Does a video show Palestinian children "searching for burnt food" after airstrikes that occurred during the 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict? No, that's not true: The footage predates by three months the conflict that arose after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. The mislabelled video documented the aftermath of a fire that destroyed tents in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon, about 200 miles from Gaza, the focus of the fall 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict.
The claim was implied in a video (archived here) published on October 14, 2023. The video showed children pulling packaged food from the ground around what looked like the site of a fire. The text superimposed on the footage read:
Palestinian kids searching for burnt food after airstrikes
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Oct 18 14:17:10 2023 UTC)
Other versions of this same claim and video appeared on TikTok (archived here) and on X (archived here), formerly known as Twitter.
The video in its original context can be found on TikTok (archived here), where it was published on July 21, 2023. Lead Stories used Google Translate to translate the Arabic caption of the original video to English, which is: "From the Bahnin al-Minya camp fire #Syria #Lebanon #fire #camp #emergency #relief."
The "Bahnin al-Minya camp fire" refers to a fire (archived here) that broke out in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon, on July 21, 2023. Although there was extensive structural damage in the camp, no human fatalities were recorded (archived here).
Other Lead Stories articles on claims pertaining to the 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict are here.
