shared the image.
Israel is already engaged in combat on two fronts, a full-on war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon since last month, and in Gaza, where Israel has fought Palestinian Hamas militants for more than a year.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Dozens of captives seized on that day are still held by militants in Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground war in Gaza has killed 43,374 people, the majority civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, figures the United Nations considers reliable.
The image of the explosion was also shared in other posts in Thai here and here and English here and here.
However, it shows a different Israeli attack on Lebanon.
Israeli strike
Reverse image searches on Google found a corresponding image published by Lebanese photographer Nabil Ismail alongside ten other images on his Instagram post (archived link).
The timestamp from his Instagram post indicated it was published early on October 7, 2024, as shown below:
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and the original photo published by Nabil Ismail (right):
On the night of October 6, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) issued warnings that specified their targets in Beirut’s southern suburb (archived link).
Citing official Lebanese media, AFP reported that four Israeli strikes struck south Beirut on October 6, shortly after calls by Israel’s army for residents to evacuate the Hezbollah stronghold which has been bombarded for several days (archived link).
AFP reported on Israel’s October 6 strike on Beirut, showing a different scene of the attack (archived link).
According to an AFP tally based on official figures, at least 1,940 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, when the fighting escalated as Israel launched an air and ground offensive against Hezbollah, which has been carrying out rocket attacks in support of Hamas.
According to Israeli official figures, at least 63 people have been killed on the Israeli side, including 12 in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights, since cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah erupted in October last year following Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel.
Israel’s military says 38 soldiers have been killed since it began ground operations in Lebanon.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war here.
