Does a video of a girl being beaten and burned alive depict a woman captured at the site of the October 2023 Israeli music festival massacre, where Hamas gunmen killed more than 260 people? No, that's not true: The video predates the attack by 8 years and was taken 7,500 miles away, in Guatemala. The footage shows a 16-year-old girl, the victim of a mob attack in Rio Bravo, Guatemala, in 2015. Her death was widely reported at that time.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on October 10, 2023. The post had a Turkish-language text teaser that read, according to DeepL:
Whichever religion did this, I am not of that religion. God damn you!!
The upper part of the video featured a graphic in English that read:
Update on the girl captured at the festival.
This is what the post looked like on social media at the time of the writing of this fact check. (Lead Stories has blurred the image of the girl because it depicts graphic violence.):
The post refers to the capture of 25-year-old Noa Argamani, a concertgoer who was kidnapped during the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival near the Gaza Strip, where Israeli officials say at least 260 people were killed. But the video does not depict Argamani.
Rather, it shows a 16-year-old girl, who was beaten and burned alive by a mob in Rio Bravo, Guatemala, in 2015. Back then, multiple news outlets reported on the video and the girl's violent death, which followed accusations of her being involved in the murder of a taxi driver.
Lead Stories has debunked claims about the Israeli music festival massacre before. You can read those here.
Other Lead Stories articles on claims pertaining to the 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict are here.
