Thousands of civilians have been killed on both sides since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, which was triggered by an unprecedented attack by gunmen from the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7. A video circulating on Facebook, however, does not show militants capturing Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem after the war began. The clip in fact shows a scene from a Palestinian TV series called "Fist of the Free".
"Praise be to God. Al-Aqsa has been liberated today!" reads a Facebook post written in Bengali and shared on October 10.
Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem is Islam's third holiest site and a symbol of Palestinian national as well as religious pride.
The Facebook post adds: "The Palestinian flag is placed there, and the azan (call to prayer) is delivered after throwing away the Israeli flag. What else could be more beautiful than this moment? God is great."
The two-minute video, which has more than 30,000 views, appears to show a group of uniformed gunmen removing an Israeli flag from atop a structure and replacing it with a Palestinian flag.
The gunmen can be heard chanting "God is great" in Arabic, followed by a Muslim call to prayer.
© AFP
Various Facebook posts also falsely linked the footage to the Israel-Hamas war, including here and here, racking up hundreds of shares.
The posts surfaced after Hamas gunmen stormed across the border from Gaza into Israel on October 7 in an operation the Palestinian Islamist movement called "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood".
Israel says more than 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were killed and more than 230 hostages seized in the bloodiest attack in the country's 75-year history.
It retaliated with relentless strikes on Gaza, which Hamas has ruled for the past 16 years. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said on October 30 that more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the start of the war.
While Hamas says 1,200 of its fighters attacked 50 different sites in Israel on October 7, AFP did find any reports of them entering the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
Palestinian TV series
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the clip showed it was taken from a Palestinian TV series called "Fist of the Free".The 30-episode series is available on the website of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah TV channel Al-Manar.
The scenes matching those in the video shared in the false Facebook post were taken from the 55:05 mark of the series' final episode(archived link).
Below are screenshot comparisons of footage shared in the false post (left) and scenes from the TV series as shown on Al-Manar channel (right):
© AFP
The series revisits an Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip that resulted in the deaths of seven Hamas fighters and an Israeli officer.
Israeli special forces were exposed while operating inside the Gaza Strip on November 11, 2018, and the subsequent exchange of fire marked the worst escalation of violence since a 2014 war.
AFP photos of Al-Aqsa mosque taken after Hamas's October 7 attack show no Palestinian flag flying over the compound.
© AFP
© AFP
The compound has been largely deserted since the attack, AFP reported on October 20.
Large numbers of Israeli security forces could be seen checking ID papers and turning away men under 50 from the Old City esplanade which is located in east Jerusalem, a majority Palestinian area seized by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.
"It's like during Covid, there's no-one," one shopkeeper in the city's Muslim quarter told AFP.
