Fact-Check: News Outlets Share Stock Photo of a Young Boy as Visuals From Turkey

The photo is a stock image that we found on Shutterstock and Adobe Stock's websites.

Several media organisations published the photo as a recent visual from the earthquakes in Turkey.

(Source: Shutterstock/Altered by The Quint)

Several social media users and news organisations shared a photo of a young boy sitting on rubble linking it to the recent earthquakes which hit Turkey and Syria on 6 and 7 February, claiming as many as 11,000 lives.

Who shared this photo?: News organisations such as Down To Earth, Lokmat Hindi, ABP Mazha, ETV Bharat, and News18 Hindi shared the photo.

(Note: Swipe right to view some of the claims.)

An archived version of this article can be seen here.

An archived version of this article can be seen here.

An archived version of this article can be seen here.

But...?: The image is a stock photo and doesn't show recent visuals from Turkey or Syria.

How did we find out?: We ran a reverse image search on the viral photo.

• The results led us to Shutterstock – a stock image website – which had the same photo on its website.

• It was published crediting the photo to one Zapylaieva Hanna.

We found the photo on stock image website.

(Source: Shutterstock/Altered by The Quint)

• We looked for the photographer's social media profiles and came across one on Facebook.

• Hanna had shared this photo mentioning that she had taken the photo in an old, destroyed building in Goloseevsky Park (in Kyiv) during Easter in 2018.

• Adobe's stock media repository also had the same photograph.

• We also came across a Gulf News article from 2022, which used the same photograph in an article about childhood trauma.

The photo was used in an article about the effect of childhood trauma in adult relationships.

(Source: Gulf News/Screenshot)

Team WebQoof has debunked several claims surrounding the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, some of which you can read here, here, here, and here.

Conclusion: The photograph of a boy sitting amid rubble is a stock image, and not related to the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

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