Even as reports came in about Israel intensifying the bombing of Gaza, a video of a child, eyes closed, crouching under a tree in darkness is in circulation. The child is covered in what seems to be mud or dust and is later rescued. The video is being circulated with the claim that it is from Gaza, and related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
X (formerly Twitter) Blue user @ShivamYadavjii, who describes himself as a journalist in his bio, shared it calling it a heartrending sight and praying that normalcy be brought back in war torn Gaza. (Archive)
Fact Check
We broke the video into multiple key-frames using InVid and ran a reverse image search. This led us to a longer version of the video posted on Instagram on September 1, 2023, by a user named parvllz__tv .
The video also has some embedded text which we identified as Tajik, a variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan. It says, "The night of the flood was recorded in Vahdat In the video, it can be seen that people do not care for the child, who is apparently buried under water and mud." Vahdat is a city in western Tajikistan.
We also came across a report by a news agency from Tajikistan named Radio Ozodi, dated September 6, 2023. It is titled "Miraculously survived. How 7-year-old Safiallo escaped during a powerful mudflow in Vakhdat." The report contained a still from the viral video and also a photo of the same child taken later while he was recuperating from injuries.
The report identifies the child as seven-year-old Safiallo Mirzozoda. According to the report, on the night of August 27, a heavy mudslide struck Chuyangaron in Vahdat and took away Safiallo, his grandmother and three other children. The child was later admitted to Vakhdat central hospital.
We also found out that a YouTube channel named OzodiVideo contained the extended version of the video clip and an interview of the child at the hospital.
The description says: "On the night of the tragedy, the residents found a child in a terrible condition among the people who survived the flood. With his head and face full of mud and his body numb from fear and cold, he crashed into a tree and escaped death." The clip was uploaded on September 5.
To sum up, an old video clip of a child trapped in a mudslide in Tajikistan is viral out of context. It is not from Gaza and has no connection with the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict that started on October 7.
Shreyatama Datta is an intern at Alt News.
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