ISIS video from 2016 shared as 'Hamas torturing Israeli soldiers'

By: Praveen Kumar
October 19 2023

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A 2016 graphic ISIS video of two Turkish soldiers being burnt alive has been circulated with the claim that it shows Hamas torturing Israeli soldiers.

(Trigger Warning: This story contains descriptions of distressing visuals and mentions of violence. Reader discretion is advised.)

As the Israel-Hamas war rages on, an explosion at a Gaza hospital on October 17 killed about 500 people, according to health ministry sources and a civil defense chief in Gaza, reported Reuters. It added that Palestinian officials said it was an Israeli air strike that hit the hospital, while Israel blamed it on a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, which has denied responsibility. The Gaza health ministry said before the hospital blast, Israeli strikes on Gaza killed at least 2,778 people and wounded 9,700, reported The Associated Press. It added that another 1,200 people across Gaza were believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead.

 What is the claim?

Amid this, on October 18, social media users shared a graphic, over three-minute-long video featuring two men in uniforms standing in a field with their hands tied behind their backs with chains. The video goes on to show fire burning behind them and gradually engulfing and killing them. Then a man clad in black from head to toe speaks to the camera and pours what appears to be fuel to the burning bodies. The caption, in Hindi and English, circulating with this video claims this video was released by Hamas, showing how they tortured two Israeli soldiers.

This has been shared on X with tens of thousands of views. An X user’s now-deleted post which shared this video and claim in Hindi, had gained over 22,000 views. 

The video and claim went viral on X. (Source: X/Screenshots/Modified by Logically Facts)

 The same has been shared on Facebook. 

(Note: We have refrained from adding any links to the video due to the graphic nature of the video.)

This video and claim were also shared on Facebook. (Source: Facebook/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)

 However, this video is old and unrelated to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

 What we found

The first thing we noticed in the viral video is what appears to be the terrorist group Islamic State’s (ISIS) flag at the top-right corner - black with white text on it with a white circle. This visual is too small to make out what it says. However, it is unlike the Hamas flag, which is green, with Arabic calligraphy in white. The ISIS flag appears every few seconds in the video.

Comparison of the viral video, the ISIS flag, and the Hamas flag. (Source: X/Wikimedia Commons/Modified by Logically Facts)

Reverse-searching keyframes of the video led us to multiple news reports and websites from around the world, dating back to 2016. Some news organizations, such as Al Arabiya News, Hindustan Times, South China Morning Post, and Financial Express, published reports on the video with screenshots from it. 

News reports about the ISIS video from 2016. (Source: Financial Express/Hindustan Times/Modified by Logically Facts)

We also came across a Reuters report from December 23, 2016, which described the video without carrying it, and said that the video was released online the previous day by the Islamic State in Syria.

Al Jazeera reported on December 23, 2016, that the killer in the video spoke in Turkish and criticized Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, demanding “destruction to be sowed” in Turkey. The report added that the Islamic State-linked news agency Amaq had said in November 2016 that the terrorist group had abducted two Turkish soldiers. Meanwhile, the Turkish army had separately said that it had lost contact with two of its men in northern Syria.

The original video was reportedly 19 minutes long and allegedly filmed in the Islamic State-declared “Aleppo Province” in northern Syria.

 The verdict

The 2016 video featuring two Turkish soldiers being burned alive by ISIS is incorrectly being shared on social media as showing Hamas torturing and killing Israeli soldiers. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.