Old Video From Syria Shared as Turkey Killing Contractors After Earthquake

The video dates back to 2013 and was first reported in 2022 by New Lines Magazine.

Fact-Check: This video showing a mass execution is from Syria and not Turkey.

(Photo: The Quint)

A disturbing video showing several people being pushed into a pit and being executed by armed men has gone viral on the internet.

The claim: People have shared the video claiming that it shows Turkish soldiers killing contractors in the country for building poor-quality buildings that exacerbated the impact of the recent earthquakes.

It was reported that Turkish justice officials had detained building contractors for shoddy and illegal construction methods that allegedly resulted in the deaths of over 50,000 people in earthquakes that took place earlier this year.

(Note: Due to the highly distressing nature of the video, we have refrained from using links to the video or its archives.)

A claim with the viral video.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

The truth: The video dates back to 2013 and shows Syrian military personnel committing a massacre. The video was first reported by Annsar Shahhoud and Uğur Ümit Üngör in New Lines Magazine in 2022.

How did we find that out: We used the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension to extract keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search on some of them.

• That led us to news reports about an alleged massacre by Syrian military personnel.

• Taking cues from that, we included keywords with the reverse image search and found an article published in news outlets New Lines Magazine and the Guardian.

A link to the story can be found here.

(Source: The Guardian/Screenshot)

• According to the New Lines Magazine article, the video showed Syrian military personnel committing a massacre on 16 April 2013 in the Damascus district of Tadamon.

• The video was leaked to researchers Annsar Shahhoud and Uğur Ümit Üngör in 2019 and were reported in 2022 after authenticating it.

• The video showed soldiers of the Syrian Armed Forces belonging to branch 227 of the Military Intelligence Directorate carrying out mass executions, the report added.

• The article further added that a longer version of the video showed the soldiers setting fire to the bodies of the victims in the execution pit.

Conclusion: An old video from Syria has gone viral with a claim that it shows Turkish soldiers killing contractors in Turkey for their shoddy construction.

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