Fact Check: Old video of Gaza bombing goes viral as Russian airstrike on Ukraine's Ministry of Defence building
India Today
A video of airstrikes levelling a multistoried building has gone viral claiming that it showed Russian missiles razing the Ministry of Defence building in Ukraine.
Amid the intense Russian-Ukraine war, a dramatic video of airstrikes levelling a multistoried building has gone viral with the claim that it showed Russian missiles razing the Ministry of Defence building in Ukraine.
Several Facebook users shared this video with captions like: “Three missiles, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense building was instantly razed to the ground. Before the Russian troops launched the missile, they did two strange things: 1. Notify foreign reporters to shoot nearby. 2. Notify all people in the building to evacuate. The missile accurately blasted the ground floor and caused the building to collapse, and finally shot the middle. Not an indiscriminate shooting, it is purely to shock Ukraine!”
The India Today Anti-Fake News War room (AFWA) found this video showed Israeli airstrikes razing the Al-Shorouk Tower in Gaza in May 2021. No credible news report at the time of writing this on March 23 confirmed if the Ministry of Defence building in Kyiv was hit by Russian missiles.
The viral posts are archived here and here.
AFWA probe
With the help of the InVid tool and reverse image search, we found that the same video has been on the internet since May 2021. We found the video uploaded to Daily Motion in May 2021 as an Israeli bombing in Gaza.
The same video was posted by the verified Twitter handle of ABC News on May 14, 2021. The tweet said, “Video shows the moment an Israeli airstrike hit and levelled the 14-story Al-Shorouk Tower in Gaza amid an escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas.”
