Accounts on social media, including Iraqi accounts, circulated a video claiming it was recent and showed Syrians throwing predatory catfish into the Euphrates River in the Al-Bukamal area toward Iraq.
The fact-checking team ran a digital analysis, breaking the clip into still frames and running a reverse image search with Google Lens, which found that the video was first published on 25 June 2026 on the page of a fish trader in the Ghab Plain in Hama province. The team contacted the original publisher, who confirmed that the fish had been moved to a fishery in the Ain al-Taqa area of the Ghab Plain west of Hama, and that the clip had nothing to do with the Euphrates River or the Al-Bukamal area.
Why is this claim misleading?
Out of temporal and geographic context: An old clip from the Ghab Plain west of Hama was recirculated as if it documented a recent incident on the Euphrates near Al-Bukamal, moving the footage out of its true time and place to suggest an event that did not happen.
