Old video of ‘crying boy’ from Syria falsely linked to Israel-Hamas war

According to Reuters, Gaza's Health Ministry said on October 19 that at least 3,785 Palestinians have been killed and 12,493 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7. The war has led many social media users to share unrelated photos and videos online and link them to the ongoing conflict.

What is the claim?
One such video being shared online is of a little boy crying, and the subtitles within the video say he's crying at the loss of his sisters. The captions shared with this video claim it is from Gaza, Palestine, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

This video and claim has been shared on X with tens of thousands of views. Archived links can be found here, here, and here.

This claim has gone viral on X since October 12, 2023. (Source: X/Screenshots)

 The archived Facebook posts claiming the same can be found here and here.

This video and claim have also been shared on Facebook. (Source: Facebook/Screenshots)

 The archived TikTok posts claiming the same can be found here, here, and here.

The same has also been shared on TikTok. (Source: TikTok/Screenshots)

However, this is an old video from Syria. 

What we found

In analyzing the clip using reverse image search, we traced the original video to 2014. The full video is longer and shows the boy sitting with two other people and a younger child. The video also includes an Aleppo Media Center (AMC) logo. The oldest uploads of this video we could find are on YouTube, uploaded by AMC on February 14, 2014, with the title in Arabic: "Important for the media: A child cries for his brothers who were killed in a helicopter bombing in the city of Masaken Hanano 2-14-2014."

AMC video report. (Source: YouTube)

Another Syrian media outlet, Shaam News Network also uploaded the video to YouTube on the same date with the title in Arabic "2014 4 14 Aleppo, Hanan housing, children and civilians survived the violent bombardment." 

An image of the crying boy and the people next to him from the same date, photographed by photojournalist Hosam Katan, is available on Reuters Pictures. This image has been used in news reports about Syria's situation at the time by Al Arabiya News and International Business Times.

Comparison of the image by Reuters Pictures with the viral video and the original video. (Source: X/Reuters Pictures/YouTube/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)

In February 2014, explosive barrels were dropped by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo in the civil war. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 76021 casualties were recorded in Syria in 2014.

Although civilians in Gaza are experiencing the extreme effects of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, this video is from 2014 and does not depict the situation in Gaza, Palestine.

The verdict

A video of a little boy crying in Syria after an air attack in February 2014 has been incorrectly shared, claiming to be an incident in Gaza from the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Therefore we have marked this claim as false.