As the conflict between Iran and Israel rages on, leaving a large number of casualties in its wake, an image of a missile exploding in the air has gone viral. Those sharing it on social media claim it shows Iran attacking Israel.
X user @TheIranianNews posted the image on June 19, with the caption, "We're back, Tel Aviv." At the time of this article being written, the post had 6 million views. (Archive)
Another X user, @thjournalisteye, also shared the image with similar claims. At the time we wrote this, the post had 28,000 views. (Archive)
The same image was amplified by several other users on X. (Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4)
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The image was also viral on Facebook with similar claims.
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Fact Check
To check the veracity of the claims, we ran a reverse image search on the viral image.
This led us to a report by German magazine Der Spiegel, from January 5, 2009, on Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip, an operation which lasted three weeks, leaving over a thousand Palestinians dead. The report had used the same image, crediting it to news agency Reuters.
We found the same image on Reuters, published on January 4, 2009, photographed by Baz Ratner. The caption says, "A shell fired by Israeli forces explodes over the northern Gaza Strip."
Thus, a Reuters image of an Israeli ballistic shell exploding mid-air in the Gaza Strip has been shared on social media with wrong claims that it shows an Iranian missile fired into Israeli territories. The image is from 2009 and completely unrelated to the recent conflict between Iran and Israel.
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