Accounts on social media circulated an image claiming it showed a commander named Abu Khalid al-Afghani, accompanied by allegations that he had been killed in an ammunition car explosion in the town of Binnish in the Idlib countryside, with the report attributed to a statement issued by the Ministry of Defense.
The fact-checking team at Kashaf carried out a digital trace of the attached image through a reverse image search using Google Lens, and found a TikTok account belonging to the person shown in the circulating image, under the name Cali Garweyne, a sheikh of Somali nationality whose account content is limited to religious and awareness posts with no material of a military nature.
The team also reviewed the official handles and accounts of the Ministry of Defense and found no statement or report concerning the killing of a person by that name in an ammunition car explosion in the town of Binnish in the Idlib countryside.
Why is this claim misleading?
An error in identity attribution: The claim relied on an image of a Somali sheikh with no connection to the incident and presented it as that of an Afghan commander killed in the Idlib countryside, while attributing the report to a statement the Ministry of Defense never issued, in order to give the account an official cover and mislead public opinion.
