News Outlets Share Old Photo From Ukraine As Türkiye Earthquake Victim

Several news outlets including IANS Live, News 18 Hindi, ETV Bharat have recently shared a photograph of a minor boy sitting on rubble falsely linking it to the recent powerful earthquake that struck large parts of Türkiye and Syria.

BOOM spoke to photographer Zapylaieva Hanna, who confirmed that the picture was clicked as part of a 2018 photoshoot in Ukraine.

Parts of Turkey and Syria were hit by a deadly earthquake on February 6. The quake reportedly killed more than 9,500 people destroying hundreds of homes and leaving several injured. Many countries including India have sent their respective disaster management teams to carry out relief work.

Wire agency IANS' news website IANS Live, News 18 Hindi, ETV Bharat Maharashtra, ABP Majha, Hindustan Times Tamil, Lokmat News used the image to report about the recent Turkey earthquake.

In a tweet, IANS uploaded the same photo describing it to be a "Representational Image".

We also found that media outlets like IB Times, News Nation TV published the picture on their reports crediting it to wire agency IANS.

Fact Check

BOOM performed a reverse image search on the photo using TinEye and found that the picture is available on several stock photo websites since 2021.

We noticed that a photographer named Zapylaieva Hanna uploaded the photo on stock photo website Shutterstock. The profile of the photographer on Shutterstock led us to Hanna's Facebook and Instagram profile where we found several photos clicked by her.

BOOM then reached out to Hanna over WhatsApp to know details about the viral photo. When asked, Hanna confirmed that she clicked the photo near Goloseevsky Park in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2018 as part of a photoshoot.

Hanna also told BOOM that the boy in the photo is her son. She said, "This is my son. His name is Leo. At that time, he was 5 years old. We are now refugees in France."

The photographer also wrote a Facebook post debunking the false claims about the picture.

Click here to view the post.