Was the same Palestinian child used to stage fake rescue photos from three separate Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip on the same day in October 2023? No, that's not true: These three photos were taken in Aleppo, Syria, on August 27, 2016, by photojournalist Ameer Alhalbi. These photos are unrelated to the 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict. In the aftermath of an airstrike on Aleppo, this barefoot girl was carried over the rubble by several different people before she was transferred to a vehicle.
The mislabeled series of photos (archived here) was published on X, formerly Twitter, on October 24, 2023. The post's caption reads:
Somebody call Guinness World Records.
We have found the most lucky (or unlucky?) girl in the world.
She has miraculously survived Israel ruthless attacks on 3 separate occasions times on the same day.
Wow!
#HamasisISIS
#Paliwood
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
These photos were taken in 2016 by Syrian photojournalist Ameer Alhalbi shortly after an airstrike of barrel bombs hit near a tent of mourners in the Maadi district of Aleppo, Syria. The August 27, 2016, photos are clearly marked in the online catalogue of Getty Images, an international photo agency, and are all identified as the same incident.
Despite this transparency, the photos have been misrepresented to present a false conspiracy narrative about "crisis actors" in different incidents.
A December 25, 2016, debunk by Snopes addressed a meme (pictured below) that uses the same three image panels as in the post pictured above. The meme is captioned:
When CNN uses the same girl
In 3 different Refugee Crisis pictures being saved by 3 different men
(Source: Snopes screenshot taken on Fri Oct 27 16:22:42 2023 UTC)
The barefoot girl appears in four of Alhalbi's photos. The three images above (left to right) are linked in the next sentence to the original, uncropped photos on gettyimages.com. The photos show the girl carried by a white-helmeted rescue worker, a man in yellow and a man in a plaid shirt.
A fourth photo that does not appear in the crisis-actor meme or the claim on X shows the man in the white helmet (Syria Civil Defence), who was also carrying another child, as he transferred the little girl into the arms of the man in the plaid shirt.
The man in the plaid shirt appears to be approaching the white-helmeted rescuer, but has been cropped out In the leftmost photo.
The nearly identical captions included with the four photos on gettyimages.com say:
A Syrian rescue worker carries children in the Maadi district of eastern Aleppo after regime aircrafts reportedly dropped explosive-packed barrel bombs on August 27, 2016. At least 15 civilians were reported killed when two bombs fell several minutes apart, near a tent where people were receiving condolences for those killed this week. (Photo by Ameer al-HALBI / AFP) (Photo by AMEER AL-HALBI/AFP via Getty Images)
Another press photographer, Abdalrhman Ismail, was also there and captured photos of the same barefoot girl. One of Ismail's photos shows the girl as she was carried by the man in the plaid shirt near an ambulance, and the other shows her sitting inside a vehicle. That photo is captioned:
ATTENTION EDITORS - VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH
An injured girl sits in a vehicle after surviving double airstrikes on the rebel held Bab al-Nairab neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, August 27, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about the 2023 Hamas-Israel crisis can be found here.
