Do these viral videos show real footage from flooded tents in Gaza? No, that's not true: While there were credible reports about December 2025 flooding in that region, some of the Gaza flood clips shared on social media were not real. The signs pointing to AI included strangely shaped hands, distorted faces and scene elements inconsistent with real natural disaster footage.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, where it was published on December 14, 2025. The caption read:
Nothing justifies murder and terrorism but scenes like this makes radicalization easier.
Justice for #Palestine
Save the Children of #Gaza
This is what the attached video looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@yafi_gaza)
In mid-December 2025, the U.N. International Organization for Migration (archived here) warned that hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza might face flooding as Storm Byron (archived here) made landfall, and the BBC identified (archived here) the most dangerous areas using satellite images.
However, not every video of the flooding posted on social media was authentic. For example, the clip reviewed in this fact check was not real footage from the scene.
It originated from a video (archived here) published on TikTok on December 14, 2025, that was marked as containing AI generated content:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@yafi_gaza)
In the video, we see a classic sign pointing to AI: an anatomically incorrect human hand:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@yafi_gaza)
Another shot shows us several things simultaneously. A child with black hair in the foreground appears to be missing the lower part of his body, including limbs. What may look like his leg is actually the unnaturally long arm of another person wearing a pink hat. Meanwhile, in the background, we can spot a person with the facial features distorted in a typical AI fashion.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@yafi_gaza)
In another frame, we see that a child in a green jacket holds on to another person whose hair has the same color and even a similar, plastic-like texture as the child's jacket:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/FadelSoliman)
One additional detail of the setting raises more questions about the entire scene's authenticity. Near the end of the clip, a barrier separates the flooded area where people stand from a drier area. This makes it unclear why they stay in the water instead of rushing to a safer spot:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@yafi_gaza)
The same account on TikTok, @yafi_gaza, posted (archived here) multiple other videos purporting to authentically show the mid-December flooding in Gaza:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of posts at tiktok.com/@yafi_gaza)
Those clips showed multiple issues that were consistent with the content made by generative AI.
In one instance, we see another example of an anatomically incorrect arm that shows the second wrist growing from a child's hand:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@yafi_gaza)
The issue repeated itself in another clip posted by this account on TikTok:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@yafi_gaza)
Some other signs pointing to AI may be more subtle. For example, one clip from the same page showed a badly flooded tent. Yet, there was still electricity -- paired with the strangely shaped hand of the woman holding what looked like a wooden stick:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@yafi_gaza)
