Fact Check: Viral Photo Does Not Show The Location Of Hamas Leader Ismail Haniya’s Assassination

New Delhi (Visvas News) A picture going viral on social media shows a damaged house falsely claiming it to be the same place where Hamas leader Ismail Haniya was killed on July 31, 2024.

Vishvas News investigated and found that this claim was false. This picture is not of the location where Ismail Haniya was killed, but rather from the site where al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in Afghanistan in 2022.

What is in the viral post?

Facebook user Elle Carlin shared the image with the caption “This is what a precision strike looks like: a single missile through the window, and only Haniyeh and his bodyguard are dead. Nobody else in the building is even injured”

You can see the archived version of the post here.

Investigation

To verify the authenticity of the viral claim, we conducted a reverse image search of this photo and found it in various social media posts in 2022, all identifying it as the same house where al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed.

Following this lead, we conducted a Google search and found several reports confirming that this image depicts the house in Kabul, Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in 2022.

In a video from CNN’s August 3, 2022, report, the building is shown from a different angle. The report states, “CNN has identified the house in Kabul, Afghanistan, that was struck by a hellfire missile drone attack early Sunday morning, killing al-Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri. According to the S President Joe Biden, Zawahiri was on the balcony at the time of the attack.”

We also found a video uploaded on the website of ABP Live on August 2, 2022, regarding the killing of Al Qaeda leader Al-Zawahiri, in which the house seen in the viral photo can be seen.

We then investigated the assassination of Ismail Haniya. Reports indicate that Haniya was assassinated in an apartment in Tehran, Iran.

To verify this, we contacted Fatemi Karim Khan, a fact checker in Iran and she confirmed that the viral claim is false and the house in the picture is not the location where Ismail Haniya was killed.

Lastly, we scanned the profile of Facebook user Elle Carlin who shared this fake post and found that the user has more than 2000 followers.

Conclusion: Vishvas News’s investigation revealed that the viral picture does not depict the site of Ismail Haniya’s assassination. Instead, it shows the location where al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in Afghanistan in 2022.

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• Ismail Haniya