Accounts and pages on social media circulated an image whose publishers claimed was a recent shot showing a massive fire breaking out near the Presidential Palace in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Kashaf’s team followed the circulating claim to verify the image, and by conducting a reverse search of the published visual material, found the claim misleading and the image old, used outside its correct temporal context. The reverse search results showed that the image in fact dates back to a fire of unknown cause that broke out near the People’s Palace in Damascus on 4 July 2025, and does not document any fire that occurred recently in the mentioned area during May 2026.
Why is this claim misleading?
Re-posting in a false temporal context: Re-posting an old image documenting a previous fire near the People’s Palace, and falsely claiming it is a recent shot showing a fire breaking out near the Presidential Palace in Damascus, falls within visual disinformation and the spreading of inaccurate news to boost engagement.
