Fact-Check: Old Video of Mosque Being Attacked in Syria Shared as One From Gaza

The video is from 2014 and shows ISIS blowing up a mosque in Syria. It is unrelated to the ongoing war.

Fact-Check: The viral video is not a recent one from Gaza. It shows a mosque destroyed by ISIS in Raqqa, Syria in 2014.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing a mosque being bombed is going viral on social media with a false claim that Israel attacked a shrine in Gaza amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

An archive can be seen here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

(Archives of similar claims can be found here, here and here.)

What's the truth?: The video dates back to 2014 and is from Raqqa, Syria.

• It shows the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) destroying the Shi'ite Uwais al-Qarni mosque.

• It is unrelated to Israel and Gaza.

How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the video, which led us to an article from 24 June 2014.

• This was shared by a website called Islamic Invitation Turkey and it carried the same viral video.

• The article identified the structure as Uwais al-Qarni mosque.

The video is from Syria, not Gaza.

(Source: Islamic Invitation Turkey/Screenshot)

• We also found a YouTube video from 8 June 2014 showing the same video video and the title read 'ISIS demolished the Uweis al-Qarani Shrine' in French.

• Taking a cue, we checked the Google Earth imagery of the shrine and found that the structure existed in March 2014 but was partially destroyed in the imagery from October 2014.

• We also checked the latest view from 2021, and it shows no structure at that place, the mosque has been completely demolished.

Google Earth imagery from March 2014.

Google Earth imagery from October 2014.

Google Earth imagery from October 2021.

• The mosque's minarets in this imagery from Syria match the ones from the viral clip.

Minarets from old Google Earth imagery (left) and the ones in the viral video (right).

(Source: Altered by The Quint)

Reports about the attack: The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) website also carried 'the before and after' images of the site in Raqqa, showing the mosque's destruction.

Before and after images of the destruction of the mosque.

(Source: UNITAR/Screenshot)

• In 2014, Al Jazeera and Reuters also reported on this attack.

• It stated that as per Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, the al Qaeda splinter group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had set off two powerful explosions at the mosque.

Conclusion: The viral video is not a recent one from Gaza. It shows a mosque destroyed by ISIS in Raqqa, Syria in 2014.

The Quint has been debunking several claims which are being falsely linked with the Israel-Palestine war; you can read them here, here and here.

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