An old video of a gruesome mass murder that took place in Syria is being shared on social media with captions falsely claiming that the footage shows people being shot dead for not observing fast during Ramzan in the country.
BOOM found that while the viral video is from Syria, it is old and shows a war crime.
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The over six-minute-long video shows uniformed soldiers pushing blindfolded people towards an execution pit already filled with bodies. Once in the pit, the blindfolded people are being shot dead.
BOOM has not included the video here owing to its horrific nature.
The caption with the viral video reads 'This is in Islamic Nation Syria..where those who have been shot dead are the Kafirs who didn't observe the fast during the Ramzan festival....A mass grave has been dugged and all those who didn't fast were blind folded and shot dead and burrows in the mass grave...Great Islam'.
The video is graphic in nature. Viewers' discretion is advised.
Click here to view the post.
Click here to view the post.
BOOM also received the video on its WhatsApp tipline with a request to verify the claim.
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Fact Check
BOOM did a reverse image search with a relevant keyword search on one one of the keyframes from the video and found it on an April 28 tweet from Anadolu Agency's verified Twitter handle.
The tweet carried similar visuals with a caption reading 'New footage shows Assad regime executing dozens of civilians in Syria at least 41 civilians were executed by Bashar al-Assad regime forces in 2013 in Tadamon, near Damascus, according to an investigation by The Guardian'.
Click here to view the post.
Taking cue, we did a keyword search simultaneously on YouTube and Google and found The Guardian's report about the incident published on April 27, 2022.
According to the report, the newly-released footage obtained by The Guardian shows a war crime committed in southern suburbs of Syria's Damascus in April 2013. The report further states that as many as 41 civilians were killed by pushing them into an execution pit and shooting them dead.
Brutal Massacre
Another report published in The Guardian on April 27, 2022 states that the now viral video was date stamped April 16, 2013.
"It's difficult to establish why this group of civilians was picked out and chosen fit for execution. The theories about why they were killed range from a collective punishment of any community that was linked to the opposition. At that point, the Syrian opposition was just on the other side of the Tadamon area, there was a very active frontline there. So the prevailing view is that a very strong message, a lethal message, was being sent to civilians in that area: don't consider changing sides", the report further stated.
BOOM also checked the dates between which Ramzan was observed in 2013 to confirm the Ramzan-related part of the viral claim. We found that in 2013, Ramzan was observed between July 9 and August 7. This clears that the killings were not linked to 'observing fasts during Ramzan'.
Syrian Civil War
According to a Council on Foreign Relation's report on Syria's civil war, "The deaths of some 1,400 civilians from chemical weapons deployed by the Assad regime in the summer of 2013 mobilized world powers to dismantle the regime's chemical arsenal. However, in the years since, the Syrian government has employed devastating conventional arms that have also caused massive civilian casualties."
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